Tariana Turia

Wellington, March 13 NZPA - Increased funding for MPs with large electorates to cover has been welcomed by the Maori Party, which says the change was recommended in 2007 and approved before the election.

It means six Maori MPs and four National MPs will each get $105,000 a year compared with the usual $64,000 so they can hire more staff in electorate offices.

Four of the Maori Party's MPs get the extra money and so do Labour's two Maori MPs.

National MPs who have qualified are Bill English in Clutha-Southland, Colin King in Kaikoura, Chris Auchinvole on the West Coast and Jacqui Dean in Waitaki.

Labour MP David Cunliffe has criticised the funding, describing it as "outrageous" at a time when the Government is cutting staff in ministries and telling workers they have to take pay cuts.

But Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia said today a Parliamentary Services Commission inquiry in March 2007 recommended that MPs with electorates of more than 20,000 sq km should be entitled to extra staff.

She said former Speaker Margaret Wilson approved the recommendation and a working group of MPs from the Maori Party, National and Labour worked on the details.

"Most of the Maori electorates are huge," Mrs Turia said.

"Compare Te Tai Tonga (161,000 sq km) and Epsom (23 sq km) or New Lynn which David Cunliffe serves (97 sq km)."

Mrs Turia said it was "bizarre" for Labour to criticise the funding when its MPs had been involved in dealing with it.

Leader of the House Gerry Brownlee said reports suggesting the Cabinet tried to keep it secret were wrong.

"The increase is something that was recommended by an independent review," he said.

"This is not about political patronage. The issue of servicing geographically very large seats to allow constituents access to their MPs has been a problem since MMP was introduced in 1996."

Maori electorates are very large because there are seven of them covering the whole country.

General roll electorates have roughly equal numbers of voters in them but some rural electorates cover much bigger areas than the city seats.

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