PM’s office to review entitlements of former MPs
Monday, 15 June 2026
The Prime Minister says his office is doing a review of the entitlements of former MPs following recent reporting.
On Saturday The Press reported taxpayers had spent about $6 million over the past decade subsidising travel for retired politicians and their spouses, including overseas business-class flights years after recipients left public office.
At his post-cabinet press conference on Monday afternoon, Christopher Luxon said over the weekend he’d read articles about entitlements for former politicians.
“I just simply asked my office to say, can you go give me some advice, so we've got a better understanding and more clarity.”
Luxon said the system at the moment was “very complex”.
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“It's built up over many decades. I want to understand it, and that's the advice that I've asked for.”
He said there was no time frame for any review and that he was not predicating an outcome.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said he was happy to see whatever advice Luxon got on the matter.
“I've always been a bit skeptical of that. I know that those former MPs claim that they got paid less while they were MPs, because they were getting this sort of, you know, this entitlement post their time.”
The Press reported the entitlement, available only to MPs who entered Parliament before 1999, allowed former politicians and their partners to claim taxpayer-funded rebates on domestic and international travel for the rest of their lives.
In some cases, the subsidy continues even after the former MP has died, with widows and widowers able to keep claiming travel costs decades later.
The cost of the scheme is growing even as the pool of eligible recipients shrinks. Last year it cost an estimated $1.5 million, the highest total in the past decade, largely due to rising airfares. Last month’s Budget increased funding for the coming year to $1.6m.