Rorts and ripoffs by politicians must end

Enough of the rackets, the rorts, the rip offs, the sleaze and the slipperiness that are defining our parliament and demeaning our democracy, writes Terry Sweetman.

Enough.

Enough of the rackets, the rorts, the rip offs, the sleaze and the slipperiness that are defining our parliament and demeaning our democracy.

As we stumble through the darkness of a seemingly endless phony election campaign, politicians are wooing us with promises, threats, scare campaigns and even the occasional portion of policy.

Some people are nodding wisely, others are curling up in the foetal position and even more couldn’t give a damn.

But what is cutting through to even the dullest, dimmest and most apathetic voter is a seemingly endless series of revelations of entitlement, extravagance and carelessness from our political class.

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It is process of personal indulgence that seems to have accelerated in recent years to encompass everyone from prime ministers to political potholders.

We are still suffering dyspepsia after swallowing the news that Sport Minister Bridget McKenzie last year spent $20,000 taking an RAAF jet from Rockhampton to Melbourne where, among other things, she watched a game of ice hockey.

That’s about three months’ wages for an ordinary toiler.

Federal Minister for Sport Senator Bridget McKenzie spent $20,000 of taxpayers’ money to take a private jet from Rockhampton to Melbournes. Picture: AAP/Dean Lewins

McKenzie had been attending Beef Week in Rockie (a National Party stronghold) and had to be at an “urgent” meeting with the Australian Sport Commission Board (and an ice hockey game).

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And, blow me down, there were no commercial flights available to support the official commitments.

Same, same a month earlier when McKenzie, who is also National Party deputy leader, spent $14,000 on another chartered flight to meet Prince Charles in Cairns.

She had to take an “unscheduled” flight so she could represent then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and curtsy before Charles and Camilla. Do people like McKenzie understand that most people have to make responsible management decisions all the time?

They just don’t undertake multiple engagements if they can’t reasonably fit them into travel arrangements.

For her it should have been Rockie or Melbourne. Either, but not both.

And are we seriously expected to believe the government couldn’t round up someone closer at hand to meet the not very important Charles in Cairns for a not very important bit of gladhanding?

This all happened last year but only recently surfaced in Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority data.

While we were digesting this insult to our intelligence, news surfaced that Finance Minister Mathias Cormann had the extraordinary good luck to book a family holiday in Singapore only to find the fares didn’t appear on his credit card bill.

Missing a $2700 bill is, I guess, understandable when you’re pulling down the best part of $7000 a week as a cabinet minister.

Australian Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said Helloworld had made an administrative error in not charging him for a family holiday. Picture: AAP/Lukas Coch

But the wonderful thing was that he had booked the tickets through an old mate and Liberal Party treasurer who was the CEO of the travel company.

And he had no idea the bill hadn’t lobbed.

And all this played out with the background music of ministerial intransigence when it came to a police inquiry, massive amounts spent on legal walls to protect them from their responsibilities, the continued sell-off public business to privateers and whiffs of cronyism.

Seriously, do our politicians think we came down in the last shower?

Some of us might feel like we actually came down in the Great Flood, but many of us have had have had managerial experience and all of us know hard it is come by a buck.

And most of us have come against accountability processes that made Donald Trump’s Great Wall look like a picket fence.

Warren Brown cartoon showing Sam Dastyari.

Not so our politicians who shelter behind guidelines of their own making, insult us with feeble excuses and scuttle off with a quiet repayment when caught out pillaging the public purse.

Our political leaders must know this is morally wrong; they must know how much it hurts their party brands.

Yet, they can’t bring themselves to take a step backwards, to concede that their pals have sinned and punish them for their trespasses.

The latest delinquents are members of the government but I remain quietly confident some members of an incoming Labor Government would eventually fall victim to the bacillus of greed and arrogance that infects our parliamentary precinct.

We all delighted in Penny Wong ripping up Cormann in the Senate or of Peter Slipper and Sam Dastyari being run out of town on a rail for arguable lesser sins.

However, these sorts of gotchas are little more than a symptom of an underlying disease that is eating away trust in our institutions.

It’s time our politicians stopped applying bandaids, sent for the doctor and swallowed some very nasty medicine.

We’re well and truly sick of them.