Canberra has become a parallel moral universe.

While the MP entitlements rules are generous, they aren’t nearly so vague as are being made out. Therefore, we need to make rorting politicians aware of the consequences of their actions, writes Michael Bradley.

By MICHAEL BRADLEY.

The virus hunting down politicians over rorting of their entitlements is out of containment and threatening to consume Canberra.

It is interesting to see that two of the most aggressive parliamentary attack dogs, Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne, are refusing to attack Labor’s Tony Burke for flying his family business class to Uluru for a holiday, particularly after Burke had led the charge against Bronwyn Bishop.

The Government is trying to jam the genie back into the bottle by diverting our attention away from individual politicians’ expense claims towards a depersonalised narrative. As Abbott said:

What has become apparent is that the problem is not any particular individual, the problem is the entitlements system more generally.

The story we are being fed, and which much of the media has accepted, is that the entitlements system for MPs is dreadfully vague, and that we can’t expect anything better until it has been comprehensively rewritten. The MPs are innocent victims of a poorly designed set of rules.

In fact, while the rules are extraordinarily generous, they aren’t nearly so vague as are being made out.

Much of the controversy has related to an MP’s general entitlement to free travel when they’re working. The rule says this:

A senator or member when travelling within Australia on parliamentary, electorate or official business but not including party business (other than meetings of a parliamentary political party, or of its executive or committees, and the national conference of a party), shall be entitled to travel at government expense.

So, what is “parliamentary, electorate or official business”? It was this on which the prosecution of former speaker Peter Slipper failed (on appeal) in the ACT Supreme Court earlier this year. Slipper had spent $900 on hired cars while taking tours of wineries near Canberra on three separate occasions. He was acquitted because the prosecution couldn’t prove that he wasn’t on “parliamentary business” while popping in and out of various wineries. For example, the judge said, “[Slipper] may have had a particular interest in viniculture, hospitality or tourism.”

So much for the chances of a successful criminal prosecution against any MPs, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t broken the rules and are entitled to the money. These are two separate questions.

There should be no real confusion around what “electorate business” or “official business” include; the latter sounds vague but has an expressly limited definition in the rules. The only ambiguity relates to the scope of “parliamentary business”, because that term is not defined. However, it explicitly does not include “party business”, so fundraisers are out of the frame. It surely doesn’t include book tours or visits to your investment properties, but, as the judge in Slipper’s case said, it’s left to the individual MP’s judgement much of the time to decide what’s parliamentary and what isn’t.

A good illustration is the revelation that Greens Senator Scott Ludlam chartered a flight in 2011, at a cost of $11,136, from Kalgoorlie to Wiluna where he attended an anti-uranium mining protest march. Ludlam’s response was that there were no commercial flights so he had to use a charter, and his main purpose for the trip was to visit uranium miner Toro Energy and meet with local people. Probably expressing the frustration and anxiety on all sides of politics about what is rapidly becoming a witch hunt, Ludlam sarcastically tweeted:

Ludlam has a point; less so Barnaby Joyce, who refused to repay travel expenses he claimed in 2012 for getting to and from three rugby league matches in Sydney where he was a corporate box guest. His rationale was that the only reason he was there was because he was an “official guest”; therefore, he was on parliamentary business.

Burke’s situation is a little different: MPs are entitled to claim travel expenses of family members when they accompany the MP on a trip for parliamentary business. Burke says he was in meetings every day, so no holiday for him. The entitlements allow for business class fares; so that’s what he took. He stayed within the rules, although we’re left to speculate just how many meetings the then environment minister needed to have in Uluru and what benefit he got from his family’s presence if he was too busy working to spend any quality time with them.

Related content: ‘Everyone on the inside knows Bronwyn Bishop is only the tip of the iceberg.’

It is true, then, that much of the time MPs have to decide for themselves what the rules mean. Evidently, they apply widely varying interpretations. Many of them seem to believe that attending a wedding is parliamentary business. Logical, though, on the Barnaby test – I only go to weddings when I’ve been invited.

There’s very good reason to argue that the existing rules are too generous, even when interpreted narrowly. Why should we contribute anything towards the family holidays of people who get a base salary of almost $200,000?

So, sure, the rules can be tightened; the perks can be cut down and they can try to define what parliamentary business really means. But do we really think that’s going to bring the age of entitlements to an end? The misuse of entitlements is widespread and longstanding, from the Prime Minister down and on both sides.

Read more: Bronwyn Bishop isn’t sorry. She’s sorry she got caught.

The prevailing attitude in Canberra is that, when you’re caught out, you pay back the money. Or you tough it out if you have half a pathetic excuse (like scheduling an official engagement in Melbourne to coincide with their free tickets to the AFL Grand Final, as several ministers and shadow ministers did last year). And you take whatever perk is on offer, like business class instead of economy, without considering whether that’s consistent with your duty to serve the public’s best interests. What seems not to register with MPs is that the taxpayers are disgusted by their collective behaviour.

The reality is that Canberra has become a parallel moral universe. If we make more rules, what makes us think the politicians won’t just continue to search out the loopholes? Clearly they think they’re not paid enough, and clearly they feel entitled to maximise their exploitation of whatever entitlements are on offer. We need to change that thinking before we can hope for better behaviour.

Related: Eight better ways to spend Bronwyn Bishop’s travel money. 

At my law firm, if one of our employees breached our trust half as badly as Bishop breached that of the electorate, we would dismiss them, demand that they repay what they had taken, and, if they had committed a crime, prosecute them. Our politicians have learned to expect that there are no such consequences to their breaches of our trust and consequently, sadly, many of them have lost their moral compass. Bishop herself sees no reason why she should not be re-elected.

To change this attitude, we need to visit the appropriate consequences of MPs’ actions upon them. It’s in our hands, because they are our servants. If they fail the expectations we fairly set, vote them out. All of them, if that’s what it takes.

Michael Bradley is the managing partner of Marque Lawyers, a Sydney law firm, and writes a weekly column for The Drum. He tweets at @marquelawyers.

This article was originally published by ABC News.

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