Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

As foreshadowed in my speech, the Greens will be supporting this amendment because it is a step in the right direction. When the bill comes before the Senate, we will be arguing for a targeted and potentially harsher approach because, in our view, there should be a much higher penalty for members of parliament who knowingly misuse entitlements. An inadvertent mistake might be one thing, but, when you knowingly misuse your right to travel somewhere or to claim overnight accommodation and you have gone to a place—for example, the Gold Coast—just for personal reasons, to improve your own personal financial position by perhaps buying an investment property, that is beyond the pale.

If you fleeced the company that you worked for you would go to jail, or you would face going to jail. If you took money out of the coffers of a company to improve your own personal position and your own personal standing, you would face the full force of the law—and rightly so. So the question arises: when you have a member of parliament who knowingly does something wrong and knowingly says, 'I can get taxpayer entitlement X, Y or Z and use it to improve my own personal situation,' what is the appropriate response? Why should it be any different to someone who defrauds their company or the boss that they work for and who could potentially find themselves in jail? That is a very simple question that the government should answer.

Should we not at the very least—and this is an argument that we will be pursuing in the Senate—be increasing the penalties for those members of parliament who intentionally do the wrong thing? When it comes to the following bill, we will have more to say about the expenses authority and the situation where members of parliament might get the rules wrong. We think there are steps that could be taken to fix that so that you do not incur the expense in the first place. But, if you knowingly do something that is really for personal benefit, surely the consequences should be much higher. Slipping up—okay, let's deal with that in a certain way. But, if you knowingly do something wrong, the penalties should be higher.

This government, in particular, should have some even-handedness, because, if you happen to be someone in this country who has lost their job and is reliant on Centrelink or Newstart to get yourself by until you get back on your feet again, if you miss an appointment, your money gets turned off and you go without. This government says, 'We want to make it even worse; you might have to go up to a month without any money at all'—not for having done the wrong thing but just because you find yourself unemployed. So this government is quite happy to turn around and say to people who find themselves out of a job—and it might because you are living in a town where unemployment is over 20 per cent—'You get no money at all, because you didn't turn up to an appointment,' but then effectively give what could amount to a slap over the wrist to people who have a lot of money and who are in a position to afford this kind of penalty.

So you really have to ask whether this government is prepared to be as even-handed and as tough on politicians as it is prepared to be on people who are unemployed. I reckon the answer is probably no, and that is probably why the government is not going to support this amendment. In moving this amendment, there are some very valid questions as to whether the government has the balance right, particularly when it comes to people who make claims they know in their heart were not right from the beginning.

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