Coroner & Legal
Campbell spent big in run-up to last election
FORMER Bass Labor MHR Jodie Campbell spent more than $26,000 of taxpayers’ money on printing and mailouts in the two months before she retired as the sitting member last year.
Ms Campbell also spent more than $4000 flying business class with taxpayer-funded airfares after she ceased work as an MP in August 2010, under a permitted “severance” entitlement for former politicians
As a private citizen she travelled five times between October and December to places including Sydney, Tamworth and Mackay. The Mackay trip, taken in December, cost taxpayers $1004.
Former Denison Labor MHR Duncan Kerr, who also retired at last year’s election, spent $14,916 on printing in June and $5205 in July last year ahead of the August 21 federal election.
Labor retained Bass, but independent MHR Andrew Wilkie took Denison from Labor.
Records of Ms Campbell’s printing and communications budget show that just ahead of the election, she spent $5372 in June and $20,902 in July, printing and distributing up to 60,000 brochures, some of it presumably for Labor’s federal election campaign in Tasmania.
Federal MPs are entitled under the rules to spend taxpayers money to assist in their re-election campaign, but Ms Campbell had already announced that she would not be seeking re-election.