Cleaners (centre) and their supporters demonstrate outside Parliament House Canberra in June 2015.
An article commemorating the federal Parliament House cleaners, who work for about $21 an hour. They have not had a pay rise for three years. Other cleaners working in Commonwealth buildings have recently had their pay cut by an average of about $6800 a year.
Do we call them entitlements, or business expenses? Whatever, punters can bet some MPs will go on gouging the system.
A few of course will thoroughly respect the rules and regulations and so deprive their children of a happy childhood. Like poor Christopher Pyne’s kids: whisked across half of Australia business class to lob in Sydney between Christmas and New Year’s Day just to watch dad work.
No trips to zoo on a ferry, unless Mr Pyne could claim he was anticipating the need to research the far-in-the-future shipbuilding centre in Adelaide by waving at our shrinking eastern naval fleet when passing Woolloomooloo. No ice creams from Eddie Obeid’s old shoppe at Circular Quay, unless Christopher was able to prove he was holding meetings with knowledgeable operators to assess the value of coal deposits under Holden Hill in his electorate. And no gamboling with the other Little Liberals on the lawns of Kirribilli House for father Chris’s kids, for fear of falling into the bottom of the harbour, where many playful plans have perished in the past.
Poor Little Pynes, there they were on New Years Eve locked in their bridge-view hotel with daddy holding the curtains tightly shut so they couldn’t enjoy any of the fireworks…because the children weren’t in Sydney for the colour and noise of the exploding eye-fest, they were there just to experience the prospect of future day-to-day explosions in Dad’s job as Education Minister as he strives now to ensure fees go up, academic excellence deteriorates, examination rigour fades and inequality mushrooms.
Australians should really pay compensation directly to the Pyne-ettes for their having to watch dad’s pantomime precursor to the Education and Training planning process.
This is a secret ritual which appears to reach a climax every year in Sydney between Santa Claus and the Harbour Bridge lighting up. You can imagine the furious diary schedule as academics, famous for staying on campus during their triannual holidays, demand meetings with a once-and-future Ministers that could be held no other time than in the very week when just about everyone else in Australia – other than diligent politicians – has a few days off to watch sport, over-eat and veg out.
To be fair, Mr Pyne is not the only Liberal with flights of fancy-that on his mind. We know all about Bronwyn Bishop and the helicopter, but there must be something in the air around Cairns that attracts MHRs. Phillip Ruddock, the man who could be charged in a paternity suit for being most responsible for the behaviour of the House of Misrepresentation, seems to like flying there from Sydney often. And Don Randall, eulogised for most of the first day of recent parliamentary sittings, had a penchant for flying from home base in Perth to Cairns to check out the real estate market there, as revealed in a previous entitlements scandal a few years ago. Strangely, the Randall tendency to criss-cross the nation from Perth to Cairns, paid for by the taxpayer, was not mentioned even once when his mates rose in the house to say what a wonderfully down-to-earth man the high and frequently flying MP was. RIP.
So far most of the pre-paid “business expenses” mud has stuck to the Liberals and Labor’s Tony Burke, unwitting victim along with his children of the Uluru Lights. But no-one should think National Party members are immune from a little jiggery-pokery with figures: after all, it is an art form on the land, where nature’s bounty can sometimes be hard to calculate for short-sighted sheep farmers at lambing time. For those people sworn to secrecy in the bowels of the Finance Department as they paw over pretentious expenses, we recommend diligent double-checking of possible self-served largesse involving National MPs and Senators.
Something the MPs seem to have clean forgotten
There’s one area of “business expenses” yet to get a thorough airing in the current evolution of miscreant behaviour by our over-ruling elite. We need a full accounting of how many MPs (and which ones) are paying off houses in Canberra belonging to themselves, their wives or other family connections via the overnight allowance that so generously rewards people for sleeping in what are, essentially, their own beds in the second (or third, or fourth) homes that they beneficently own.
For a seven-hour overnight shift in Parliament House, parliament pays each cleaner $147. While those cleaners are working, parliament pays an MP overnighting in Canberra $215 for sleeping.
The “entitlements” system is crying out for name change. Even “business expenses” doesn’t quite cut the mustard. We need to call them what they are: Perks Of Office. When any MP breaks or bends the rules in future, a sniff test will determine whether they have POOed in their own nests…again.
Bill Rowlings is retired, from gardening. He runs a national civil liberties mob freely to occupy his days, and writes for pleasure, having once done so for a living as reporter and sub-editor before sinking to editor level and, later in his career, into PR.
