MPs spend $2m on communications at taxpayers’ expense

Coalition MPs in battleground seats have ramped up communications spending ahead of next year’s election.

Macquarie MP Susan Templeman spent $146,962 on her communication expenses. Picture: AAP

Coalition MPs in key battleground seats have ramped up spending on printing, mail distribution and ­e-material ahead of next year’s election, claiming more than $2 million of taxpayers’ money on their communication expenses across a three-month reporting period.

The Weekend Australian can reveal that the communications and printing spend in the 20 most marginal Coalition-held seats from July to September cost taxpayers $1.16 million, while MPs in Labor’s 10 most marginal seats racked up $571,266 over the same period.

The largest individual spend was $146,962 in the Blue Mountains electorate of Macquarie, held by Labor MP Susan Templeman on a margin of 2.19 per cent.

The largest spend among marginal Coalition seat-holders was $111,163 in Attorney-General Christian Porter’s West Australian seat of Pearce, which he holds on a margin of 3.63 per cent.

Some MPs, including the LNP’s Warren Entsch, who holds the northern Queensland seat of Leichhardt on a 4 per cent margin, have said the communications spend was partly driven by constituents writing to MPs to request pictures of the Queen.

“One of the largest expenses in the past 11 months was when the media thought it would be funny to tell people to contact their federal MP and request a set of flags and a portrait of the Queen,” he said.

“I was required to provide these to the people who demanded them at taxpayers’ expense.”

GRAPHIC: The big spenders

An analysis by The Weekend Australian shows that MPs in ­Coalition battleground seats, including electorates such as Andrew Hastie’s WA seat of Canning, have outlaid more than $2m of taxpayer money.

WA Liberal MPs Michael Keenan, Ken Wyatt and Steve Irons, as well as Mr Hastie and Mr Porter, whose seats are under threat, reported a combined communi­cations expenditure of $445,578 from July to September.

Mr Hastie, who holds his seat by a margin of 6.79 per cent, told The Weekend Australian the purpose of his communications “was to inform and update people living in the Peel Region and Perth Hills on my work … and also keep them abreast of government initiatives”.

“I’ve been fighting to upgrade the hospital in WA’s second-­largest city, which the state government has repeatedly overlooked,” he said.

Coalition and Labor MPs who have declared they are not running at the next election — Wayne Swan, Ann Sudmalis, Jenny Macklin, Emma Husar, Michael Danby, Jane Prentice, Kate Ellis and Gai Brodtman — also claimed a combined $571,266 on “printing and communications”.

Mr Swan, a former Labor treasurer, spent $119,000 between May and August on nearly 589,000 ­separate “printed items”, while Ms Sudmalis — the outgoing Gilmore MP who has been on secondment at the UN — claimed more than $106,000 in communications ­expenses.

A spokesman for Mr Swan, now national president of the Australian Labor Party, said the former treasurer needed to keep up his printing costs to stay in touch with constituents.

“Mr Swan is still the elected member and regularly communicates with his constituents on ­issues important to him and the electorate,” he said.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott, who could face a tough challenge from independents in his Sydney seat of Warringah, spent almost $100,000 on “printed items, distribution, personalised letterhead stationery, e-material and late payments”.

The Weekend Australian understands the largest communications expense incurred by Mr Abbott, a $55,230 “distribution” cost in June, was the result of an annual ­electorate-wide mail-out providing information to constituents about government initiatives.

Mr Entsch, who spent $83,466 in his electorate of Leichhardt, also noted that some expenses from the previous financial year had been carried over into the next reporting period.

“The $83,466 figure is in fact expenses incurred over two separate financial years, 2017-18 and 2018-19 … Therefore, it is totally misleading to say these expenses were occurred in a three-month period,” he said. “My electorate covers a vast area, nearly 150,000 km2, making it Two-and-a-half times the size of Tasmania”.