Something strange can happen to people who become members of the best club in the country – Parliament. They not only lose touch with the rest of us. They also lose touch with the definition of public property. This week, two stark examples emerged in the unpleasant forms of the Maori Party’s co-leader Tariana Turia and our Great Fence-sitter and Champion Chancer, Peter Dunne.

Tariana Turia... on the make again
Tariana Turia... on the make again
Turia, a person who can barely conceal her loathing for the Pakeha and invariably describes her supporters in quasi-apartheid terms as “our people”, is eagerly looking forward to some more massive State compensation for the theft of “her” beaches and seabed by the evil White Man. After a ministerial review rightly urged the Government to overturn the 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act and wrongly recommended negotiation of a national or iwi-by-iwi settlement, Turia said compensation was the usual outcome “when you steal or take something that isn’t rightfully yours.” To which her colleague Pita Sharples bewilderingly added: “Yay, we have won access for Pakeha to the beach”. What’s he on?

Tariana, somebody should tell you that the beaches and the seabed have not yet been established as rightfully yours, either. The injustice of the Act was in removing Maori’s rights to have their day in court over this issue. It is far too soon to be jumping the gun and expecting yet another taxpayer-funded handout, because the chances of anyone – Maori or Pakeha – gaining private ownership of the seabed are hopefully remote.

The very idea is absurd. Apparently, Maori believe that they have a claim on parts of Hawke’s Bay airport, despite the fact that the entire area was under the sea before 1931. What happens if our territorial waters are extended? Would Maori therefore own all that, too? You can see where Turia is coming from. She doesn’t simply have her eye on the kai. There could be some oil out there, too, from which Maori might derive fortunes without lifting a finger…

There is a stench of separatism around people such as Tariana Turia that doesn’t settle easily on the rest of our otherwise refreshingly egalitarian society. The only way to resolve this issue – after that day in court – will be to declare all our coastline and seabed as public property, to be shared equally among all the occupants of this country and to be personally owned by none of them.

Peter Dunne... How he spends your money is his business
Peter Dunne... How he spends your money is his business
The voters of Ohariu – who regularly re-elect Peter Dunne and in doing so provide life-support to his feeble, one-man United Future Party (a complete misnomer, because one man can neither be a party nor united with himself, and New Zealanders have no future with him) – do the rest of the country a gross disservice. They should depose him at the next election, not on the basis of his being a poor MP, but because his existence as a political creature (subsequently distorted by the system to the point where he exerts undeserved influence) damages the quality of our democracy, as did Winston Peters. Dunne stands for nothing of importance, appears to have achieved virtually zilch, but sustains his over-blown self-importance through the bizarre electoral system called MMP.

This year, MPs will spend around $16 million of our money purely on air travel. They have, in the meantime, slashed the budget for adult education from $16 million to a worthless $3 million. Labour spent quite a chunk just on airfreighting its heavy hitters into the Mt Albert election campaign. Now it emerges that there are no firm rules governing how MPs spend the air points earned with all this flitting about. While this is by no means as serious as the scandal of British MPs and their expenses claims, it is nevertheless another illustration of the cavalier attitude our local representatives adopt to their constituents and to the public money for which they are responsible.

National’s Chris Tremain is only into his early weeks as Whip, but his relaxed attitude to what is clearly a gaping loophole, wide open to abuse, is not good enough. This is a trough that should be closed off to greedy snouts without further delay, and the matter should be referred to the IRD because the air points collectors are clearly enjoying an untaxed benefit in kind.

And what does the arch opportunist Peter Dunne, Revenue Minister and self-publicised guardian of the public purse, have to say about his own air points?

He arrogantly retorts that how he spends them is his business.

He’s wrong.

It’s ours.