Sign the petition: Publish every MP expense, every quarter

There is no good reason Parliament should be allowed to hide how it spends your money.

MPs already earn a very comfortable salary. An ordinary backbench MP is paid about $168,600 a year, rising to around $181,200 by 2026. That is funded entirely by the taxpayer. On top of that, MPs have access to generous Parliamentary Service budgets covering travel, accommodation and transport.

The problem is not that expenses exist. The problem is that the public is not allowed to see the details.

Totals are not transparent

At present, expense data is released as vague summaries, often months after the money is spent. No itemisation. No receipts. No explanation of what was necessary and what was indulgent. Just big numbers and a shrug.

Some MPs are spending sums that rival or exceed their annual salary. In the private sector, that would raise serious questions. In Parliament, it barely registers.

That is not accountability. That is a closed shop protecting itself.

A simple fix

This petition calls for one straightforward reform:

Quarterly, fully itemised public reporting of every MP’s expenses.

Not annually. Not lumped together. Not buried in PDFs. Quarterly. Named. Broken down by category. Published online in a searchable format.

If MPs are spending public money appropriately, they should welcome this. If they are not, sunlight will fix the problem very quickly.

Why this matters

New Zealanders are dealing with rent increases, grocery bills, fuel costs and interest rates that bite hard every week. Asking politicians to show where they spend taxpayer money is not unreasonable. It is the bare minimum.

Transparency changes behaviour. When people know their spending will be scrutinised, waste disappears fast. That is true everywhere, including Parliament.

Do you think the public has a right to know?

This is not about party politics. It is about trust.

If MPs want public confidence, they need to earn it. Publishing receipts every quarter would go a long way toward doing exactly that.

👉 Please sign the petition and share it: https://petitions.parliament.nz/4e21e8bb-7676-48d8-b3b4-08de50340f26?lang=en

The more signatures it gets, the harder it is for Parliament to ignore.

Sunlight is not punishment. It is accountability.