Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott really blew up deluxe at News Corp's Herald Sun last week after the Melbourne tabloid published an analysis of his taxpayer-funded travels in 2016, sourced from data released twice-yearly by the Commonwealth Department of Finance.
Abbott's displeasure was aired prominently in the following day's edition, in his letter to the editor accusing his Coalition colleagues of an "insider hatchet job", and a news story on it.
We suspect his hackles were especially raised by this offending paragraph: "Curiously, Mr Abbott spent 11 Monday nights in Melbourne last year, claiming the cost of flights as well the $438 nightly allowance. That included six Monday nights in a row during May and June."
We thought it just as curious that anyone at the Hun even thought to count the Mondays! After all, what's so special about them in Melbourne? Other than Peta Credlin's weekly appearance in Andrew Bolt's Southbank studio, we can't think what!
The former PM and his chief of staff don't much appreciate scrutiny of (they'd say obsession with) their personal relationship. During parliamentary sitting weeks, Abbott stays at the Canberra apartment of Credlin and her husband Brian Loughnane, 200 metres from the Australian Federal Police College where he boarded for two years as PM while The Lodge was under painstaking restoration.
Abbott is also still a regular at Melbourne's Park Hyatt, where he (and his entourage) has long opted to bed down while in Bleak City. Abbott even declares his membership of the Hyatt Courtesy Club with the House of Representatives' Registrar of Members' Interests, where he also lists wine given to him by Alf Moufarrige's Servcorp. He sure is a stickler when it comes to the freebies!
