Weird Things in Parliamentary Expense Reports Vol. 1

Our pollies often charge strange personal expenses to the tax payer - and they often very quickly get caught by nosey journalists.

But if you're crazy enough to spend some time reading official parliamentary expense reports, it's not too hard to find some items that raise a few questions.

For example: How did Senator Derryn Hinch manage to spend $900 in one day on taxi fares?

Further scrutiny of his reports reveals he was in the town of Echuca on that day for 'electorate duties', which raises more questions than it answers.

Speaking of strange travelling charges - i'd love to know how Senator Bridget McKenzie managed to drop $19,9420.20 on impromptu travel from Rockhampton to Essendon. At a distance of 1,971 km by road, that's a charge of $100 per km travelled to the taxpayer. Did Senator McKenzie need to charter a plane at short notice?

Aside from travel expenses rorts - of which there are many, in my opinion, our pollies like to charge us for a bit of heavy reading.

 For example, Senator James McGrath managed to spend a whopping 3 grand in 3 months on books and newspapers with the largest single purchase being 20 copies of "Howard: The Art of Persuasion: Selected Speeches 1995-2016" at a cost of $917.18. That's $45.86 per copy. You'd think he would at least get a bulk discount for an order of 20.

Aside from 20 copies Howard's finest moments in print, Senator McGrath purchased many other fine titles including "Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex" and "Don't Hurt People and Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto".

In spite of this impressive list of books, Senator McGrath isn't even the most dedicated bookworm in the upper house. My short time spent analysing these reports led me to realise that Senator Fierravanti-Wells has a serious need for read.

Damn, do you think she read all 20 copies of "The Forgotten People, 75th Anniversary Edition" and the regular edition?

Click here to see what your local member has been spending your money on.

The Spectator Australia's Circulation is Under 8,500 Copies per Week

Our own Australian edition of the highly partisan Tory weekly The Spectator often makes the news due to columns filled with unique hot-takes from editor and sky news host Rowan Dean (and friends). And like Sky News, The Spectator's controversial contents and political-class audience often results in its importance being heavily overstated in the media.

One may think that a national magazine frequently featuring the musings of politicians, bearing the standard of a near 200 year old publication of high repute, would do quite well in a mid-sized media market like Australia. One can also be very wrong.

Audited circulation figures for Australian magazines are impossible to find since most Australian publishers withdrew from official AMAA surveys two years ago, in favour of the slightly more opaque and flexible figure of 'average readership'.

However, The Spectator Australia is not published by an Australian company. It is published by the Press Holdings Media Group, a Barclay brothers firm which is incorporated on the notorious tax haven island of Jersey. Due to its main business operations occurring in the UK, the properties of Press Holdings is audited by ABC, a British auditing firm.

Through the ABC website we can see that the British edition of The Spectator maintains a healthy weekly circulation of  94,458 units. 

The Australian audition?

Less than 8,500 copies moved every week on average. That means that this national magazine that frequently obtains the contributions and attention of Federal politicians moves only about 1400 more copies a week than the local paper for Narrabri. 

With half of that figure coming from subscriptions, that means that only 4000 copies a week are being sold for the full cover price at the Newsagent. I am not privy to the finances of The Spectator Australia, but I do know that it doesn't often run full page advertisements. To rely on subscription and cover price revenue to run such an overhead-heavy business such as a weekly magazine? I know most of its content is syndicated from the British version - but I do not think this magazine is a profit-making venture. I would be love to be proven wrong! And I would love to know how much Tony Abbott charges for a column. (Another suspicion - maybe he provides them on mate's rates).

Read the ABC audit data here. 
https://www.abc.org.uk/product/16941-the-spectator-australia

Intrigue: Prominent Moderate Young Liberal Suspended from Party

Reports have emerged this morning that Hugo Robinson, president of the Ryde Young Liberals was temporarily suspended from the party for writing an article earlier this month in the SMH that criticized the manouvirings of his federal counterparts.

Internal sources have confirmed that Robinson will only be suspended for one month. Furthermore, it is alleged that the NSW state executive levied the ban on behalf of the legendarily litigious Alex Hawke, right hand man to PM Scomo and kingmaker of the soft right faction.

Shoddy Reporting from The Australian

Have you seen the front page of “The Australian” today?

It is well known that “The Australian” is a conservative publication – but the sheer editorialising of the day’s news, as well as the questionable placement of media gossip on the front page makes me wonder if the Australian’s typesetters accidentally received the agenda for the “Daily Telegraph”.

It is bad enough that the decision was made to relegate the coverage of the biggest ever shareholder revolt against executive remuneration to the business section. 

It is even worse that above-the-fold placement was given to Karl Stefanovic. You might as well be reading a gossip rag like “New Idea” (which produced much better political reporting this week than the Australian by breaking the Andrew Broad story).

But I digress. As pathetic as the Stefanovic story is, you can’t deny that it is news of general interest. My main concern is the second above-fold-story.

In short, the story highlights sections of an audit of the Renewable Energy Target that reveals that roughly a quarter of residential solar panel installations are sub-standard, with about 5 per cent of that quarter representing installations with a “severe risk” of causing harm. Genuine news story? Yes. Front page worthy? Maybe. Taking the liberty to compare government subsidies of solar panel-installations to the fatal “pink bats” scheme? 

Please. Also note that the incredibly inflammatory headline confirms the unsaid: no one has yet died due to the dodgy solar panels. Additionally, the story claims that “one-quarter of all rooftop units inspected posed a severe or high risk”, the language in the report uses neither of those words. The bottom-two safety ratings are “unsafe” and “sub-standard”. Although an average of roughly 23 per cent of installations were deemed “sub-standard”, out of 24,371 inspections undertaken since 2011, only an average 4.2 per cent of panel installations were deemed unsafe by the auditor. 

Again, I assert that this is a genuine news story. However, to either change the language contained in the report or to independently assert that the meaning of “sub-standard” is “high risk”, and to strongly suggest that solar panels cause death in the headline is nothing more than irresponsible journalism.

In fact, I wonder if the story’s author even read the report. References to the report seem to come from a letter the Federal energy minister wrote to his state counterparts about this issue. Although it certainly is within the duties of the minister to draw attention to a potential risk within his portfolio and their regulatory jurisdiction – I suspect that this was an act of political posturing supported by our national newspaper on a day when even the NSW state liberal government is distancing itself from federal energy policy (or lack thereof).

Poor effort from “The Australian” today. I suspect we will see more of it. In October, Chris Dore, editor of the Daily Telegraph was made editor-in-chief of The Australian. Although it is not uncommon for news limited editors to jump between titles, this one appointment might bring our national paper further to the right and further downmarket. But what can we expect from a man who lunches with two notoriously conservative political activists?