While Tony Abbott appears to have smuggled nothing more than budgies in his swimming trunks, standards must improve when it comes to politician expenses, writes Barrie Cassidy.

OK, let's accept that Barnaby Joyce, George Brandis, Philip Ruddock, Peter Reith and numerous other present and former politicians genuinely believe they are entitled to taxpayer reimbursement for the cost of attending weddings.

How does that sit with these words on the "age of entitlement" delivered by Treasurer Joe Hockey in London in 2012?

The problem arises ... when there is a belief that one person has a right to a good or service that someone else will pay for. It is this sense of entitlement that afflicts not only individuals but also entire societies. And governments are to blame for portraying taxpayer's money as something removed from the labour of another person.

That is surely something every taxpayer can contemplate the next time the government tries to take away or reduce an entitlement. And then further contemplate how that principle applies to politicians.

When the government next takes money away from the taxpayer, as it occasionally must, it will very quickly discover the real damage caused by the greedy and pedantic application of the ambiguous rules surrounding expense claims.

Hockey went on to say:

A weak government tends to give its citizens everything they wish for. A strong government has the will to say no.

While they're at it, maybe they can find the will to say no to themselves.

The real age of entitlement exists within the ranks of parliamentarians. Because they have had access to a range of entitlements for so long, they have become dependent on them.

Many of them, if they play their cards right, can get through a week in Canberra without ever having to put their hands in their pocket. Some of them are so mean they are unwilling to spend their own money on very much at all.

As is so often the case, these sorts of stories cause maximum grief not necessarily because of the initial misdemeanours but because of the way the central players respond.

Tony Abbott didn't help his cause when he pointed out that one of the sporting events he participated in at taxpayer's expense was in a marginal seat. Neither was Greg Hunt very persuasive when he said that if mistakes are made, then "people" should deal with it, apologise, repay and move on.

Politicians maybe, but people? People often don't get that luxury when they put in dodgy claims to the tax office and get caught out.

And as for Peter Reith's contribution on Network Ten's The Project, he argued the case as only an ex-politician would. Asked about politicians billing the taxpayer for attending weddings, he said:

Politicians need to go to social functions. All this talk about weddings, for heaven's sake, it's a social function. Quite frankly as far as I'm concerned it's work and there shouldn't be petty pickling over what's a wedding you can go to and what's a wedding you can't go to.

But, Dave Hughes protested, "I've never claimed any of the weddings I've been to."

Reith replied, "Yeah, but you're not a politician."

Reith went on to argue that any politician who knocked back an invitation from a "shock jock" to attend his wedding is a mug, because if you show up, you'll probably get on his program.

Self-esteem, it seems, is not a politician's strong suit either.

The glimmer of hope for Australian politicians in all of this is that on the available evidence it won't go near the British experience for scandal and embarrassment.

For years, British MPs who lived outside London were able to claim an allowance for maintaining a second home closer to parliament. Only when freedom of information laws changed did journalists start to hone in on the true extent of those expense claims.

Eventually it was discovered MPs were claiming for everything from furniture items to basic maintenance and even renovations. Some furnished their entire second home on public money. Then it became known some MPs switched their first and second homes, so that in some cases, the taxpayer picked up the cost of maintaining country estates.

But the story really took off when news broke that the delightfully named Douglas Hogg MP had his head dug deeper into the trough than almost anybody. It turned out Hogg had billed the taxpayers for cleaning out the moat surrounding his country property.

Suddenly, the public had a graphic symbol of excess, and a real sense that some politicians really did feel they lived in a different world to everybody else.

Australia doesn't yet have a Hogg with his head in the trough. The story flourishes, however, because the Prime Minister is implicated.

It doesn't need to tear the system apart as it did in Britain. That will in part depend on how it is handled. It won't be near good enough for politicians to treat this as a bipartisan issue, and band together to ride it out. Something has to give, whether it be greater transparency or more precise and prescriptive guidelines.

It is not good enough to say there will always be a grey area. The tax office doesn't see it that way for everybody else.

Handled properly, the public will simply mark down all politicians - again - and move on. No damage will be done any more to one side than the other.

And Tony Abbott is entitled to argue that, if anything, participating in sporting events is probably more defensible than just turning up and watching, as so many of them do.

Standards need to improve. Better judgment needs to be exercised. But on the available evidence, Abbott has been smuggling nothing more than budgies in those swimming trunks.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of Insiders and Offsiders on ABC1. View his full profile here.