faulker03

I haven't been through the report of the review An Independent Parliamentary Entitlements System but these seem to be the recommendations relevant to transparency and accountability. This is territory traversed in the past to some degree by the Auditor General and the Belcher committee. In those instances quite a few recommendations were ignored or conveniently disappeared through the cracks, but we live in hope....  ( Update: F r om Minister Cormann's Media R elease: The Government supports all the recommendations in principle and will now commence work on implementation. Implementation of a number of recommendations will involve further work by the Remuneration Tribunal, which the Government will ask the Tribunal to commence forthwith. Recommendation 24   Improving transparency – publish all key documents online The Government should ensure that all rules and practices relating to interpretation and operation of the work expenses framework are published together online, ...

Six years ago the then government announced a 'root and branch review' of parliamentary entitlements following critical findings by the Auditor General The committee chaired by Barbara Belcher reported in April 2010. The government sat on the report for a year before releasing it. As recounted here the Auditor General six weeks ago reported something had been done on 17 of the committee's 39 recommendations. But "there has been no formal government response to the recommendations of the CROPE (Belcher) report, or subsequent Remuneration Tribunal report, in relation to fundamental reform of the legislative and administrative framework underpinning the provision of Parliamentarians’ ‘tools of trade’."  Today the Prime Minister announced The rules governing the parliamentary entitlements system need reform....The rules lack clarity and lack transparency. We need a system that is simple, effective and clear. We need a system that more independently sets and m...