You can help us investigate expense claims by searching records and the results of our data analysis for instances where an entitlement claim may have been outside the rules

Expenses scandals have engulfed both sides of politics, with Bronwyn Bishop stepping down and the prime minister, Tony Abbott, announcing another review into parliamentarians’ entitlements is on the way.



Earlier this year we used data analysis techniques to break stories showing Tony Abbott and Kevin Andrews claimed expenses around and during the Pollie Pedal fundraiser and show that politicians on both side of the fence have made claims for flights and accommodation around dates they were attending sporting events.



Now we’re updating our earlier expense claim databases to bring four years of travel and flight expenses online in a searchable database for the first time.



You can help us investigate expense claims by searching the records for instances where an entitlement claim may have been outside the rules.



Bronwyn Bishop resigns as Speaker, Tony Abbott announces Read more

Here are all the datasets. You can download them as spreadsheets (open the document, then download via the file menu), or add them to your own Google Drive account for analysis.



To assist this process, we’ve included additional data analysis.



For lower house MPs, the location of their travel allowance claim has had location information attached to it (using an API, so this may be incorrect for some) and then checked to see whether the allowance claim was inside or outside the MP’s electorate.



This is particularly relevant as politicians are required to give a reason for the travel allowance, and often cite “electorate business”. The late MP Don Randall, for example, claimed electorate business on a trip to Cairns a week before he declared he had bought an investment property in the area, and then repaid the expenses.



We’ve also included a dataset showing where more than one politician from the same party has travelled to the same location at the same time, excluding trips to Canberra. This analysis aims to highlight instances where several MPs have attended, say, a colleague’s wedding on the taxpayer’s dollar.



Here’s the results of that analysis in graphs – click through to the interactive versions to see locations on points or zoom in to highlight locations:

Travel allowance claims grouped by party, location. Interactive graph here.

It’s also how we discovered that the prime minister and other Coalition politicians taking part in the 2014 Pollie Pedal charity bike ride again claimed almost $10,000 in flight and travel expenses around the event, despite earlier criticism of the practice.



Flight expense claims grouped by party, location. Interactive version here.

You might also want to check dates of events such as birthdays, weddings, festivals or sports matches.



For example, we cross-referenced the dates of grand finals with travel expenses, along with free tickets declared in the register of pecuniary interests, to show multiple politicians have claimed travel costs around the times they attended sporting events.



Once you’ve found something, please use the form below to submit it to us to investigate further.

Or, if you’re interested in producing a data visualisation or other project with the datasets please go ahead, but let me know at: nick.evershed@theguardian.com.

Update: Added link to guidelines on entitlements and an option to download all datasets in a compressed folder.

