Brendan Nelson and Harry Jenkins to help lead entitlements review
|
Version 0 of 1. The former Liberal leader Brendan Nelson and the former Labor Speaker Harry Jenkins will help lead the review of parliamentarians’ entitlements triggered by a public backlash against numerous travel claims. Parliament will resume on Monday with the election of a new Speaker to replace Bronwyn Bishop, who resigned after coming under pressure for a series of expenses claims including $5,227 for return chartered helicopter flights from Melbourne to Geelong to attend a Liberal fundraiser. Other MPs – including Labor’s Tony Burke and the Coalition’s Christopher Pyne – have also come under media and political pressure for some of their expenses claims, including taxpayer-funded trips for family members. Related: Politicians’ entitlements and expenses: help investigate four years of data Tony Abbott said he hoped the root-and-branch review would bring about an end to expenses-related controversies and allow “the public to have confidence that members of parliament are working very hard for them”. The government finalised the five-person review panel on Friday. The prime minister has previously said the exercise would be led by David Tune, the former secretary of the Department of Finance, and John Conde, the chair of the remuneration tribunal. But the newly announced members include Nelson, who served as defence minister in the Howard government and opposition leader after the Liberal party’s 2007 election loss, and Jenkins, who was Speaker from 2008 until 2011 when Labor replaced him with Peter Slipper. The final member is Linda Nicholls, the chair of Yarra Trams and a director of Medibank Private, Sigma Pharmaceutical Group and Fairfax Media. The government said the review team had a deadline of the first half of 2016 and would examine the parliamentary expenses framework and options to move to a simpler, transparent and more independent system. The special minister of state, Michael Ronaldson, said the events of recent weeks had “clearly demonstrated a need to significantly amend the way our system operates”. “We want to move to a system that allows all senators and members to effectively carry out their many and varied responsibilities within an expenditure framework that is clear and easy to understand for both the public and parliamentarians,” Ronaldson said. “It is also important to ensure the community continues to have ready access to elected representatives.” Related: Bronwyn Bishop had to be forced out – but some good may come of the scandal | Lenore Taylor Abbott declined to criticise Burke on Friday after the Australian newspaper reported the then agriculture minister spent $48,951 on a six-day trip to Barcelona for a food security conference January 2009. The newspaper reported that Burke and an adviser – who is now his partner – travelled first-class for the trip. When asked on Friday whether the trip met community expectations, the prime minister did not mention Burke. “I want root-and-branch reform so that the latest round of controversies are the last,” Abbott said. Pyne, the leader of the house, used a television interview on Friday to defend Burke, the manager of opposition business. “All the stories about Tony Burke, so far none of them have been in breach of the rules,” Pyne told Nine’s Today program. “If the rules are the rules and people stay within them, you can’t then criticise them, so let’s have a proper, full discussion about it rather than taking pot shots at each other.” Pyne defended his own decision to charge taxpayers thousands of dollars to fly his family business class from Adelaide to Canberra in late 2013 because it was “within the rules”. “That’s right, for the opening of parliament – because I’m the leader of the house, I’m a new cabinet minister, it is the opening of parliament, my four children joined me in Canberra,” he said. The Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese, who was also part of the Today show discussion, said it was “fantastic” that Pyne’s children were able to see the swearing in. “Those kids are not going see their dad this morning,” Albanese said. “It is not, I don’t believe, unreasonable that Christopher’s kids were there to see him sworn in just as the day that I was sworn in as deputy prime minister my son was there along with my wife. It’s a proud moment in our family. It’s part of, in terms of dealing with the issues that families have and it is reasonable.” The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, said he had confidence in Burke, who had acted within the rules and had assured Shorten “that at all times he’d been carrying out his job as a minister when the overseas matters were dealt with or arose”. |