OPINION
Peter Allan Williams
Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality check.radio three days a week
peterallanwilliams.substack.com
Our media just do not like Christopher Luxon.
But of all the issues they could and should be attacking him on, the nonsense over his accommodation allowance is about as petty and irrelevant as you can go.
How come there has been virtually no coverage of his party backtracking on election promises to drop the 39 per cent tax rate on trusts and the so-called “app tax”?
Frankly, they are such easy hits for the media one wonders if the political reporters cannot see the wood for the trees. Even the Taxpayers Union has been vociferous in its condemnation of the National Party u-turns, and deservedly so.
Back to the accommodation allowance schemozzle.
Being successful and wealthy in this country is, in the minds of the media, a sin.
Luxon owns a few properties. Good for him. He had a well-publicised multi-million dollar salary when he ran Air New Zealand.
Like any prudent salary earner, he decided to invest some of his income. Like thousands of other New Zealanders and a good many MPs, he bought some houses and apartments.
He lives in Auckland so is entitled to accommodation in Wellington when he’s there to do his job.
Yes, he could have lived in the apartment at Premier House. But a report in the New Zealand Herald – AFTER Luxon had been beaten into submission by the media and decided he would not claim the accommodation allowance – showed that it is not an especially salubrious place to live.
The place has thirty-year-old fittings and furnishings, poor insulation and windows that were not sealed. Premier House is, according to a report from its governing board, “uncomfortable” and “badly laid out.”
Most significantly the Premier House Board said it was well below current building standards and only partially met building and residential tenancy requirements.
The political media expected the Prime Minister to live there when in Wellington.
Luxon’s reluctance to not is completely understandable.
One other point to note – the place costs the same to operate whether or not the Prime Minister is in residence.
So if Premier House is unsuitable then Luxon is entitled to accommodation paid for by the taxpayer – like every other out-of-town MP.
That he chooses to live in a place he owns and be paid an allowance which he can pocket as the property owner might not seem morally right in these times of austerity, but it’s hardly an uncommon practice.
Is Parliamentary Services, who administer these allowances, supposed to differentiate between the rich and the not-so-rich MPs?
Last year it was revealed about twenty MPs, including Labour’s Willie Jackson and Deborah Russell, are doing precisely what Luxon was doing until he stopped.
The other great sin, according to the media, is that Luxon’s apartment across the road from Parliament is mortgage-free. Therefore the Prime Minister can pocket the entire $52,000 tax-free on top of his $479,000 salary – which remember is only about 20 percent of what he used to earn at Air New Zealand.
What our political reporters fail to understand is that despite being mortgage-free, Luxon is likely to have body corporate and rates payments. For a million-dollar apartment, those costs will be in excess of $10,000 a year.
Because of the media hit job, the Prime Minister is now having to pay his own way to stay in Wellington to do his job.
Is that fair? Not in my book.
This backdown suggests – again – that Luxon is not a political strongman. A leader of real conviction would have gone back on the attack against the media who colluded in depriving him of an allowance that he and every other out-of-town MP is entitled to – and claim.
Luxon had that report that the New Zealand Herald told us about two days after his backdown. He could have gone right back at them in the various ambush interviews he had to give on the subject and quote a few lines from the report like “below current building standards” and “only partially met residential tenancy requirements.”
Then he could have pointed out that a mortgage-free apartment does not come without significant operating costs.
But it’s too late now.
Luxon has lost. The media has won and the Prime Minister has admitted as such. On Friday afternoon he said that callers to a talkback show had influenced his decision!
Jesus wept.
When is our Prime Minister going to show some real strength and leadership on trivial nonsense like this?
And by the way, why isn’t he scrapping the 39 per cent tax rate on trusts? Why is he keeping Labour’s App Tax for those who use the likes of Uber and Airbnb?
More broken promises like those and his credibility will drop even further.