Tony Abbott reckons “the take-home message for all politicians” from the Bronwyn Bishop travel claims saga is that they cannot “get away with exploiting the rules”.

I think the take-home message is there often are no rules. Well, none that are clear enough to be properly enforced, anyway. So in the eyes of the law politicians who do the wrong thing, or push the boundaries, can get away with almost anything. The only brake is the court of public opinion, if they get caught.



And, despite all their earnest protestations when one of their number does get caught doing stuff no normal person would dream of, that’s the way the major parties would prefer things to stay.



Bronwyn Bishop's fate determined by media more than parliamentary scrutiny I Lenore Taylor Read more

I spent quite a bit of time this week trying to find out what rules or guidelines there were for chairs of parliamentary committees who made travel claims. It felt like having a bit part in a novel by Kafka.



I wanted to find out if it was OK for the chair of a parliamentary committee to say they had a meeting, by themselves, with an unnamed person, on “committee business”, in a city where there were no committee hearings and apparently without reference to the rest of the committee at all.



This seems to be pretty much what Bishop says she did on two occasions, which just happened to coincide with two of her colleagues’ weddings. (She has now paid the money back, but continues to assert that it is within the guidelines.)



By comparing historic travel claims with records of parliamentary committee hearings, Guardian Australia found 15 occasions where Bishop claimed a total of $3,723 for work “as chair of a parliamentary committee on committee business” when records suggest there were no hearings.



Surely if that is allowed it would leave a loophole the size of a Mack truck for a hypothetical politician who wanted to rort the system to make travel claims for almost anything they wanted to do.



There are determinations by the Remuneration Tribunal, which at the time said “the chair of a parliamentary committee shall be paid travelling allowance in respect of each overnight stay in a place other than his or her home base when travelling on parliamentary committee business”. But that doesn’t help because there’s no definition of parliamentary committee business.



The finance department said I should ask the Remuneration Tribunal and the Department of the House of Representatives for a definition. Both of those said I should ask the finance department.



A second inquiry to the finance department elicited a definition of “formal business” in a procedural order signed by the then minister Eric Abetz in 2005.



It says formal business is what normal committee members must be doing to claim travel allowance. And formal business, it says, is business that has been actually authorised by the committee at a properly constituted meeting recorded in minutes.



But is “formal business” and “parliamentary committee business” the same thing or are there special rules for committee chairs. No answers.



So when the prime minister and the Speaker look serious and tell us that the finance department is investigating all Bishop’s claims going back 10 years, that sounds very thorough, but it’s unlikely to result in much if there are, in effect, no clear rules for her to have broken.

Which is exactly what meant the former speaker Peter Slipper was cleared. He was initially found guilty of three dishonesty charges for misusing his Cabcharge allowance in 2010 to visit a number of Canberra wineries and then filling out multiple vouchers to hide the trips.

But in February he won an appeal against the convictions, in part because there is no definition of the “parliamentary business” MPs are supposed to be undertaking when they bill us for cabs. It was therefore impossible to say he wasn’t undertaking parliamentary business.



The judgment notes the Remuneration Tribunal provides no definition of “parliamentary business”. That sounds familiar.



And when Greg Miles, who had at the time been assistant secretary of the ministerial and parliamentary services division of the Department of Finance for eight years, gave evidence in the Slipper appeal hearing, the following exchange occurred (as recorded in the judgment);



“There is no definition of parliament business in the legislation, is there?”



Miles: “No there is not.”



“Or any other document?:



Miles: “No.”



“And it’s not defined in the senators and members handbook, is it?”



Miles: “No.”



“And it’s in fact left to members to determine whether or not they are travelling on parliamentary business, isn’t it?”



Miles: “That’s correct.”



“So essentially, members are required to self assess whether or not travel is on parliamentary business?”



Miles: “That’s correct.”



In his judgment Justice John Burns writes that “despite a recommendation by the Australian National Audit Office in 2002, repeated in its 2009 report ... that the term ‘parliamentary business’ be defined in the determination so as to provide greater certainty and transparency in the use of parliamentarians’ entitlements, the parliament has not done so. This, together with the terms of the determination, suggests an intention that the term is to be given a broad interpretation consistent with the significant latitude to act, based on their own judgment ... if the parliament had intended to restrict the meaning of parliamentary business ... it would have done so”.



Presumably there’s no definition of committee business for exactly the same reason.



And yet another audit office report published two months ago says the same problems remain, and that the Slipper judgment “highlighted that ... it is very difficult for the standards of accountability ... to be effectively applied in relation to entitlements expenditure by parliamentarians”.



MPs often complain they cannot get clarity about what is and isn’t allowable. MPs from all parties have made mistakes and been forced to pay money back. But both major parties also like the flexibility of the “Minchin protocol”.



Both sides of politics are careful how hard they go on the attack over expenses scandals because they know how quickly things descend into tit-for-tat allegations and mutually assured reputational destruction.



And both sides decide what to do about allegations against their own, not by referring to the (near non-existent) rules, but by judging what they can get away with.



That’s the debate consuming the Liberal party at the moment.



Any “tougher” guidelines that might be announced in the lead-up to the resumption of the parliament will be purely to try to help weather this storm. But if they don’t introduce actual accountability and rules clear enough for us to know whether they have, or have not, been broken, then the next storm will inevitably follow.

