Victorian Speaker Telmo Languiller must step down
VICTORIAN Speaker Telmo Languiller must step down from his position immediately or Premier Daniel Andrews must sack him.
Opinion
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VICTORIAN Speaker Telmo Languiller must step down from his position immediately or Premier Daniel Andrews must sack him.
The senior Labor MP has been caught out charging taxpayers almost $40,000 in a little-known “second residence” perk.
The Legislative Assembly speaker should be setting and policing standards, not taking advantage of loopholes to add more fat to his significant salary of $244,547, expense allowance of $17,785 and use of a chauffeur-driven car.
While the $37,678 he slugged taxpayers for the “second-residence” expense — in which he called his primary residence Queenscliff — may have technically conformed to parliamentary rules, it is a universe from community standards and expectations.
More: Speaker to cough up almost $40k
After all, Mr Languiller has another property in Footscray, which is also outside his electorate of Tarneit.
He should not be entitled in principle to claim an expense which was originally designed to offset travel and accommodation expenses for MPs who lived more than 80km from the Melbourne Post Office.
The Victorian community, indeed all Australians, are repulsed by the arrogant and hypocritical sense of entitlement politicians have shown as they are repeatedly caught with their snouts in the trough.
We saw this with Bronwyn Bishop and her air travel, we saw it with former Victorian corrections minister Steve Herbert who thought nothing of having his dogs chauffeured around on the taxpayer dime and we saw it with Sussan Ley and her publicly-funded trip to buy a Queensland investment property.
It is irrelevant that Mr Languiller has now offered to pay back the almost $40,000 he claimed for the second residence perk until November last year.
He made these claims knowing it could be substantiated only on the thinnest of technical grounds and did not comply with the spirit of the expense rule as it was intended.
Greedy politicians like Mr Languiller who are willing to exploit any and all expense loopholes do themselves no favours with a public which is fed up with cynical MPs who tell the community to tighten their belts while they seek a free ride on easy street.
He must go. Now.
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