Mike's Minute: When did public service become about freebies?

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Fresh off the back of new Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer accepting free suits and glasses (is it just me or is accepting free glasses even weirder than accepting free suits?), the Deputy Leader of the British Labour Party accepted a free apartment in New York.

I can understand that a little bit more readily. You're in New York, a donor says, "I've got a place, stay there", you needed a place to stay anyway, so it kind of makes sense.

Whereas most people who need reading glasses buy them for themselves.

Clothing is tricky, to the extent a spouse gets added to the mix and you are expected to look a certain way. It is expected you can't turn up looking the same every time, so you need more clothes than normal people. But where is the line between an allowance and simply taking the mickey?

MPs aren't paid all that much here, or in Britain, or Australia, which is where their Prime Minister now finds himself in his own hole after the revelations he organised a bunch of free upgrades on Qantas by allegedly going directly to then-CEO Alan Joyce.

This was for personal travel for himself and his family. As Prime Minister you travel first class, if not on the Airforce jet, but your son travels like anyone else. Or they do unless Dad has been on the phone to the CEO.

How these people think this is normal I have no idea. How they think they will get away with it is beyond me.

Public life these days is transparent. You can't do anything without a snitch, or a leak, or a WhatsApp going astray.

Is it a Labour thing? A left-wing thing?

How does Starmer and Albanese explain freebies you and I would never get?

How do they defend freebies from an already exulted position?

Back here Luxon got a bagging for doing nothing wrong, apart from being successful enough to own a few houses. What would we have done if he had been upgrading himself, or accepting free suits and Amanda turns up in new eyewear paid for by party supporters?

Public service once meant serving the public, not using your position to upgrade yourself, whether for aviation or sartorially.

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