Age of entitlement alive and well for pollies

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By Leith van Onselen

My cousin, Peter van Onselen, wrote a cracking article in The Australian over the weekend calling for reform of politician entitlements, which costs taxpayers a whopping $500 million a year and are often misused:

Make no mistake, we should dwell on what Bishop did when she took a helicopter at taxpayers’ expense from Melbourne to Geelong for a party political fundraiser.

…the lack of contrition and the efforts of Liberals to suggest the matter should be at a close highlights the cultural snout-in-the-trough attitude among many politicians that they are within their rights to use taxpayers’ dollars for extravagances and party political endeavours that have little or nothing to do with their official roles.

Bishop is a serial offender when it comes to using our money to pay for the largesse… Bishop has used the taxpayers’ dime to attend the opera, canvass for a job overseas, fly an oversized entourage with her to meaningless functions that technically count as part of her job.

She’s not alone, however… And we wonder why the public is cynical about the political class.

Don’t think misuse (or overuse) of parliamentary entitlements is rats and mice stuff that evokes a headline but doesn’t affect the budget. More than $500 million is funnelled into political entitlements each and every year. Pause and think about that…

Meet someone you know in an industry with the most passing relevance to your portfolio, and a politician can fly business class to the city where the meeting takes place, stay the night in a five-star hotel, receive travel allowance, bring their staff or their partner and hire cars wherever they go. You pay for it. Haven’t they heard of the telephone?…

Both sides do it, it’s a bipartisan problem in need of repair.

Hard to disagree with any of this.

Joe Hockey’s claim last year that “everyone has to live within their means, whether it’s a company, whether it’s a family, whether it’s an individual, whether it’s a government” would hold more weight if politicians lived by the same rules as everyone else and also agreed to take a significant haircut, rather than expecting everyone else (and the disadvantaged, in particular) to bear the burden of cuts.

Perks available to federal politicians extend well beyond frivolous business trips, and include an around the world first class fare for themselves and their spouse, with accommodation and expenses, every year, as well as allowances to buy any books and publications they want. What’s worse, they get to determine a lot of the guidelines and rules for the perks themselves, with only patchy oversight from the Department of Finance.

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Clearly, then, greater transparency and accountability, as well as a simplification of rules, are much-needed reforms.

Unfortunately, with politicians from both sides having their heads well and truly planted in the taxpayer trough, and no doubt concerned that their own dirty laundry may be aired to the public, don’t expect any push for accountability and reform to come from the major parties.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.