TA (that's Travelling Allowance! sorry PM TA for confusion) claims for parliamentary sittings that didn't happen and conversations with ABC journos
Wednesday, 02 October 2013
This post is considerably longer and covers more territory than I'd anticipated when I started writing it. It's really in two parts - firstly a look at the ABC's QandA program guest lists correlated with parliamentarian's "entitlements" paid for by taxpayers during the period July 2011 to December 2011. And then some specific stuff about the Greens and Senator Hanson Young that I hope you'll find interesting.
I've restricted the QandA guest list to opposition (ie LNP at the time), Greens and Independents as different rules apply for Ministers and Government MPs representing them.
On my read 10 MPs apparently used taxpayer entitlements to cover expenses associated with travel to appear on the ABC's show in those 6 months. The first program I looked at was on 7 July 2011 and it featured Senator Sarah Hanson Young and Scott Morrison MP.
In looking at the days around her appearance on QandA I learned so much about events of the time that I've decided to publish all the stuff I found interesting. I'll have more for you during the day to show how other MPs treated their television appearance.
One thing is clear to me - the system for reimbursing expenses incurred by parliamentarians as they travel, sleep and eat is clearly broken.
The Sun-Herald's report on Sunday said this:
The federal Department of Finance's guidelines state MPs are allowed to claim travel and accommodation expenses for official business including ''meetings of a government advisory committee or taskforce'' or ''functions representing a minister or presiding officer''. Meeting with journalists is not a purpose sanctioned by the guidelines.
I think the newspaper's interpretation of the guidelines is arguable, but take it as uncorrected gospel from a journal of record. Keep the SMH statement in mind and let's look at the same 6 month period (Jul-Dec 2011) the SMH used and compare parliamentarians travel expenses against meetings with the ABC journalist Tony Jones on his program Q and A.
On Thursday 7 July 2011 Q and A had a special program "Stopping the Boats", broadcast after an ABC Special "Leaky Boats". That day was also a sitting day for both houses of parliament.
Sarah Hanson-Young appeared that night on Q and A broadcast from Sydney.
The Senate was exceptionally busy on that last sitting day of a session. By way of example, just after midday the Senate considered whether or not to order the production for publication of government documents related to the Australia Network Tender, disgracefully awarded to the ABC. Senator Hanson Young was present and voted against that motion. (I digress, but this FOI material released later provides fascinating insights into the Australia Network Tender and police investigations - who knows how different things might be if we had a Senate prepared to exercise its powers.)
The Greens didn't want to know about the Australia Network Tender, but they did want the Australian Parliament to get involved in a public company's operations in the United Kingdom. Senator Bob Brown moved this motion "That the Minister for Broadband, Communications
and the Digital Economy (Senator Conroy) investigate the direct or indirect ramifications for Australia of the criminal matters affecting the United Kingdom operations of News International Limited and report back to the Senate".
At 12:12 Greens Senator Rachel Siewert moved a motion to ban all export trade of all live animals from Australia. Senator Hanson Young was one of 9 senators who voted in favour.
Senator Hanson Young asked a question about getting money back from Tiger Airways for cancelled tickets at 2.24PM and that's the last mention of her in the Hansard for that day. The Senate continued working into the night with legislation that included laws about how Australian troops are deployed to war, the carbon tax and a range of other important matters.
At 6.05PM the Senate heard a heart-rending account of the Joint Select Committee on the Christmas Island Tragedy from Senator Gavin Marshall. He spoke about the drowning of 30 people whose bodies were recovered, the fact that a further 20 people were missing presumed dead and the rescue against the odds of 41 people by Navy and Customs crew. He also spoke with great passion and dignity about the suffering of the Australian residents on Christmas Island. Senator Hanson Young is not recorded as being present.
The Senate rose at 6.51PM after an adjournment speech by Senator Mark Furner. But Sarah had pressing matters in Sydney that day, electorate matters is what her expense claim for travelling allowance tells us.
We know the ABC's Q and A program was being broadcast from Sydney that night and Sarah Hanson Young had top billing.
Senator Hanson-Young's taxpayer funded "entitlements" report for the period is here.
She claimed Travelling Allowance for being in Canberra for 5 days, commencing Saturday night 2 July up to and including Wednesday night 6 July 2011.
The claim for $233 TA for Saturday night is a bit rich, it's listed as being for "Sittings of Parliament" which did not commence until Monday 4 July.
Maybe she was concerned about this report from the Sunday Telegraph, 3 July 2011
This week Brown threw a handful of rhetorical mud at Tony Abbott, declaring openly he will roll back any attempt by a future Coalition government to unwind carbon pricing, entrenching the impossibility of future Liberal-Green co-operation.
Brown also dropped a carefully timed hint that Queensland senator Larissa Waters is a potential future leader, an endorsement unlikely to please ambitious young Greens Sarah Hanson-Young and Adam Bandt.
Brown believes News Limited, publisher of The Sunday Telegraph, has an agenda against the Greens, describing News as "hate media".
Thursday was a normal work-day for a busy senate but Sarah apparently got an early-mark to be on the television.
She claimed Travelling Allowance for being in Sydney on Electorate Business for the night of Thursday, 7 July, the evening of the live ABC Q and A program on which she featured. What electorate business the Senator for South Australia had in Sydney that night is not clear from the accounts.
Senator Hanson Young billed airline flights of $952 from Canberra to Sydney on 7 July, then on to Brisbane the next day.
Senator Hanson Young billed us $248.32 for her ComCar usage in Sydney on 7/8 July:
Serendipitously Senator Sarah was asked about her love for the big white Comcar on 8 July, 2011 in this report from Gemma Jones, published in the Daily Telegraph:
Hypocritical gas-guzzling Greens - they're still using their Comcars
THEY want to tax regular Australians out of their cars but the Greens are still being chauffeur-driven in their tax-payer funded Comcars.
Senator Christine Milne, who accrued $7527 in Comcar expenses in the past 12 months, this week said that ordinary people needed to "drive less and drive more efficiently".
The party is pushing for extra excise on petrol or to extend the carbon tax to fuel to curb motorists.
But the tough-on-driving approach did not appear to apply to Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young yesterday.
Her Greens colleagues are also still using the Comcar chauffeur service, with leader Bob Brown leaving taxpayers with the biggest bill of $20,673 for the past 12 months.
Senator Hanson-Young, who accrued $17,260 in Comcar expenses, gave no response when asked if she thought the Greens should give up their cars in light of Senator Milne's comments.
7 July 2011 was quite a fateful day for Senator Hanson Young. That's the date on this transcript from her own website about - well let's let her tell the story:
She posted that transcript on 7 July but her notorious questions of the Ombudsman Alan Asher, arranged at secret meetings between Mr Asher and Senator Hanson Young took place in May. Maybe she needed an extra Saturday and Sunday for a secret Private Parliamentary Sitting in which she got her story straight recollected properly.
Here's The Australian's Mathew Franklin
How the Ombudsman Allan Asher and Senator Sarah Hanson-Young cooked up an estimates fix
COMMONWEALTH Ombudsman Allan Asher has been caught colluding with the Greens to criticise Julia Gillard's border security policy and enlist the minor party's support for his campaign for extra funding for his office.
And Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young faces questions about why she used a Senate budget estimates committee hearing in May to ask Mr Asher questions he had scripted for her, then later used those answers as the basis to demand a funding boost.
Evidence of the collusion, released in the Senate yesterday, sparked a political uproar, with the government questioning the Ombudsman's impartiality and integrity and the Coalition insisting Mr Asher was forced into his unusual actions by frustration over government incompetence.
Mr Asher was unrepentant last night, insisting he appealed to the Greens because he had no other way to publicly raise his concerns about inadequate funding.
"In the absence of a parliamentary oversight committee with whom he can raise issues of concern, it is not unreasonable for the Ombudsman to raise such issues direct with individual MPs or senators," he said in a statement, in which he conceded that scripting questions for Senator Hanson-Young was not "the wisest approach".
Commenting through his spokesman, Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said the role of the Ombudsman, whose job is to independently handle complaints about the government and its agencies, required "independence, impartiality and integrity".
"It's a matter for the Ombudsman to explain how providing scripted questions to a senator ahead of an estimates hearing is consistent with those values," the spokesman told The Australian.
Senator Hanson-Young ignored a series of questions from The Australian about the probity of her actions, instead releasing a media statement saying she believed that without her involvement with Mr Asher, important information about the border security system might never have reached the public arena.
Here are the heavily redacted documents released by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet about Mr Asher's collusion with Senator Hanson-Young.
Mr Asher resigned his $380,000 PA job on 20 October, 2011 as a result of the controversy. This article by Mr Asher's friend John Wood (a former deputy ombudsman) will give the FOI pedants a real insight into how governments can frustrate the telling of the truth.
Mr Asher's resignation came two days after his appearance at the Finance & Public Administration Legislation Committee (Senate Estimates) in which he fessed up to what Senator Hanson Young and he had been up to.
Labor Senator John Faulkner cleared up any doubts about who Mr Asher had been dealing with.
Here is the way Senator Hanson Young dealt with the fairly obvious fact that the details of her collusion with Mr Asher were coming out.
Greens pleased to be working with the Ombudsman
Following a request from the Senate's Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, the Commonwealth Ombudsman has released extensive documentation about the Ombudsman's role, activities and outcomes, Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown and Immigration spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young said today.
The documentation includes the release of information on immigration issues as well as the role of Defence Force Ombudsman and Taxation Ombudsman, following questions posed to the Ombudsman by Senators Hanson-Young and Brown at the Ombudsman's request.
"As with best media practice, the Greens are concerned to protect reliable sources seeking confidentiality. Nevertheless, in the public sector, this can always be overridden by Freedom of Information," Senator Brown said.
"The request by the Ombudsman to have their questions put to his office was considered by the Greens to be an important release of information into the public arena which might otherwise not have occurred," Senator Hanson-Young said.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman is a statutory authority, independent of government.
After Mr Asher resigned, Senator Hanson Young appeared on the ABC's Lateline program to tell us that she didn't feel bad about Mr Asher taking one for the team and it wasn't in any way her fault.
TONY JONES: Do you feel at all responsible for Mr Asher's demise or are these sort of behind-the-scenes dealings between you and him actually a typical part of the political process, the game-playing that goes on in these kind of hearings?
SARAH HANSON-YOUNG: I think all you need to do is watch Question Time in the House or the Senate, and on a daily basis you have backbenchers reading out handwritten questions to the minister written by the minister on a daily basis, in Senate committees.
TONY JONES: Yes, but to be fair, this is an independent advocate who's meant to be independent of the political process, including independent of the Greens, the Government, the Opposition; he's meant to be plotting his own course and yet he appears to have been very close to your position.
SARAH HANSON-YOUNG: Well, look, I think if the only crime that he has committed is putting in writing the concerns he wants to be able to raise in a public forum because he believed that they had been suppressed, well, I think that is a decent thing for a person who desperately believes his job, most importantly than all, is to ensure that he looks after the cases that come across his desk and has the resources to do that. The issues in immigration detention are chaotic. The skyrocketing suicide rates - there was a man on the roof of the Darwin detention centre last night who attempted to hang himself and had to be dragged down by his fellow detainees. And that's - this is happening on a daily basis. Long-term detention is creating this problem. The minister doesn't want to hear about it. He didn't want to hear about it from Mr Asher; he doesn't want to hear about it from the Greens; he doesn't want to hear about it being - he doesn't want to hear it being spoken about in the media. This is a ...
TONY JONES: OK - alright, go ahead. No, finish that.
SARAH HANSON-YOUNG: This is absolutely punishment for Mr Asher for sticking up his head, doing his job and advocating for the very independence of the reviews that he is meant to conduct. If you wanted to silence one of your critics, if you wanted to shut down the ability of an independent reviewer to not do their job, to not embarrass you, you would cut their funding, and that's what we've seen.
TONY JONES: If you had been more subtle with your questioning, if you'd made your questions distant in some way from the ones that he sent you in that email, could you have protected him?
SARAH HANSON-YOUNG: Look, I think it's - the questions that I asked were important to be put. I believed that - and I still fundamentally believe this was information that had to be on the public record. I think ...
TONY JONES: But do you regret at all the way you put the questions, because when you look at the email and the questions side by side, it looks simply like collusion?
SARAH HANSON-YOUNG: I don't regret it, Tony. I was confronted with an option and I think it's pretty naive to think that politicians aren't confronted with these options on a daily basis. You get information and you make a choice: is this information that should be in the public record or is it not? I made the decision that it was. I firmly believe it was. Mr Asher believed that it was. And it's - the issue here is why did he have to go through this process? And one of the things that the Greens have said this week and one of the things we will continue to do is move for reform to enable a parliamentary committee to oversee the activities of the Ombudsman so that he can automatically be able to put to Parliament these issues, these concerns, and that there is some oversight. Because it was put to me today, and I think this is a question that's worth considering: the independent Ombudsman has all these roles to review executive government and review government agencies, but his funding and his access to the Parliament is at the behest of the executive government. So, let's actually try and do something to reform this system so this doesn't have to happen like this. In New South Wales even, the Ombudsman there has a Parliamentary committee that can oversee the activities so that the Ombudsman can come to them and say, "Look, this is what's going on, this is what I'm working on." In New Zealand, in Britain, in South Africa even, in Thailand, this is how the Ombudsman's positions are managed, and I think that's something we should be looking at. The Greens will put forward legislation to do that. And if the Prime Minister and Tony Abbott are serious about their concerns of how this happened, well let's see this legislation move swiftly through the Parliament to fix it.
TONY JONES: Have you spoken to Mr Asher since his resignation?
SARAH HANSON-YOUNG: No, I haven't, I haven't, and ...
TONY JONES: Why not?
SARAH HANSON-YOUNG: Well, because I think he's probably - he's probably got better things on his mind than to speak to me.
Never a truer word spoken than in that last quote. I spent 3 weeks with Alan Asher last year. I found him to be an honest man who is far too trusting for his own good. Compare his dignity and resignation with the way he was treated by Senator Hanson Young, rather like something unpleasant collected on the sole of her shoe.
But back to the expense claims. For what it's worth I think it is legitimate business for a Federal MP, particularly a shadow minister to make themselves available to the media for interview. But a system that encourages or tolerates a claim for TA as "Electorate Business" for a Senator from SA who spends the night in Sydney to appear on an ABC TV show is broken. Expense descriptions should say what they mean and mean what they say. I've seen page after page of taxpayer expense payments that don't.
Here is a link to the legislative instrument that sets out MPs "entitlement" (a horrible way to describe these payments). I'd appreciate some well-informed opinions about the system.
And I'll do my best to bring you the other examples of taxpayer funding for the ABC's talent on Q and A during the day.