Tim Blair: The PM’s law and rorter plan is a joke

UNTIL last week, however, we had no idea exactly how the prime ministerial theory of innovation might apply in practice, says Tim Blair.

REMEMBER “innovation”? Malcolm Turnbull doesn’t. The Prime Minister couldn’t get through a single sentence during last year’s election campaign without mentioning innovation, agility and excitement. This led to him almost innovating his way to defeat, as agile Australian voters excitingly ditched the Coalition.

But still Turnbull clings to innovation as the key to our national revival. Until last week, however, we had no idea exactly how the prime ministerial theory of innovation might apply in practice.

Well, now we know. It turns out innovation just means more bureaucracy and greater government spending. Turnbull’s notion of innovation involves slathering an extra layer of government all over an already-gigantic legislative structure. It’s kind of like trying to make a car run faster by loading another car on top of it. Twice the cars means twice the power, right?

Faced with the need to ensure further ministers weren’t tempted by tax-funded real estate inspections, in the manner of numerologist ex-health minister Sussan Ley, Turnbull boldly announced he would counter excessive expenses by establishing an expensive new expenses-checking authority. “An independent parliamentary expenses authority will be a compliance, reporting and transparency body,” the PM said, innovatively. “It will monitor and adjudicate all claims by MPs, senators and ministers, ensuring that taxpayers’ funds are spent appropriately and in compliance with the rules. The body will be governed by an independent board, which will include a person experienced in auditing, in audit matters, a person with wide experience in remuneration matters, the president, for the time being, of the remuneration tribunal, a former judicial officer and a former MP.”

Sussan Ley with prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Combined salaries for the senior figures involved in this might nudge towards $1 million. Agile! And consider all of the support staff required to collect, process and audit every single parliamentary expense claim. Exciting!

It’d be cheaper just to allow ministers to keep ripping us off. Also, dwell for a second on the admission implicit in Turnbull’s proposal. Evidently the man has so little authority over his government’s MPs that he cannot restrain their cash-chomping ways and must resort to outsourcing the job to various unelected types.

The rules regarding government expense claims are already clear. So are the limits to which the public will accept stretching those rules. Test cricket gets by with just a couple of on-field officials and one remote TV umpire, and they deliver verdicts within seconds. Deciding the dodginess of an expenses claim shouldn’t be that much more of a challenge.

Turnbull’s idea is so bad that yesterday it won the full approval of Greens leader Richard Di Natale, who actually called for yet another layer of bureaucracy above the planned independent parliamentary expenses authority, in the form of a federal anti-corruption watchdog. “Let’s have this parliamentary authority established,” Di Natale told the ABC, our official yay-for-spending media tax harvester. Worse still — yes, even worse than the ABC — a mob of the usual worthies penned an open letter backing the establishment of an anti-corruption body.

Former WA Labor premier Geoff Gallop, ACTU president Ged Kearney, UNSW Dean of Law George Williams, Robert Richter QC, former NSW DPP Nicholas Cowdery and former independent MP Tony Windsor (sound the alarm!) all signed the letter, which urges in part: “It’s time to create an independent anti-corruption watchdog to investigate and expose corruption and serious misconduct at the federal level, including among federal parliamentarians.”

If only we already had, say, an independent billion-dollar per year investigative outfit with hundreds of operatives prowling Parliament House every day seeking evidence of wrongdoing. Maybe they could broadcast their findings on dozens of television, radio and internet outlets. Just an idea.

A genuinely innovative approach to the issue of parliamentary expenses claims might be to completely overhaul the guidelines so that any grey areas are eliminated and to specify that claims for travel and accommodation are only associated with events that have no entertainment element.

At a stroke, tax-funded visits to sporting events and the like — currently permitted if some political aspect is involved — would be cut.

One argument for massively increasing the pay for politicians over recent years was that it would reduce the impulse to claim for every possibly-claimable entitlement. Plainly, that hasn’t worked. So slash the entitlements instead.

No way will this happen, of course, but in the meantime prepare to be delighted by the first-ever expenses claim filed by a member of the innovative new Turnbull Independent Monetary Investigation Division.

My bet is on the former MP.

GIGANTIC PARROTS SOARING ON HOTTER AIR

WE were wrong to mock global warming and fools to deny the horrific consequences of climate change. And now we will have to pay for
it with our lives.

That’s the only possible conclusion to be drawn from the latest terrifying study into the future effects of destructive human-caused carbon dioxide emissions.

Break this news gently to any younger members of your family.

According to University of Notre Dame researcher Professor Dylan Korczynskyj, the wings of Western Australian ringneck parrots have increased by four to five millimetres over the past 45 years.

And you know who’s to blame: us, and our indefensible planet-heating ways.

Professor Korczynskyj believes that this parrot wing growth could be due to climate change, pointing out that critters’ extremities in hotter climates tend to be longer.

“As the climate might be increasing in temperature, the increase in wing length might actually help these birds shed that excess heat and so it is better matched with their environment,” he explained.

That’s just fine, naysayers may scoff. Nobody will have much of a problem with parrots that during the next half a century extend their wingspans from 17.5cm to 18.5cm.

But consider how these beasts might evolve as climate change continues ruining our world.

Add another 45 years of warming and suddenly we’ve got parrots flapping all over the place with colossal 19.5cm wingspans. Throw in 90 more years on top of that and they’ll be up to an unimaginable 21.5cm.

Why, it’s only a matter of time before these warming-fuelled sky leviathans are the size of pterodactyls, sporting 12m of wing as they soar away with our screaming children clamped in their bloody talons.

At a rate of 1mm of growth per wing every nine years, or 2mm in wingspan, the diminutive ringneck parrot will easily achieve pterodactyl dimensions within a mere 6000 years or so.

If you’re able to read this, tragic bird-hunted citizens of the ninth millennium, please accept our apologies.

And for the love of God, or whatever deity is running the show in your kooky future world, don’t dare go outside without your full complement of government-approved parrot safety apparel, including a full-body dousing of peak strength BeakAway™ ringneck repellent.

Remember, without BeakAway™ you’re just a big juicy caraway seed with legs.

LAST POST A SOUR NOTE FOR POOR TWEETER

A PERSON’S last words are always poignant, serving to remind us of our temporary place on this Earth and the grace and beauty, however brief, of life’s manifold wonders.

OK. Not always.

Some final words are unintentionally hilarious or humiliatingly trivial. Immediately before his 1995 execution for murder, US double killer Thomas J. Grasso is said to have complained about his last meal. “I did not get my SpaghettiOs,” the condemned man whined. “I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this.”

And with this sentiment, Grasso was gone. One benefit, possibly the only, of social media is that we now see virtual last words — the concluding posts on Twitter or Facebook accounts abandoned by their still-living former operators.

The people behind these accounts may be active but their accounts are deceased, sometimes featuring last words that offer a curious poignancy of their own.

For example, Fairfax senior foreign correspondent Paul McGeough seems not to have written anything on his Twitter page since last year.

What could be his very final tweet still rings out in cyberspace like the echo of a past era, before all of the world’s certainties — at least as judged by Fairfax staff — were cast to the winds.

Posted on November 7, 2016, it reads: “Donald Trump will not win the US election, worst still, he’ll be a sore loser.”

No word yet on whether Paul got his SpaghettiOs. Fairfax isn’t quite as generous with salaries and expenses as it used to be.