Spending transparency

One of the unusual things about the Heatley affair was that the detail of credit card use were supplied to the media in the first place. Under Labour, all attempts to gain this info had been rebuffed, as Tracy Watkins explains:

The shame is that any of this happened. It is not much of a reward for the Government remaining absolutely true to its promise of greater openness and transparency.

Requests under the Official Information Act for ministers’ credit card expenses have been made before. But what was new about this week’s release was the manner in which the information was provided. Minister’s credit card statements were supplied in their unvarnished form. Identical requests under the former government garnered nothing like the same level of disclosure; the information was supplied in table form, with totals ascribed to each minister and little more. The only checks that could be made were phone calls to individual ministers, asking them for an explanation as to why they had run up a particularly large bill in comparison to others.

The explanation from Internal Affairs was the way this particular request from The Dominion Post was worded. The more likely explanation is that ministerial credit card OIA’s, like most other skerricks of information relating to the last Labour government, had to pass through chief of staff Heather Simpson first. Ms Simpson’s iron fisted control and ability to spot a political bushfire from 100 miles away are legendary – she was so successful, National has adopted many of Labour’s strategies for political management. But in the case of this week’s OIA there was either a conscious decision made to set a new benchmark or National lacks anyone with the same powerful oversight and ruthless attention to detail as Ms Simpson.

But now the benchmark has been set, there is no going back. It opens the door to OIA’s for the unvarnished records of Labour ministers. But it would be surprising if it didn’t also make ministers think twice before they run up expenses on their credit card.

Perhaps the Dominion Post could reveal the exact wording they used, so that others can use it as a template!