Leader of the House, Gerry Brownlee, says he is compelled to correct media reports on the funding of very large electorate seats.

Six out of seven Maori seats and all other constituency seats covering a geographic area larger than 20,000 sq km are set to each receive an extra $40,000 to hire another staff member.

Four Maori Party MPs, four National MPs and two Labour MPs will be able to employ an extra staff member so that they can better service their widely spread constituents.

Media reports suggesting that the Cabinet has recently extended the increase to include more MPs, or tried to keep it secret, are simply wrong.

"This funding increase was clearly spelled out in the post-election agreement the National Party reached with the Maori Party as long ago as November last year," Mr Brownlee said.

"It has been a freely available public document since then, even if some journalists haven't read it. To state that we haven't told anyone and have secretly extended it to National MPs is a shocker."

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

National's agreement with the Maori Party states that the issue of disproportionately large seats would be addressed by immediately implementing the March 2007 Triennial Review (the Goulter Report).

The agreement says the following recommendation would be put into place:

"That all Maori constituent MPs and each constituency Member of Parliament with an electorate in excess of 20,000 sq km are to be entitled to the services of an extra staff member"

"This is not about political patronage. The issue of servicing geographically very large seats to allow constituent's access to their MPs has been a problem since MMP was introduced in 1996," Mr Brownlee said.

It should be noted the extra staff member will not apply to Tamaki Makaurau, the seat of Pita Sharples, due to its smaller urban size.