Why did the Australian health minister resign?
Over the past week, the Australian media has been focused on the abuse of the Parliamentary Entitlements scheme by former health minister Susan Ley.
Amid constant calls for an overhaul of the system, there have been countless reports of abuses committed by government and opposition MPs over recent years. Most recently the former health minister, Sussan Ley was forced to step down from her ministerial portfolio due to her claiming charter flights to her luxury gold coast apartment as official travel expenses.
According to Fairfax the former minister is a licensed commercial pilot who chose to pilot the flights that she charted. She did this not only to the gold coast but to other capital cities in Australia. The routes she frequented have extremely high commercial jet traffic raising questions as to the inconvenience that could have possibly been caused to her as a result of having to use commercial travel.
Since Fairfax revealed the extent of the misuse of her travel allowance the Health Minister has resigned her ministerial portfolio and on the 18th of January Malcolm Turnbull announced that former minister for industry would take over the portfolio along with the sports portfolio which Ms Ley also held.
This is not an isolated incident, Australia’s politician are becoming infamous for abusing their parliamentary privileges as ordinary Australians are being forced to suffer through spending cuts which are intended to assit with budget repair.
This week the Finance Minister, Mathias Cormann was revealed to have used taxpayer-funded travel in weekend retreats with his wife to Broome, a resort town in Western Australia. According to Fairfax media, the minister billed taxpayers 23,000 dollars in total for these trips which took place between 2009 and 2014.
This revelation is particularly startling when it is considered that his current portfolio of Finance calls on him to oversee government spending and work to ensure that the government is spending money responsibly.
Despite his office highlighting the fact that his actions were completely within the regulations that are MPs are subject to when they use travel entitlements, his actions fell outside of the public’s expectation of what is an appropriate use of taxpayer money.
