Liberal senator tells Kenyan TV that the salary was reasonable compensation for the work politicians did

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Lucy Gichuhi, the Liberal senator for South Australia, has told a Kenyan TV show that her $200,000 a year salary was “reasonable pay” and that she “gets a lot of work” done.

“Two hundred thousand Australian dollars — in a whole year that’s not a lot of money,” she said.

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In the program broadcast on Jeff Koinange Live on Kenya’s Citizen TV in January, Gichuhi was asked about her salary and responded: “My salary here it is on the website, I don’t look at it because it comes to the bank, but it’s not a lot of money, by the way,” she said.

She also defended the wage saying: “Politicians — and I mean Australia politicians — work so hard, 24/7, nobody can compensate them for the work they do.”

The footage emerged after the Liberal senator blamed an “administrative error” for having to pay back thousands of dollars of taxpayer funds.

Gichuhi, who joined the Liberals in February, billed taxpayers more than $2,000 to fly two family members to Adelaide in October last year for her 50th birthday.

Lucy Gichuhi (@senatorlucy) Regarding the media reports about my travel expenses, this was an administrative error involving misunderstanding of travel rules.



I’ve raised an invoice from the department to pay the costs of $2139 in full.

“It was an administrative error and I know how inappropriate it was,” Senator Gichuhi told ABC Radio on Monday. “It was an error and as soon as we got to know of it, we fixed it.”

The freshly-minted Liberal has promised to repay the funds in full, but said she was still waiting for the appropriate government department to raise an invoice.

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Gichuhi entered the parliament last year after Family First’s Bob Day was ruled ineligible to sit in the Senate.

She was elected in Day’s place because she had been Family First’s second candidate on its SA ticket at the 2016 election