The Courier-Mail is upset this morning about ex-Queensland MPs costing the state $200,000 per year in travel perks. Like many other countries, Queensland provides travel perks for MPs after they have left office if they have served at least 7 years in the State Parliament (and were elected 3 times). It allows them free air travel within Australia, or to New Zealand, or Papua New Guinea.

I have no problem with this in principle as former long-serving MPs tend to still be involved in a number of official events, and frankly, $200,000/year is a very small amount compared with the state's GDP of around $160,000m.

However, I do have a problem with some of the details of how it is implemented.

Firstly, this is the first time that is has ever been disclosed, and even now, only the total figure is provided. This is public expenditure, and I see no reason why we shouldn't be told exactly who of the former MPs is using it. Speaker Mike Reynolds claims that revealing this would expose "private citizens" to "public ridicule". Frankly, that is ridiculous. If they are abusing it, then public ridicule should definitely follow, and if they are only using it for official business, why is there a problem?

This leads on to the second problem. At present there is no requirement for any reason or justification to be provided for this travel. This is a much more serious concern (but would be alleviated by making the expenditure breakdown public) as under no circumstances should the State be subsidising any business trips made by former MPs. An argument could be made for funding some personal trips, but the State should not be subsidising businesses via the backdoor, by reducing their travel expenses if they have hired ex-MPs.

Posted by Dave Bryant at 3:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)