In the last fortnight or so, there have been a number of revelations pertaining to the misuse of parliamentary entitlements by various members of parliament, mainly from the Coalition.

It appears that several of them have been attending weddings on the public purse. The Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, apparently inadvertently claimed thousands of dollars in travel expenses promoting his Battlelines book, a sum he has since repaid. On the Labor side, Bernie Ripoll was revealed to have conveniently travelled to France to conduct a ‘bike study’ and just so happened to be doing so during the Tour de France, the expenses for which were also claimed against the taxpayer. He says he does not apologise for claiming those expenses. Nor, for that matter, did George Brandis, who repaid over $1,600 in expenses to attend the wedding of broadcaster Michael Smith but said he did not believe there was any problem with it. It’s also worth noting that Tony Burke and former Prime Minister Julia Gillard also had to repay inappropriately claimed entitlements as well.

My personal position on this whole issue is that these scandals add to the perception of sleaze, slime and corruption in politics.

It is an appalling misuse of taxpayers’ money, regardless of the side of politics for which you barrack. Malcolm Turnbull said on Insiders last Sunday that there was a lot of ambiguity in the entitlement regime and perhaps that was to blame. That may well be the case, Malcolm, but the question in the minds of all reasonable people must surely be why several politicians seem to be assessing that ambiguity against, rather than in favour of, the taxpayer? Why would any politician attempt to justify attending private social events as somehow being related to their work as politicians? The next question is likely to be why there is any ambiguity at all in these rules and why hasn’t appropriate reform been implemented to curtail these obvious rorts?





The answer is regrettably that many of these politicians are ethically misguided. Whilst some of these would have been legitimate oversights and mistakes, those who have sought to justify the flagrant abuse of entitlements need to have a good look at themselves in the mirror. Even if the rules are open-ended and ambiguous, politicians should always err on the side of caution and not claim it. After all, members of parliament, including backbenchers, are paid a minimum of $195,130 per annum, which places them among the highest earners in the country. They are very well remunerated and should know better. If these sort of rorts were committed in the private sector, it would be cause for summary dismissal.



To this extent, it is disappointing that Peter Reith claims that politicians should be entitled to unlimited travel, because it wasn’t realistic to distinguish political and non-political work. I beg to differ.

Politicians serve at our behest and they should not be entitled to travel on overseas junkets or to private social events at taxpayer expense under the convenient guise of ‘fact-finding mission’ or ‘searing political speech-making’.

The vast majority of Australians, I think, are entitled to expect that politicians do not abuse their enormous privileges and do not appreciate being treated as mugs.



Putting it all into perspective



Now, as important as it is to highlight abuse of entitlements, it is worth remembering that the amounts being discussed amount to a few tens of thousands of dollars. This pales in comparison to the $400 million the government seized from dormant bank accounts in the last year. Or the $660 million the federal and state governments spent on consultants in the last year. Or the $280,000 the Tax Office spent just on the feasibility study to port the eTax application to the Mac and another $5 million to subsequently develop it. The point being that there is a litany of waste, mismanagement and misuse of taxpayers money at various levels of government that the media spends comparatively little time focusing on.

Robert Candelori is a law student at the University of NSW and a member of the Liberal Party.

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