Former Workplace Relations Minister Peter Reith and former Health Minister Michael Wooldridge have done a great service to the community in using a loophole in the system to qualify for taxpayer-funded travel for life.
Their hypocrisy and exploitation of the quirk has so outraged the community that pressure might now grow to overhaul the whole system of MPs’ perks at great saving to the taxpayer and the restoration of a sense of proportion to MPs remuneration.
The existing rule is that to qualify for the Gold Pass of lifetime travel anywhere in Australia on business class with chauffeured Commonwealth cars to and from the airport you must serve 20 years as a member or six years as a minister or in the life of six Parliaments. Former Workplace Relations Minister Peter Reith and former Health Minister Michael Wooldridge did not qualify on those flat grounds. But another provision on calculating years of service states that every year served as Minister is counted as three years’ ordinary service.
Mr Reith, it will be remembered launched many attacks on unions for engaging in perks.
There are grounds for some post-service travel allowances. In the case of former Prime Ministers, it should be a lifetime entitlement for travel associated with public functions of a non-profit nature. For Ministers and long-service MPs it should have a time limit. Former Ministers can have an important role in public discourse. Their attendance at conferences and the like helps public debate, particularly after they are freed of the shackles of Cabinet solidarity. But the allowance should be limited to functions associated with their former ministries, or in the case of back-benchers, associated with their electoral duties.
One of the big difficulties with the existing system is that former MPs do not have to justify their travel and existing MPs do not have to account for their electoral expenses. One of the biggest users of free travel among former MPs was former National Party leader Ian Sinclair. He argues that he does a lot of charity work and stays in the public arena and he lives in Tamworth, making travel more expensive. This is true and the charity work is extremely valuable, but it has little to do with his parliamentary role. No other private or public sector organisations give these sort of post-employment benefits. And they are in addition to MPs very generous superannuation entitlements, a publicly funded, unaccounted-for electoral slush fund based on the number of primary votes obtained and allowances for laptop computers and other office equipment and postage allowances unheard of in other fields of employment.
These days MPs can look forward to longer retirements, as longevity increases and more of them leave early to pursue – as they so often put it – other interests.
An Auditor-General’s report last year revealed there were insufficient checks on the purpose for former MPs’ travel. It revealed – astonishingly – that the travel costs of former MPs now exceeded the travel costs of sitting MPs.
Enough.
MPs – particularly Government Ministers – talk about accountability and responsibility when it comes to people on welfare or even people on boards of corporations. It is time they ordered an independent review of their own perks. All perks should be accounted for. That is not difficult. Business is expected to get tax invoices for all GST related claims. A sensible cut-off period should apply to all perks for former MPs.
MPs argue that they need good conditions because they are subjected to election every few years. The argument no longer holds. There is little evidence that anyone suffers in future employment prospects for having been an MP – though if these perks continue maybe their collective reputation will suffer so much that no-one will want to hire any of them.