PM Tony Abbott must kick pollies off their gravy train

PRIME Minister Tony Abbott should begin the new parliamentary session tomorrow with an apology to the public for the systemic misuse of the misnamed parliamentarians’ entitlement scheme by ­Coalition figures.

PRIME Minister Tony Abbott should begin the new parliamentary session tomorrow with an apology to the public for the systemic misuse of the misnamed parliamentarians’ entitlement scheme by ­Coalition figures.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten would be wise to follow suit and add a mea culpa on behalf of those on his side of the House who have also abused the public trust, and Green MP Adam Bandt shouldn’t miss the chance to apologise for his senate colleague Sarah Hanson-Young’s recent raid on the public purse to underwrite her latest maritime publicity stunt.

 The misuse of taxpayers’ money may have been within the long-accepted parliamentary guidelines, as former speaker Bronwyn Bishop and Opposition finance spokesman Tony Burke have loudly protested, but any realistic regard for public sentiment would indicate the gravy train must end now, before the government’s “root and branch” ­review ­reports next year.

 After hounding Bishop from her presiding role in the House, Burke has belatedly confessed his own use of public funds to pay for family holidays to Uluru and Cairns (what about all the other flights, Tony, including those with your current partner?) have also been “completely beyond community expectations”.

 When many Australians are tightening their belts, the knowledge that they have been paying for politicians’ families to fly first and business class to ­vacation destinations serves to justify the overwhelming contempt in which politicians from all sides are increasingly held by Australians are rightly sickened by their delinquent abuse of taxpayers’ money.

 The imperious, bugger-the-rest-of-you entitlement mentality revealed by the Bishop-Burke-Hanson-Young stories has shown how appallingly out of touch the Australian political class has become.

 While not in the same class as the UK expenses scandal that found among other things that Douglas Hogg, a former Conservative cabinet minister, included in his ­expenses claims the cost of having the moat cleared, piano tuned and stable lights fixed at his country manor, the blase manner in which senior Australian politicians used chartered aircraft, business- and first-class seats for their kids, or ran up huge bills for lavish entertainment, or in Hanson-Young’s case for a self-serving stunt, fails all pub and sniff tests and every tenet of what should be the responsibility of elected officials to taxpayers’ money.

 This appalling insensitivity to the standards to which ordinary members of the public are expected to adhere carries through to life after politics, with former Liberal senator Helen Coonan, a director of a lobbying firm and a member of James Packer’s Crown Resorts board, accepting the position as chairman of the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority.

 While the SHFA may not directly affect Packer’s ­involvement in the Barangaroo development, there is a clear perception of conflict as SHFA’s decisions may well ­impact on the site.

 Abbott drew a line in the sand for political behaviour in October, 2013, when he ­declared at a media conference with former NSW premier Barry O’Farrell that he was ­determined to ensure that “as far as the new Coalition government in Canberra is concerned that not only is it clean and fair, but it’s seen to be clean and fair” and claimed that you could “either be a powerbroker or a lobbyist, but you can’t be both”.

 Coonan has accepted a number of board positions since retiring from politics and although she may well be the best candidate for the SHFA position, it was ludicrously unwise and mind-bogglingly stupid of NSW’s Baird government to have offered her this appointment and it was injudicious of her to have accepted it.

 Competence and legal niceties aside, it’s not a good look in the front bar.

 Nor do the nonsensical claims that taxpayers should bankroll MPs’ flights to party fundraisers meet the test of public expectations.

 Fundraisers are party business and expenses associated with them should be borne by the parties.

 The extraordinary sense of privilege prevalent in the political class is mind-blowing and due, in part, to many MPs and senators who have zero experience in the real world, having risen through the ranks of political advisers and union apparatchiks and there gained their appetite for rorting of the type seen so shamefully in the Health Services Union.

 Not that the private sector is without blemish when it comes to lavish salaries, but expense rorts — once legendary in the media industry — are now history.

 Shareholders argue against huge pay cheques and bonuses and ­demand rigorous scrutiny of expenditures and scrupulous accountability, as do the tax ­office and other private sector watchdogs.

 The “root and branch” investigation into politicians’ expenses has to go far further than the usual whitewash world-weary and understandably cynical voters expect.

 Outside the privileged world of white Comcars and bloated staff numbers, ordinary Australians pay their own way and claim any legitimate business expenses afterwards.

 We, the voters and taxpayers, are the shareholders in government.

 It is our money that is being spent on business class vacations for politicians’ children and partners.

 Community expectations of MPs have sunk to a dismal level by greed of the type we rightly scorn in tin pot African and Latin American countries.

 Restoring probity to the political process will not be easy after so many have had their hands in the public till for so long.

 But it is a challenge from which Abbott must not resile.