Derailment of great gravy train a favour for all, even MPs

Finally, the most outrageous political perk, the Life Gold Pass, is dead.

The very existence of this gravy train for time-servers has bred public contempt for politicians.

There are no records for the cost of the scheme prior to 2001 but in the past 16 years it has cost taxpayers $17.2 million. Ex-MPs have enjoyed around 40,000 free flights in this time. Many of them have taken more than $100,000 worth of free travel each. Some of them were flying high despite leaving parliament more than 20 years ago.

Tony Abbott made the call to shut it down in his horror budget in 2014 but it was never legislated and had a six-year phase-out clause. Malcolm Turnbull and his Special Minister of State Scott Ryan have scrapped the phase-out and will end the scheme immediately.

Turnbull and Ryan should be congratulated for taking this action. They have realised there is no way the Gold Pass can last a day longer when the government is trying to convince the Senate — and voters — to accept spending cuts to repair the budget.

And you can bet the May budget will have more unpopular cuts.

As for the complaint from the cranky Queensland duo of Warren Entsch and Ian Macdonald that the rules have been unfairly changed on them, welcome to the world that pensioners and Centrelink customers inhabit after every budget.

Do they realise how it looks to someone having their pension cut to whinge about losing this obscene perk?

Too many former politicians abused the free retirement travel scheme that grew as a trade-off for pay rises over the years. Behind-the-scenes perks were loaded up as compensation.

And the Gold Pass was the Gold perk.

Trips to Broome, Hamilton Island, Lord Howe Island and other holiday hot spots at Easter and Christmas were paid for by taxpayers.

To qualify for the club MPs needed to do nothing more than be a time server. Eligibility rules have changed over the years but in recent times the perk was “earned” after serving 20 years on the backbench, six years as a minister or one year as prime minister.

John Howard took it further by making sure every ex-MP was a winner when he introduced the oddly named “severance traveller” package which provided travel for between six months and five years after they left parliament for those who didn’t qualify for the lifetime extravaganza.

That’s how Ruth Webber, the one-term, low-profile Labor senator from Western Australia, was able to charge taxpayers for an astounding 147 flights costing $116,662 over two years at a rate of one flight every five days.

With the major parties losing support to populist independents and minor parties, Ryan knows MPs have to meet higher standards than ever before and is doing his colleagues a favour by grounding the great gravy plane.