Matt Johnston: Expense rules as unclear as a muddy moat
THE many scandals involving MPs’ expenses suggest our elected representatives still don’t get how damaging such revelations are, writes Matt Johnston.
Opinion
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MY FAVOURITE parliamentary expenses scandal involved a UK MP who charged taxpayers for his country estate’s maintenance, which included clearing a moat.
Nothing could better illustrate the idea that politicians are out of touch with voters than an MP using their money to clean his private moat. Who has a moat?
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While the latest expenses scandal engulfing Victorian politicians is not quite moat-worthy, it does reek of the same entitled pomposity. The Victorian scandal erupted when it was revealed Labor MPs Telmo Languiller and Don Nardella were charging taxpayers $37,678 a year to live in seaside towns well outside their electorates.
Until now, most people assumed the lucrative but little-known “second residence allowance” had been used only by country MPs living 80km or more from Melbourne’s CBD. Those MPs can claim the perk if they “maintain a second residence in Melbourne” for sitting weeks.
At first blush that sounds like a particularly perverse set of rules, whereby you can claim this massive chunk of taxpayer cash only if you’re actually doing well enough to own multiple properties. On closer inspection, one could argue that to “maintain” a second residence could mean just about anything. Does cleaning up after yourself at a friend’s house count as maintenance?
What galls people most about the Don and Telmo show is that the MPs could claim this money only by moving away from the people who voted for them. Both men represent electorates in the western suburbs, but were paid $37,678 a year after moving to the seaside. Languiller promised to repay the money and resigned as Speaker, recognising the manipulation of parliamentary rules was not in line with “community expectations”, let alone the standards of a Speaker.
Friends have been quick to point out Languiller stopped claiming the allowance in 2016.
Less friendly MPs said it was like robbing a bank and paying it back later with an apology.
But asked whether his claims would meet community expectations, Nardella said bluntly that “Ocean Grove is where I live”, and is refusing to pay back a cent.
All MPs must know the damage this does to them. The more people hear about dodgy expenses, the less they trust elected representatives. That percolates on toxic social media sites and the pressure on all MPs increases. In turn, it becomes harder to steer complex legislation through a deeply suspicious community and potential parliamentary candidates run a million miles from Spring St.
Premier Daniel Andrews is talking tough on entitlements (could there be a word that rankles voters more than that?) but I doubt he’ll grasp the nettle. One option would be to scrap dodgy allowances and give MPs a bigger base salary. Or at least dump the second residence allowance, which has been used like a property investment scheme, and just reimburse country MPs for travel and accommodation.
That would be much more effective if MPs had to declare what they were claiming, which, knowing this place, won’t happen.
Why am I so cynical about meaningful change taking place? Maybe it’s the way Labor has fought to block an Ombudsman’s investigation into publicly funded electorate officer spending.
Or maybe it’s the way some Liberal MPs have been quietly pushing behind the scenes for an increase in their parliamentary budgets for communication.
THERE’S also the way pay and entitlements were approached in 2013, after backbenchers complained about their post-parliament financial security. A “resettlement” allowance was created. MPs who lost seats or preselection contests got $35,000 for serving one term or $70,000 for two or more terms.
I don’t have a problem with that, given MPs don’t get sick leave, holiday pay or redundancies per se. But instead of making it so the payout was given to any MP who left the parliament who wasn’t covered by the old defined benefits scheme, rubbery rules about preselection were devised.
Two retiring Coalition MPs were put on Upper House tickets in unwinnable positions just so they could get the payout.
Instead of confessing to giving themselves a bigger base salary, MPs also created a tricky new “expense allowance” worth 8 per cent of a backbencher’s base salary. That’s about $12,000.
At the time, Greens MP Greg Barber had a field day asking then assistant treasurer Gordon Rich-Phillips about rules governing those payments. He asked: “Is that for things like dry-cleaning or haircuts or something?”
The unflappable Rich-Phillips said simply: “It recognises that members of parliament incur expenses by virtue of being members of parliament.”
That explanation, much like parliament’s ridiculous expenses schemes, was as clear as water in a poorly maintained moat.
Matt Johnston is state politics editor
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