Senate president Stephen Parry’s bid to approve own overseas travel

Labor frontbencher Stephen Conroy has slammed a move by the Senate president as “extraordinarily arrogant”.

President of the Senate Stephen Parry. Current travel arrangements ‘made life a bit difficult’. Picture: Kym Smith

Senate president Stephen Parry wants to overhaul the way his overseas travel is approved and funded, in a move that would give him greater independence from Malcolm Turnbull’s office.

The Department of Finance pays for the Senate president to take up to five international trips each year at an uncapped financial amount. All travel requires prime ministerial approval, but Senator Parry has proposed changing the rules so he can sign off on his own arrangements, with a maximum annual budget of $250,000 paid for by the Department of the Senate.

Senator Parry told a Senate ­estimates hearing yesterday he had already used the new system after a question on notice revealed the Department of the Senate had paid $2579 for his airfares on an official visit to New Zealand. He discussed the changes last year with Speaker Tony Smith and the Prime Minister, who agreed to lift the so-called concurrence rule.

Labor frontbencher Stephen Conroy slammed the move as “extraordinarily arrogant” while opposition Senate leader Penny Wong blasted Senator Parry for failing to notify the committee.

“You’ve introduced a system, overturned the 20-year-old system, I assert, without appropriate transparency and disclosure,” Senator Wong said.

Senator Parry said the current arrangements “made life a bit difficult” under former prime minister Tony Abbott, whose chief of staff Peta Credlin sought clarification about a proposed trip and disagreed with some aspects of the travel. The Senate president said he was forced to cancel a trip to the US and Canada after he received approval from Mr Abbott’s office just three days before takeoff. “We had a lot of things on standby, but it became too late so we cancelled the travel,” he said.