Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly I would like to congratulate the government on bringing forward this legislation, the Parliamentary Entitlements Legislation Amendment Bill 2017. It is always pleasing when the government adopts a Nick Xenophon Team policy and embraces it as its own. In 2015, following the helicopter scandal, Senator Nick Xenophon introduced a bill designed to provide greater accountability and transparency in the use of parliamentary entitlements. The bill provided for an independent watchdog to administer claims, with monthly disclosure of all MPs and senators' expenses published online and the right of the public to make a complaint to the watchdog.

Back in 2015 the major parties did not support Senator Xenophon's bill, because they thought it was unnecessary at the time. It took yet another scandal, yet another time when we were all shamed by the inappropriate action of colleagues, yet another time when the community's trust in politicians was eroded, for them to change their minds. I believe we are in a precarious position with the public that we serve—and that is it: we serve them. They no longer trust us. They no longer respect us. We have had too many travel rort scandals for them to take us seriously. They look at their own lives, the rules they operate under, the way they work out their own work expenses and the way they are managed, if they are lucky enough to actually have access to work expenses, and they cannot believe the sense of entitlement that some of us have displayed. We all remember being lectured by the government, particularly by the former Treasurer, that the age of entitlement was over. Of course, they were referring to others, mainly to welfare recipients, and not particularly to members of parliament. So is it any wonder that the public rejects this message comprehensively?

How do we regain the trust and respect of our communities? I believe that establishing an independent authority to administer claims for parliamentarians' entitlements is certainly a step in the right direction. If parliamentarians know that every travel claim they make will be made public then perhaps we will stop seeing attendances at sporting matches, particularly when they are interstate, or attendances at New Year's Eve parties or family holidays being billed to the taxpayer. Public scrutiny and potential embarrassment are powerful deterrents. The proposed authority has been modelled on the UK Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which has operated successfully for a number of years. In a parallel situation to our own, the UK authority was established in response to a huge expenses scandal in 2009, primarily related to claims of a second residence. The UK scandal generated significant public anger and resulted in a large number of resignations, sackings and retirements. Several parliamentarians were prosecuted and sentenced to terms of imprisonment. That makes my proposal of a 200 per cent penalty pale into insignificance.

I want to focus on the composition of the board of the authority, which has been copied directly from the United Kingdom. My concern is that we do not have any representation from the community on the board. We have the President of the Remuneration Tribunal, a former MP, a former member of the judiciary and an auditor. I think, if a member of the public were looking at the composition of the board, they would be sceptical about them being out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people. We are talking about elites, essentially, looking at elites. We know that there will be self-selection, and I firmly believe that within this parliament we could legislate to have a member of the community, an ordinary Australian, as part of that board. So I intend to move an amendment in the consideration-in-detail stage, to change the composition of the board, to add an additional member who is a community representative. When I look around Australia, when I think of regional electorates like Indi and my electorate of Mayo, I am sure that we would have a community representative who would gladly put up their hand, somebody from regional Australia who would say, 'Yes, I would like to be on that board and I could provide great value to it.' I think it is very important that we involve the community in this process and that we open ourselves up to the community for that very reason.

In closing, I do support this bill. I am very hopeful that the government and the opposition will consider opening up this authority to be real, to be part of the community and, hopefully, by doing so, we will start to claw back some of the confidence of our community.

See this speech in context