It’s all across the mainstream media (hence my reluctance to comment on this non-news news), but here we go. From Fairfax:
Labor has called on Health Minister Sussan Ley to explain why she bought an investment property on the Gold Coast during a taxpayer-funded trip classified as official business.
There are calls for Health Minister Sussan Ley to be sacked after revelations she bought a unit on the Gold Coast, while on a taxpayer funded trip with her husband.
Ms Ley said she had not planned to buy a Gold Coast ocean view apartment during a trip to Brisbane in May 2015 for a government announcement about an expansion of drugs included in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
In a statement, Ms Ley’s office said the minister travelled to the Gold Coast for meetings with health stakeholders after the announcement, but her purchase of the $795,000 Main Beach property had been unexpected.
Ms Ley’s husband accompanied her on the trip. She claimed the standard $370 politicians’ travel allowance, while her husband travelled under family travel expense rules, bringing the cost to more than $3900.
“The property purchase was not planned nor anticipated,” a spokeswoman for the minister said.
I’m shocked and stunned. A member of the ca. $300 million property owning political class purchased another negatively geared property while on a taxpayer funded holiday?
Why so surprised? Apart from working in the private sector post-career (first ensuring the right sort of companies get the right sort of grants, bids and business from you while Minister) and the lavish non means or age tested parliamentary pensions (although nowhere near a CEO’s abhorrent’s salary or golden parachute), what else is someone of the political class to do but join in the Australian dream?
This is Ley’s third investment property, which is above the average for the non-political class negative gearer (usually just the one), and above the 2.5 average properties per politician.
She’s not going to resign on the trumped up shock from the benches of the ALP – whose members own similar sized property portfolios and enjoy the rorts thereof – and neither is negative gearing or other property reforms going to be enacted when the country’s “leaders” are the ones who benefit the most from it.
And you thought that the landed gentry were only in the Mother Country?