Federal politicians will have their expenses made public on Wednesday in a win for the Greens and Teal MPs who have been campaigning for transparency.
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles was criticised for hiding the details about his use of special purpose flights for months.
At the time Mr Marles and the Labor Government claimed they could not be released due to security concerns for politicians.
The government also claimed MPs’ expenses were not released because of technical issues inherited from the Coalition government as it vowed to fix the issues and restore transparency to the system as was part of its pre-election promises.
Special Minister of State Senator Don Farrell said the government was “delivering” on its commitment to restore transparency and integrity to the Parliamentary Expenditure Management System on Wednesday.
“From today, parliamentary expenses will again be published, starting with the July-September 2022 reporting period. This will be followed by a fast-tracked schedule of reporting until all parliamentary expenses are up to date,” he said in a statement.
Politicians’ work and travel expenses will be released on the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority (IPEA) website with MPs and their staff given the opportunity to cross check their statements before they are published.
The IPEA confirmed on Wednesday, around 75 per cent of current and former politicians had certified their parliamentary expenses for the July-September 2022 quarter.
Under guidelines created in 2013 the government must make details of flights available every six months but that stopped before the 2022 election because of a security review.
NSW Greens Senator David Shoebridge lodged a freedom of information request, earlier this year, which revealed Mr Marles had spent about $3.6 million on RAAF flights.
Mr Marles insisted he was following security advice despite a freedom of information request showing he was involved in a March decision not to make the information around VIP flights, including departure and arrival locations along with who was onboard, publicly available.
The Deputy Prime Minister said the security review had indicated putting information about the VIP flights to the public could compromise safety and “patterns of life and behaviour”.
Information about MPs expenses were last published in 2022 before the federal election and since coming to government Labor has pointed to an IT issue which prevented all details from being collated.
Senator Farrell said the failure to report expenses “should never have happened” and pointed to issues inherited from the former government.
“This system has never functioned as intended, and complaints across the Parliament have been consistent since its commencement in 2018,” he said.
“From Opposition we raised hundreds of questions, over successive years, including repeated questioning at Senate Estimates– all of which, fell on deaf ears.
“In coming to office, we not only commenced work to fix the system but proactively referred the project to the Australian National Audit Office for review. We expect the outcomes of that review in the new year.”
(SKY NEWS)
