After more than a week of community outrage and embarrassing revelations about the spending habits of politicians of all stripes, Anthony Albanese has finally made something approaching a concession that rules allowing MPs to splash millions on themselves and their families don’t pass the pub test.
The Prime Minister now says he has asked the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority for advice on whether the system — through which Communications Minister Anika Wells spent $1000 on a dinner in Paris for three people, and Queensland National Andrew Willcox spent $123,386 since 2022 flying his wife to Canberra — should be changed.
We’ll help you out there PM: Yes.
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There are too many extraordinary examples of eye-popping largesse to run through them all here. Suffice to say the worst offenders come from all corners of politics and their spending is so wildly out of step with community expectations as to be absurd.
We’ve been here many times before
Mr Albanese prides himself on his ability to take the electorate’s temperature on issues.
But on this, he has got it very badly wrong.
The Prime Minister’s reaction to the scandal has primarily been one of irritation that it has overshadowed what he believes will come to be regarded as one of the great triumphs of his prime ministership: Australia’s world-leading social media ban for under-16s.
What’s $1.1 million or so of taxpayer money spent whizzing family members of MPs across the country against a legacy like that?
Australians aren’t buying it. On the whole, they’re in favour of the social media ban for kids.
But they’d also really, really like their MPs to stop pissing their hard-earned taxpayer dollars away on idling Comcars and flash dinners the likes of which most ordinary voters could never contemplate.
Mr Albanese isn’t the only politicians to suffer from this blind spot when it comes to community expectations on pollie perks.
It’s a cross-party affliction fostered by a tacitly agreed code of silence. Parties know that to lob bombs at one another about excess will lead to mutually-assured destruction.
So they keep quiet, keep spending and ride out the wave of community fury when the issue rears up every five years or so.
Unless the IPEA is being run jointly by Imelda Marcos and Jay-Z, it will surely find that the current rules do not meet community expectations and entitlements should be reined it.
There will be some sort of song and dance by the Government about how they’re doing just that.
But forgive us a little cynicism about just how effective any changes will really be at revoking pollies’ gravy train tickets.
We’ve been here many times before.
We’re assured by our leaders that they’ve got the message, and that the geyser of perks will be plugged once and for all.
Except it never really is.
