Melbourne MPs Telmo Languiller and Don Nardella resign over allowance designed to support MPs living in the country

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Daniel Andrews has promised a review of Victorian parliamentary expenses rules after speaker Telmo Languiller and deputy speaker Don Nardella were forced to resign.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, the Victorian premier said he had asked the special minister of state, Gavin Jennings, to look at loopholes in parliamentary allowances and present the first wave of amendments to cabinet on Monday.

“Essentially, I’ve asked the special minister of state to give me advice on changing the rules so that this can never happen again, and that the rules as we look to the future are black and white,” Andrews said. “No room for interpretation.”

He said the behaviour of Languiller and Nardella was “appalling”.

“In a general sense, is it any wonder that few people think highly of democratically elected members of parliament?” he said. “Is it any wonder that there is a cynicism, that there is a scepticism, that there is a distrust of so many members of parliament when we see behaviour, appalling behaviour, just like this? I’ll have no part of it and I’ll make important changes to ensure what happened here can never occur again.”

However Andrews said he would not crack down on MPs living outside their electorate, saying that if a person had been elected by that community then they should be allowed to represent them in parliament.

According to Fairfax Media, 13 government MPs live outside their electorate.

The pair resigned on Saturday after days of controversy over their use of an allowance designed to support country MPs living more than 80km from Melbourne.

The former speaker Telmo Languiller claimed $37,000 in second residence allowances while living on the coast south of Melbourne instead of his western suburbs electorate.

The deputy speaker Don Nardella was also found to have claimed about $100,000 in allowances for living an hour from his Melton electorate in Ocean Grove on the Bellarine Peninsula since April 2014.

Only Languiller has committed to repay the allowance back.

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Languiller said he understood that offering to repay the allowance was not enough, in a statement announcing his resignation on Saturday afternoon.

“No matter what difficult personal circumstances I may have been going through, I have to recognise it as an error of judgment and I accept that I should pay the price for that error of judgement,” he said.

Andrews, said on Saturday that the allowance would be investigated to see if changes needed to be made.

“It is self-evident that the second residence allowance is meant for regional MPs who must travel to Melbourne for parliament,” he said in a statement on Saturday. “For that reason, I have asked the special minister of state to urgently determine what changes are required so what has occurred in these instances does not happen again.”

The Labor party will nominate candidates at the next regular caucus meeting.