End the Age of Entitlement… for politicians! GET UP

NEVILLE,

Some politicians are blowing huge amounts of taxpayer money to fund their lives of luxury – but the age of entitlement for politicians could be about to end.

Prominent Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop has found herself on public trial after she used $5,227 of taxpayer money to charter a helicopter to travel less than 100kms from Melbourne to Geelong to get to a Liberal Party fundraiser.¹ Since then, Ms Bishop has also admitted she claimed taxpayer money for travel on two trips during which she attended the weddings of Liberal MPs.²

The scandal has been raging in the media for more than two weeks now. But there’s been barely a peep about the underlying problem or the sort of safeguards that prevent taxpayer funds being blown on indulgences. That’s why we have launched the Get Around Like The Rest of Us Pledge.

We are organising an open letter to every MP and Senator in the country asking them to sign the pledge for fair use of taxpayer funds. Will you add you name to the open letter now?

There are some commonsense changes that would help clean up what is a murky system. The reforms required are simple and would change the system dramatically – like requiring politicians to state how the travel they claim was necessary for work and giving authority to an independent adjudicator to oversee spending and set clear guidelines.

Here’s the plan:

• Add your name to the open letter calling on every MP and Senator to commit to backing reform and holding themselves to a higher standard until a better system is created

• Tomorrow we will send the open letters co-signed by you and thousands of other Australians to every MP and Senator in the country asking them to sign the pledge

• We will make sure MPs and Senators who say they’ll sign on get the credit they deserve. For the first MPs that sign up we’ll organise a media opportunity and invite national and local media as well as GetUp members

• For MPs or Senators who won’t sign on we’ll let their local papers and radio know too – so their electors know where they stand

You can read the pledge and add your name to the letter to your MP here

Next month Independent Senator Nick Xenophon plans to put out legislative amendments that if passed would make some of these changes law. As it stands today they probably won’t get enough support in the lower house. Getting Labor on board will be no easy feat. And getting the Liberals to support the reforms will be incredibly difficult. That’s why we need set the bar higher and ask our representatives to sign on. So that next time someone’s found to be abusing the public purse they won’t be able to claim ‘it wasn’t just us – it was everyone’.

There is now overwhealming pressure on Ms Bishop to resign. The contempt she has shown for the public is as bad as we will see for a generation.

But Ms Bishop is just one of a long list of politicians who burn through cash like it’s monopoly money. In the last financial year 170 million dollars was spent on MPs entitlements; seven on travel allowances. In 2013 Tony Abbott himself repaid the $1095 cost of travelling to Sophie Mirabella’s wedding he’d claimed 6 years earlier. In 2010 he repaid more than $9000 in travel expenses accrued while promoting a book he’d written³.

The chopper scandal could end up being just a tiny bump for a gravy train that will keep rolling on – unless we can get enough of our representatives to show some leadership.

https://www.getup.org.au/Age-of-Entitlement

Sincerely
Josh, for the GetUp team

References
[1] Senior ministers ‘ropeable’ over Bronwyn Bishop’s scandal they say is damaging the Government, Chris Uhlmann and Anna Henderson, ABC, July 30 2015
[2] & [3]’Choppergate’ puts politicians’ perks under scrutiny, Deborah Snow and James Robertson, Sydney Morning Herald, July 25, 2015