I have today written to the Secretary of the Department of Finance, Ms Jane Halton AO PSM, to request the Department conduct an audit of all travel claims by current and former Members of the House of Representatives and Senators during this and the previous Parliament.
I have taken this step because in recent weeks it has become clear that a number of Members and Senators have been abusing their parliamentary travel entitlements.
In particular there seems to be a widespread practice of parliamentarians travelling at the public expense, often with family members, even though any reasonable person would identify their journey as being principally for personal reasons. At best this is deeply unethical, at worst fraudulent.
The accusations in the Australian newspaper today about Tony Burke taking his family to Uluru is a case in point because no reasonable member of the community would feel that the cost of such a journey should be borne by taxpayers.
Former Speaker Bronwyn Bishop’s misuse of entitlements formed a pattern of behaviour prompting me to call on the Federal Police to investigate. If the Finance Department audit is to identify similar patterns of misbehaviour, or egregious individual episodes of misconduct, then I would expect those matters to also be referred to the Federal Police.
Independent Member for Denison Andrew Wilkie
