Luxon asked to look at payments for retired MPs' travel
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has asked officials to review the scheme that pays for retired MPs to travel, after newspapers found taxpayers have spent around $6 million over the past decade on these subsidies, the NZ Herald reported on 15 June 2026.
The scheme pays for travel by former MPs and their wives or widows. The Press looked at specific examples, including Noeline Colman, whose husband Fraser was a former Labour MP. She has claimed at least $80,000 in travel payments.
Luxon has not said he will change anything. He has said it would not be fair to take away payments from retired MPs who are already using them.
Post-parliamentary entitlements — payments and benefits for former MPs — sit in a tricky political space. When people leave Parliament, they keep certain benefits alongside their pensions, including the travel scheme and a gold card for discounted services. Previous governments have found these difficult to change. The problem is that people earned these benefits under the rules that applied when they worked in Parliament. If you change the rules now, you either have to let existing members keep their benefits (which costs the same amount), or you take them away — and look like you changed the deal.
Luxon's position — that it would be unfair to take back benefits — means any change would only apply to future MPs. That would not save much money soon, because current retirees would keep their benefits. The scheme could cost what it does now for another ten years or more.
$6 million over ten years is about $600,000 a year — not a huge amount of the parliamentary budget. The real issue is that it looks bad. Most people do not feel sorry for retired MPs getting taxpayer money for travel. That is harder to explain than if the money went to something less visible.
It is not yet clear whether Luxon's request will lead to actual changes, a full review, or no action at all. Governments often ask for advice after news stories, set out their position on fairness, and then take time to see what the public thinks before deciding what to do.
