It's so hard to get the rules around politicians' work expenses right, apparently, that every few months we must have a fresh scandal.
The whole thing is so, so difficult that a report meant to solve it – commissioned by Tony Abbott in August 2015 to appease taxpayer outrage at then-Speaker Bronwyn Bishop's career-curtailing chopper ride – is only now being dusted off for another look. That's 11 months after the government said it supported all the 36 recommendations and went on to implement – wait for it – three of them.
![Health Minister Sussan Ley: forced to stand aside pending an inquiry into her travel expense claims.](http://web.archive.org./web/20180108004118im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/o/w/7/7/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtq3eu.png/1484446518615.jpg)
One of MPs' possible excuses for spurious expense claims – "but everyone else is doing it" – has been shown to be at least true, if not morally defensible, since Sussan Ley was forced to stand aside as health minister pending an inquiry into her multiple trips to the Gold Coast on the public dime. Â
Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop charged taxpayers $2716 to attend the polo on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula a year ago as a guest of beermaker Peroni and car company Jeep. Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, whose department oversees the travel entitlements system, billed the Australian people $3533 for air fares so he and his wife could attend the 2013 AFL grand final in Melbourne. Trade Minister Steve Ciobo and Liberal Senator David Bushby also travelled there on taxpayer dollars, according to the ABC. Infrastructure and Transport Minister Darren Chester settled on an investment property while on a taxpayer-funded trip to Melbourne last January where he also caught the Australian Open tennis. Three ministers, George Brandis, Peter Dutton and Mitch Fifield, charged us all almost $7000 to attend Malcolm Turnbull's exclusive harbourside New Year's Eve bash in 2015, while other ministers attending did not.Â
Malcolm Turnbull's Statement of Ministerial Standards requires ministers to act in a manner "that will ensure public confidence in them and in the government". They should be "scrupulous in ensuring the legitimacy and accuracy of any claim for entitlement", and must "not use public office for private purposes". Does Sussan Ley's charging of taxpayers $13,000 to pilot private charter planes along busy routes, where commercial flights are available at a fraction of the cost, meet these tests?
Imagine the conversation if she had to explain it to her constituents: "Yes, I regularly charter flights although it would be cheaper to fly commercially, and I also charter flights from my base in Albury to Canberra, even though it's only a 3½-hour drive which my neighbouring MP Cathy McGowan regularly makes, because ..."
Because why, exactly, Ms Ley? So far she has not said, which leaves plenty of room to speculate that her desire to make enough flights to meet the requirements of her commercial pilots' licence may be part of the answer.
Ms Ley's position has become untenable. Meanwhile, Kelly O'Dwyer, acting as special minister of state, has said the government will reform the MP entitlements system in the first half of the year. The Conde review of March 2016 recommended an urgent tightening of the definition of parliamentary business.
We might expect such a definition to preclude jaunts to clearly non-parliamentary social events like the tennis, the football and the races, not to mention political party fundraisers. But the Conde review's proposed definition is very broad. For example, it might be OK for MPs to claim for attending events as long as they're there "in their capacity as a member of Parliament" or they're "communicating with constituents".Â
It remains an affront to Australians already disenchanted with parliamentary standards that there is no independent oversight of breaches, and that investigations of improper spending are shrouded in secrecy.
We need an independent federal integrity commission to rewrite the expense rules, regulate and enforce them. The current expenses system trusts MPs to be open and scrupulously honest with their claims on the community's dollar, but too many have proven themselves unworthy of that trust. Â
We say again: the Conde review does not go nearly far enough to stop the rorts. In MPs' defence, the existing rules are so complicated, confusing and contradictory that they almost invite abuse.Â