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Mathias Cormann’s $23,000 travel bill for Broome trips over five years

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Dubious Travel Claims | Liberal Party | QED
Liberal Party

Mathias Cormann’s $23,000 travel bill for Broome trips over five years

2010-2014

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann billed taxpayers more than $23,000 for weekend trips to the beach resort town of Broome with his wife over five years, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Between 2010 and 2014 WA senator Cormann and his wife made five taxpayer-funded trips to Broome on weekends for electorate business. A three-day trip in July 2014 cost taxpayers $6696, including $5662 on flights. Senator Cormann also claimed $820 in travel allowance and $214 in car costs.

According to the SMH, a previous trip from Friday to Sunday at the start of July 2013 cost taxpayers $4563, and a similar trip in May 2012 cost $4831. Senator Cormann also claimed family travel costs for trips over weekends in March and July 2010. The total cost of the five trips was $23,088.

A spokeswoman for Senator Cormann said all his travel was “undertaken within the applicable rules on work expenses and has at all times been appropriately declared”.

“Senator Cormann’s job as a senator for Western Australia necessarily involves travel across his very large electorate to attend functions and meet with constituents, business and community stakeholders,” the spokeswoman said. “Inevitably, much of the travel and attendance at functions and events in the electorate, whether in Perth or across regional WA, occurs Fridays to Sundays, when Senator Cormann has returned back to his home state from interstate parliamentary work commitments.”

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What's a rort?

Conflicts of Interest

Redirecting funding to pet hobbies; offering jobs to the boys without a proper tender process; secretly bankrolling candidates in elections; taking up private sector jobs in apparent breach of parliament’s code of ethics, the list goes on.

Deceptive Conduct

Claiming that greenhouse gas emissions have gone down when the facts clearly show otherwise; breaking the law on responding to FoI requests; reneging on promised legislation; claiming credit for legislation that doesn’t exist; accepting donations that breach rules. You get the drift of what behaviour this category captures.

Election Rorts

In the months before the last election, the Government spent hundreds of millions of dollars of Australian taxpayers’ money on grants for sports, community safety, rural development programs and more. Many of these grants were disproportionally awarded to marginal seats, with limited oversight and even less accountability.

Dubious Travel Claims

Ministerial business that just happens to coincide with a grand final or a concert; electorate business that must be conducted in prime tourist locations, or at the same time as party fundraisers. All above board, maybe, but does it really pass the pub test? Or does it just reinforce the fact that politicians take the public for mugs?

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