Showing posts with label Age of Entitlement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Age of Entitlement. Show all posts

Wednesday 13 April 2016

Australian Federal Election 2016: why are taxpayers spending so much on political has-beens?


The Sydney Morning Herald: John Winston Howard

The Liberal Party began to roll-out the aging John Winston Howard OM AC last week as part of its fundraising efforts for the upcoming federal election campaign.

But make no mistake, it’s not just Liberal Party supporters who were paying for that 11,000 guest Docklands party in Melbourne and the exclusive dinner at the Pratt family mansion in Kew the following night – the Australian taxpayer is also likely to have been subbing the former prime minister as he sipped his wine and nibbled on canapés.

Since he lost his seat in the 2007 federal election Howard has milked the public purse for $1.82 million in additional entitlements over and above his very generous parliamentary pension.

That $1.82 million pays for a fully equiped modern office including phone & internet, office consumables, domestic air travel for himself and on occasion a family member and  travel in government cars, as well as subsidising the running costs of his own private vehicle1.

Given his obvious sense of entitlement which saw him bill taxpayers over $67,000 in the first half of 2015 (the latest Dept. of Finance entitlement record published) it will come as no surprise to eventually discover his trip from Sydney to Melbourne and return will not be paid by either Howard or the Liberal Party.


Footnote
1.Howard is one of five former prime ministers still receiving these additional entitlements

Tuesday 12 April 2016

On the Turnbull-Joyce ticket the old Age of Entitlement endures


On Thursday 24 March 2016, in a week in which the House of Representatives was not sitting and on the eve of the Easter long weekend, Nationals MP for New England and Deputy-Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce decided to go to faux election campaigning by helicopter – slugging very weary Australian taxpayers somewhere between $3,836 and $4,166 for the ride (depending on which of his staffers journalists were quoting).

However, despite his protestations otherwise, this was not the first time Joyce had hopped into a helicopter rather than a car since 2013.

Ah, yes….on the Turnbull-Joyce ticket the old Age of Entitlement endures.


It was the day before Easter in Drake, a sleepy village in northern NSW, when the peace was interrupted by a helicopter depositing Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce on a sporting field behind the popular local pub, the Lunatic Hotel.

Drake is just a 40-minute drive from Mr Joyce's second electorate office in Tenterfield but his office insists a helicopter was the best option to avoid a four-hour drive from his home base in Tamworth. It was his second chopper ride to the village in less than a year.

After I'm finished I'll have a beer and jump in the chopper and head off to fly over the blueberry farm 

The latest Drake visit, which will cost the public almost $4000, happened two days after the Turnbull government released a long-awaited review into parliamentary entitlements sparked by the "choppergate" scandal that engulfed former speaker Bronwyn Bishop and sent Tony Abbott's prime ministership into a final nosedive.

The review called for clear guidelines so the "use of charter transport must constitute value for money, and in particular that, in the absence of compelling reasons, helicopters cannot be chartered to cover short distances".

Mr Joyce, who has been in unofficial election campaign mode since Tony Windsor recently declared his challenge in New England, arrived in Drake on March 24.

During the three-hour visit he launched a Telstra mobile tower - first announced in June 2015 - and visited the school, a local blueberry farm and inspected a bridge in need of an upgrade.

The Age, 8 April 2016:

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce chartered a helicopter to visit an area less than an hour and a half by road from his ministerial office in Armidale.

The flight to Copeton Dam places a question mark over a key plank of the National leader's defence of his helicopter usage, supported on Friday by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, that choppers were used as an alternative to unreasonably long drives.
The 120 kilometre flight from Armidale to Copeton Dam cost $2211 return.

The most controversial helicopter flight in Australian political history, Bronwyn Bishop's $5000 hop from Melbourne to a Liberal Party fundraiser in Geelong, was just 40 kilometres shorter…..

He took a fourth helicopter trip from Armidale to Legume near the Queensland border in February last year, according to parliamentary records for electorate-related travel.

That flight, to announce a $350,000 road upgrade, cost the public $4737.

Confirmation of four helicopter flights forced Mr Joyce's office on Friday to withdraw its statement to Fairfax Media on Thursday that the two flights to Drake were his only helicopter usage since becoming the MP for New England in 2013.

Friday 29 August 2014

Joe 'my middle name is entitlement' Hockey and the public purse


This is the federal treasurer who in his first federal budget was determined to turn the divide between the rich and poor in Australia into a yawning chasm…..

Media reports put Joe Hockey's current parliamentary income at $365,868 - a base salary of $195,130 plus an 87.5% loading for his position of Treasurer. 

According to the Remuneration Tribunal Determination 2014/16: Members of Parliament –Travelling Allowance from 31 August 2014 Hockey will also receive $91 a night for staying in his own house in Canberra and $271 when he stays in commercial accommodation. 

If his wife happens to be staying in their house at the same time, Hockey receives an additional $10 from taxpayers.

Excerpts from article in The Daily Telegraph on 17 August 2014:

* The Hockey family’s astute purchase of the property in one of Canberra’s premier suburbs is a well-known story in political circles. The home is worth an estimated $1.5 million according to local real estate agents. But the Hockey clan picked up the property for a song, purchasing it for just $320,000 in 1997.
In his recently published biograph Not Your Average Joe, a former Liberal MP Ross Cameron boasts that Mr Hockey struck a golden deal, spotting the house when driving in Canberra.
“The house was a piece of Hockey mercantile genius,’’ Mr Cameron said.
Biographer Madonna King writes that the seller, who according to ACT lands title records was called Robert Hamilton wanted “no part in lawyers or agents.’
“So Joe, the lawyer, called his father, the real estate agent, who took the owner out for a beer,’’ Ms King writes.
“The Hockey’s scored the house for land value. Joe’s father didn’t mention he was a real estate agent, buying the property on behalf of his lawyer son.’’
When it was purchased in 1997, Mr Hockey was listed on sales documents as owning 5 per cent, his wife Melissa Babbage 61 per cent and his father Richard Hockey 34 per cent….
The double dipping of MPs who claim travel allowance to stay in properties owned by themselves or their wives and in some cases reduce their tax by negatively gearing property is well-known in Canberra. In 2007, it was revealed Malcolm Turnbull, then regarded as Australia’s richest MP, rented a house from his wife Lucy when in Canberra. It was reported Mr Turnbull paid $10,000 a year to his wife under the arrangement and claimed another $10 a night when she stayed in Canberra. In response, Mr Turnbull said the story was a “beat up.”

*The Treasurer has legitimately claimed $108,000 in travel allowance for 368 nights over the last four years including many nights for parliamentary sitting weeks where he has stayed at the Canberra house.

The Daily Mail 14 August 2014:

Mr Hockey and his millionaire banker wife Melissa Babbage, own four properties between them, including a five-bedroom harbourside family home in Hunters Hill, one of Sydney's wealthiest harbourside suburbs, believed to be worth more than $5 million, which they bought for $3.5 million in 2004.
Their $10 million property portfolio also includes a 200 hectare cattle farm in Queensland and a beautiful six-bedroom coastal retreat with 180-degree views of the beach in Stanwell Park, an hour south of Sydney. Mr Hockey's statement of registrable interests, made in 2010, also lists him as joint owner of a property in the prestigious Canberra suburb of Forrest.

Wednesday 20 August 2014

One rule for us and another for those super-entitled Liberal Party politicians


This is Australian Treasurer and millionaire Joe 'I'm the friend of the poor & downtrodden even though I have reduced their incomes' Hockey alighting from his taxpayer subsidised chauffeur-driven car. Please note (lower right hand corner) that this car has stopped on a disabled parking spot. Says it all really......

* Hat tip to Richard Chirgwin for bringing this to my attention