Showing posts with label Age of Entitlement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Age of Entitlement. Show all posts

Thursday 21 July 2016

Counting the coins as we wait for the 45th Parliament to commence


Before Malcolm Turnbull (as prime minister of a government in the third and final year of its first term in office) called a double dissolution election, the last Dept. of Finance Australian Government General Government Sector Monthly Financial Statement due was for May 2016 and, this revealed an underlying cash balance for the 2015-16 financial year to 31 May 2016 which was in deficit to the tune of $34,860 million.

total government revenue - $360,209 million of which $340,866 million was taxation revenue
total expenses - $388,061 million leaving a shortfall of $27,852 million
public debt interest - $14,101 million
net government debt - $284,657 million.

The June figures are yet to be published and it will be a case of track the Dept. of Finance website for the next three years as the Liberal-Nationals Coalition fails yet again to reign in its own discretionary spending.

Meanwhile Prime Minister-elect Turnbull - in an election so close that by 18 July 2016 only 13 of 150 House of Representatives seats have been officially declared - held an evening of champagne and canapés with a who’s who of Liberal and National MPs and senators at The Lodge in Canberra on 17 July.

The food included Pialligo ­Estate’ smoked salmon on rye toasties with horseradish cream, Moroccan lamb rissoles with harissa yoghurt, vegetable samosa with mint relish, roast beef en croute with stilton cream and tomato chutney, Vietnamese prawns with chilli jam and chicken satays.

I sincerely hope that Mr. Turnbull personally paid for use of The Lodge that night and for all catering and security at this event, as he didn’t become the official tenant again until after the Governor-General swore him in on 19 July 2016.

Mr. Turnbull's reportedly in excess of $1 million donation to the Liberal election campaign may possibly have brought him government but it could never buy the allocation of taxpayer funds for his private victory party.

Monday 13 June 2016

Australian Federal Election 2016: a rabble of rorters


So Liberal MPs politically profile their constituents on the back of the taxpayer dollar and, that money is paid on to a company which sends these dollars to the political arm of the Liberal Party of Australia.

And they wonder why their polling is so very ordinary?


You don't know it, but you might be one of the Liberal Party's largest donors. 

A company Liberal MPs direct taxpayer funds towards to keep tabs on voter behaviour is becoming a major source of income for the party, raising questions about whether taxpayers are indirectly footing the bill for donations.

Fairfax Media can reveal nearly all Liberal MPs pay a company, Parakeelia Pty Ltd, $2500 a year to use "Feedback" software, money understood to come from their taxpayer-funded office allowances.

Parakeelia is registered to the same inner-Canberra office building as the Liberals. The company's directors include the Liberal Party's federal director, Tony Nutt, and president, Richard Alston. It is registered with authorities as being associated with the party.

Last financial year, Parakeelia transferred $500,000 to the federal Liberal division, making it the party's second-biggest single source of funds. The year before it came in fourth with $400,000; before that $200,000.

But the Liberals would not say how much of the company's revenue began as taxpayer funding.

Some party figures question whether the party is profiting from public funding.

"What are the costs to them from running the software?," asked one former Liberal MP. "You'd have to say minimal. Our contributions per MP are very small, so we never really could know if they were turning a buck or not."

The last time this information was disclosed, a decade ago, half of Parakeelia's revenues came from MP offices. The balance was mostly money from the Liberal Party machine.

The software logs information about an MP's constituents. Every time a voter calls an office, or writes a letter to the local paper, electorate staff make a note about any information gleaned about their political views. Staff also proactively research community groups and businesses and add it to the files……

Parakeelia Pty Ltd declared to the Australian Electoral Commission that it directly gave the federal Liberal Party an estimated $550,392 - for an election campaign which gave us Tony Abbott as prime minister. 

The same associated entity will directly hand the federal Liberals at least $269,176 to try and keep Malcolm Turnbull in office.

Monday 30 May 2016

Australian Federal Election 2016: oh the pain, it burns!


I’m sure there is more than one voter on a low income who is chortling about what went down in Week Three of the federal election campaign.

This has been the state of play for members of the Australian Parliament since 1999.

Excerpts from TR 1999/10 Taxation Ruling Income tax and fringe benefits tax: Members of Parliament – allowances, reimbursements, donations and gifts, benefits, deductions and recoupments:

10. Members commonly receive the following types of allowances, in addition to their Parliamentary ‘salaries’ (see paragraphs 42 to 45). Particular allowances may vary depending on the Parliament in which a Member serves.
• Committee allowance
• Daily expense allowance
• Electorate allowance
• Expense or entertainment allowance
• Opposition spokespersons’ allowance
• Postage allowance
• Printing and stationery allowance
• Private vehicle allowance/motor vehicle allowance
• Telephone allowance
• Travel allowance.
These allowances, like MPs and senators parliamentary salaries, are considered assessable income by the Australian Taxation Office.
Second property not used as a Member’s residence: A deduction is allowable for expenses of a non-capital nature, and for depreciation of plant, where the property is not properly regarded as a second residence. However, the deduction is limited to the extent to which the expenditure is incurred in respect of a property that is used by a Member for work-related travel purposes on overnight stays away from his or her residence, and the expenditure is not private or domestic in nature (paragraphs 328 to 336).

Second residence expenses: A deduction is not allowable for the costs of maintaining a property that is used as a second residence (paragraphs 337 to 343)……

These two sections of the ruling appear to allow parliamentarians to double-dip at the ordinary taxpayers expense – first using the overnight travel allowance to pay down the mortgage on a Canberra residence if it’s not owned outright and then claiming tax deductions including mortgage interest, rates, insurance and utilities on the same residence.

Then this cosy little arrangement became public knowledge…….

News.com.au, 22 May 2016:
TAXPAYERS are helping to pay the mortgage and the rent for federal MPs who are raking in $1000 a week to sleep in Canberra and then, on top of that, claiming a big tax deduction for rent, rates, electricity and mortgage.
In a little-known tax ruling, MPs who rent can also claim a tax deduction for a second residence including “lease payments; rent; interest on borrowings used for the acquisition of the property; rates; taxes; insurance; general maintenance of the building, plant and grounds’’.
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, charged with cracking down on budget waste, is just one of the MPs double-dipping by claiming a $273-a-night travel allowance (which, bizarrely, is not regarded as taxable income) and scoring a tax deduction as well….
The rules state that an MP “may choose to rent or buy a property rather than stay in a hotel or other commercial establishment when travelling. A deduction is allowable for expenses, that are not of a capital, private or domestic nature, in respect of such a property where it is used by a Member for accommodation when he or she is undertaking work-related travel.
“Such expenses include: lease payments; rent; interest on borrowings used for the acquisition of the property; rates; taxes; insurance; general maintenance of the building, plant and grounds.’’

The Guardian, 22 May 2016:
The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, has defended politicians receiving both a $273 a night travel allowance and tax deductions for mortgages and rents for properties in Canberra.
Speaking on Insiders on Sunday, Cormann said the remuneration tribunal granted the travel allowance and the tax office allowed deductions for politicians’ accommodation expenses.
Reports have revealed that on top of the allowance, MPs who rent or buy a property to stay in during work-related travel can also claim tax deductions for rent, interest on borrowings used for the acquisition of the property, rates, taxes, insurance and general maintenance.
The first report indicates that some federal politicians may be under the impression that a travel allowance paid for a presumed expense was not taxable income.
Then came this painful revelation……
ABC News, 23 May 2016:
Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan stressed that members of Parliament had to abide by the same standards as everyone else.
"The rules are the same for every taxpayer, regardless of their occupation," Mr Jordan said in a statement.
"Any taxpayer who has had to travel overnight for work is entitled to deduct the costs of meals and accommodation under our tax laws.
"However, given that there are clear misunderstandings of how the ruling is applied, we will undertake to review the 1999 ruling to give greater clarity for all taxpayers on the treatment of allowances they may receive from their employer to cover the costs of work related travel."
The ATO said the returns of all taxpayers, including MPs were scrutinised, and that any taxpayer should not be claiming deductions for travel expenses unless they have declared the allowance as income in their tax returns.
In 1999, the ATO issued a ruling about how it assesses travel allowances and tax deductions for MPs.
That ruling will now be reviewed in light of the issue being thrust into the campaign spotlight.

Friday 20 May 2016

Labor blots its copybook in Week 2 of the federal election campaign


Preselecting a 49 year-old candidate in West Australia who at nineteen assaulted a police officer could be seen as an unfortunate mistake easily rectified, but for this to be followed less than a week later by the discovery that one of Labor’s Victorian MPs seeking re-election had not declared an investment property for close to three years can only be called the first big blunder of the party’s federal election campaign.

To then find that the Member for Batman and Shadow Minister for Justice David Feeney is also one of those politicians who claims $271 a night while living in an apartment owned by a close family member – in this case his lawyer wife’s trust – only makes the situation worse.

This parliamentary entitlement claim places him is the same category as former treasurer Joe Hockey and current prime minister Malcolm Turnbull* and, is likely to alienate some voters in his electorate.


* Malcolm Turnbull’s last Summary of Parliamentary Expenditure show this multi-millionaire is still claiming the nightly allowance for living in a Canberra apartment owned by himself.

Wednesday 13 April 2016

Australian Federal Election 2016: why are taxpayers spending so much on political has-beens?


The Sydney Morning Herald: John Winston Howard

The Liberal Party began to roll-out the aging John Winston Howard OM AC last week as part of its fundraising efforts for the upcoming federal election campaign.

But make no mistake, it’s not just Liberal Party supporters who were paying for that 11,000 guest Docklands party in Melbourne and the exclusive dinner at the Pratt family mansion in Kew the following night – the Australian taxpayer is also likely to have been subbing the former prime minister as he sipped his wine and nibbled on canapés.

Since he lost his seat in the 2007 federal election Howard has milked the public purse for $1.82 million in additional entitlements over and above his very generous parliamentary pension.

That $1.82 million pays for a fully equiped modern office including phone & internet, office consumables, domestic air travel for himself and on occasion a family member and  travel in government cars, as well as subsidising the running costs of his own private vehicle1.

Given his obvious sense of entitlement which saw him bill taxpayers over $67,000 in the first half of 2015 (the latest Dept. of Finance entitlement record published) it will come as no surprise to eventually discover his trip from Sydney to Melbourne and return will not be paid by either Howard or the Liberal Party.


Footnote
1.Howard is one of five former prime ministers still receiving these additional entitlements

Tuesday 12 April 2016

On the Turnbull-Joyce ticket the old Age of Entitlement endures


On Thursday 24 March 2016, in a week in which the House of Representatives was not sitting and on the eve of the Easter long weekend, Nationals MP for New England and Deputy-Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce decided to go to faux election campaigning by helicopter – slugging very weary Australian taxpayers somewhere between $3,836 and $4,166 for the ride (depending on which of his staffers journalists were quoting).

However, despite his protestations otherwise, this was not the first time Joyce had hopped into a helicopter rather than a car since 2013.

Ah, yes….on the Turnbull-Joyce ticket the old Age of Entitlement endures.


It was the day before Easter in Drake, a sleepy village in northern NSW, when the peace was interrupted by a helicopter depositing Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce on a sporting field behind the popular local pub, the Lunatic Hotel.

Drake is just a 40-minute drive from Mr Joyce's second electorate office in Tenterfield but his office insists a helicopter was the best option to avoid a four-hour drive from his home base in Tamworth. It was his second chopper ride to the village in less than a year.

After I'm finished I'll have a beer and jump in the chopper and head off to fly over the blueberry farm 

The latest Drake visit, which will cost the public almost $4000, happened two days after the Turnbull government released a long-awaited review into parliamentary entitlements sparked by the "choppergate" scandal that engulfed former speaker Bronwyn Bishop and sent Tony Abbott's prime ministership into a final nosedive.

The review called for clear guidelines so the "use of charter transport must constitute value for money, and in particular that, in the absence of compelling reasons, helicopters cannot be chartered to cover short distances".

Mr Joyce, who has been in unofficial election campaign mode since Tony Windsor recently declared his challenge in New England, arrived in Drake on March 24.

During the three-hour visit he launched a Telstra mobile tower - first announced in June 2015 - and visited the school, a local blueberry farm and inspected a bridge in need of an upgrade.

The Age, 8 April 2016:

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce chartered a helicopter to visit an area less than an hour and a half by road from his ministerial office in Armidale.

The flight to Copeton Dam places a question mark over a key plank of the National leader's defence of his helicopter usage, supported on Friday by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, that choppers were used as an alternative to unreasonably long drives.
The 120 kilometre flight from Armidale to Copeton Dam cost $2211 return.

The most controversial helicopter flight in Australian political history, Bronwyn Bishop's $5000 hop from Melbourne to a Liberal Party fundraiser in Geelong, was just 40 kilometres shorter…..

He took a fourth helicopter trip from Armidale to Legume near the Queensland border in February last year, according to parliamentary records for electorate-related travel.

That flight, to announce a $350,000 road upgrade, cost the public $4737.

Confirmation of four helicopter flights forced Mr Joyce's office on Friday to withdraw its statement to Fairfax Media on Thursday that the two flights to Drake were his only helicopter usage since becoming the MP for New England in 2013.

Friday 29 August 2014

Joe 'my middle name is entitlement' Hockey and the public purse


This is the federal treasurer who in his first federal budget was determined to turn the divide between the rich and poor in Australia into a yawning chasm…..

Media reports put Joe Hockey's current parliamentary income at $365,868 - a base salary of $195,130 plus an 87.5% loading for his position of Treasurer. 

According to the Remuneration Tribunal Determination 2014/16: Members of Parliament –Travelling Allowance from 31 August 2014 Hockey will also receive $91 a night for staying in his own house in Canberra and $271 when he stays in commercial accommodation. 

If his wife happens to be staying in their house at the same time, Hockey receives an additional $10 from taxpayers.

Excerpts from article in The Daily Telegraph on 17 August 2014:

* The Hockey family’s astute purchase of the property in one of Canberra’s premier suburbs is a well-known story in political circles. The home is worth an estimated $1.5 million according to local real estate agents. But the Hockey clan picked up the property for a song, purchasing it for just $320,000 in 1997.
In his recently published biograph Not Your Average Joe, a former Liberal MP Ross Cameron boasts that Mr Hockey struck a golden deal, spotting the house when driving in Canberra.
“The house was a piece of Hockey mercantile genius,’’ Mr Cameron said.
Biographer Madonna King writes that the seller, who according to ACT lands title records was called Robert Hamilton wanted “no part in lawyers or agents.’
“So Joe, the lawyer, called his father, the real estate agent, who took the owner out for a beer,’’ Ms King writes.
“The Hockey’s scored the house for land value. Joe’s father didn’t mention he was a real estate agent, buying the property on behalf of his lawyer son.’’
When it was purchased in 1997, Mr Hockey was listed on sales documents as owning 5 per cent, his wife Melissa Babbage 61 per cent and his father Richard Hockey 34 per cent….
The double dipping of MPs who claim travel allowance to stay in properties owned by themselves or their wives and in some cases reduce their tax by negatively gearing property is well-known in Canberra. In 2007, it was revealed Malcolm Turnbull, then regarded as Australia’s richest MP, rented a house from his wife Lucy when in Canberra. It was reported Mr Turnbull paid $10,000 a year to his wife under the arrangement and claimed another $10 a night when she stayed in Canberra. In response, Mr Turnbull said the story was a “beat up.”

*The Treasurer has legitimately claimed $108,000 in travel allowance for 368 nights over the last four years including many nights for parliamentary sitting weeks where he has stayed at the Canberra house.

The Daily Mail 14 August 2014:

Mr Hockey and his millionaire banker wife Melissa Babbage, own four properties between them, including a five-bedroom harbourside family home in Hunters Hill, one of Sydney's wealthiest harbourside suburbs, believed to be worth more than $5 million, which they bought for $3.5 million in 2004.
Their $10 million property portfolio also includes a 200 hectare cattle farm in Queensland and a beautiful six-bedroom coastal retreat with 180-degree views of the beach in Stanwell Park, an hour south of Sydney. Mr Hockey's statement of registrable interests, made in 2010, also lists him as joint owner of a property in the prestigious Canberra suburb of Forrest.

Wednesday 20 August 2014

One rule for us and another for those super-entitled Liberal Party politicians


This is Australian Treasurer and millionaire Joe 'I'm the friend of the poor & downtrodden even though I have reduced their incomes' Hockey alighting from his taxpayer subsidised chauffeur-driven car. Please note (lower right hand corner) that this car has stopped on a disabled parking spot. Says it all really......

* Hat tip to Richard Chirgwin for bringing this to my attention