Travel Rorts Feed Trump-Style Politics

In my first election I voted Labor after asking my mum who to vote for. After that, for most of my adult life, I voted Greens and preferenced Labor. Not because they were perfect, but because they were the best of a bad bunch. But then credible independents came along - David Pocock in my electorate. I shifted again, not because I became less progressive, but because I had long stopped trusting the machine.

The latest travel-rorts scandal has just confirmed why.

We now know that politicians across all the big parties - Labor, Liberal and the Greens - have been milking their so-called “family reunion” travel allowances. Ministers and senior MPs have flown partners and kids around the country to AFL grand finals, the Australian Open, music festivals and protests, all at public expense and all “within the rules”.

Labor’s Anika Wells has referred tens of thousands of dollars of family travel to the watchdog. Don Farrell has clocked up the equivalent of multiple trips around the world for his family. The Prime Minister has claimed flights for his partner to attend big sporting events. On the Greens side, Mehreen Faruqi, David Shoebridge and Sarah Hanson-Young have used the entitlement to fly their relatives to Splendour in the Grass, Bluesfest and a pro-Palestine rally. And Sarah Hanson-Young even spent $50,000 flying her lobbyist husband back and forth to Canberra - his company advises the likes of Rio Tinto, Uber and Spotify!

Different parties, same snouts, same trough.

What infuriates me most is the smug line that keeps getting trotted out: “It’s within the guidelines.” Of course it is. The guidelines are dodgy, and they exist because politicians designed and approved the system that works very nicely for them.

Yes, there’s an “independent” authority to oversee expenses. But Parliament sets the overall framework; MPs vote on the entitlements; and somehow, in a cost-of-living crisis, they’ve ended up with rules that let them fly spouses and partners around the country in business class while nurses, teachers and tradies are counting every dollar.

This isn’t just a matter of bad optics. It’s a betrayal of trust.

We expect this behaviour from the Liberals. That doesn’t make it acceptable, but it makes it predictable. What really stings is seeing Labor and especially the Greens - who like to claim the moral high ground on integrity and fairness - playing the same game.

If your political pitch is “We’re not like them, we’re here to clean things up,” then using taxpayer money to fly your highly paid consultant partner back and forth or to take your family to music festivals and protests isn’t just tone-deaf. It is political self-harm on a national scale.

Because while all this is going on, One Nation is polling at record highs - around 17% primary vote. That’s not happening in a vacuum. There’s a global trend of voters turning to far-right populists out of frustration with what they see as an entitled, insulated elite. The more “progressive” politicians act like an entitled group with special rules and perks, the more oxygen they pump into Pauline Hanson’s political lungs.

Of course travel rorts aren’t the only reason people vote One Nation. There’s racism, disinformation, genuine economic pain and a media environment that thrives on outrage. But Labor and the Greens have to face an uncomfortable truth: every time they defend dodgy entitlements as “within the rules”, they help to normalise the idea that politicians are crooks - and they make the Trumpist option more attractive.

They’re not just failing to solve the problem. They are becoming part of it.

I’ll keep supporting strong independents who refuse these kinds of perks, publish their expenses transparently and push for genuine reform of parliamentary entitlements. That’s where I see hope for rebuilding trust.

If the self-described progressives want to stop the rise of the far right, they can start by looking in the mirror, tearing up their rorted travel rules and acting like the public servants they claim to be - not a political class above the rest of us.

Travel rorting by progressives enables the Far Right.