· Two top health bureaucrats spend $140,000 on travel and accommodation

· Taxpayers paid nearly $1700 for the Health Secretary’s 48 hour trip to Burnie

· Burnt-out Health Minister defends these expenses in Parliament

A Freedom of Information request has revealed that the top two bureaucrats in the Health Department racked up a combined total of over $140,000 on travel and accommodation over the past 18 months. One of them has only been employed since November last year.

While obviously, it is necessary for top bureaucrats to travel to meetings and have their accommodation costs met, it looks like these costs go way beyond what is reasonable.

For example, when the top health bureaucrat in Tasmania went to Burnie for 48 hours it cost taxpayers nearly $1700 in accommodation costs. How on earth can that level of spending be justified?

When the same person went to Launceston, again for little more than 48 hours, the accommodation bill was over $1500.

A single return flight to Perth cost taxpayers $3881.

Meanwhile, the second highest bureaucrat racked up $15,000 in taxpayer funded travel expenses before even starting work with the Health Department and $10,000 in taxpayer funded travel and accommodation since starting work. That includes almost $6500 for 16 nights’ accommodation in Hobart when she first started work.

Tasmania’s burnt-out Health Minister gave a feeble excuse in Parliament today that it was ok to waste massive amounts of money, because it happened before the full effects of the global financial crisis were known.

That’s not acceptable. There is never a good time to waste money. And this extravagant spending has also occurred after the Premier pledged belt-tightening in response to the economic downturn.

Just days ago the Minister confirmed she was looking at getting rid of 250 jobs in Health in order to save money. It must be cold comfort to those people who could lose their job that while they could be forced out the Minister is happy to defend extraordinary travel expenditure by her bureaucrats.

That’s not leadership from the Minister at a time like this.

And it is more evidence of a Government that is tired and out of touch after 11 long years in office and which has its priorities wrong.
Brett Whiteley MP Shadow Minister for Health and Human Services