Paul Farrell theguardian.com, Tuesday 8 October 2013

It took just three minutes for both major parties to exempt three key departments from freedom of information scrutiny

'We’re calling on the government to come clean': Lee Rhiannon. Photograph: AAP

Millions of dollars in expense claims by federal politicians are shielded from public scrutiny, as both major parties passed a law blocking access to information from both houses of parliament in May this year.
It took just 10 minutes for the Coalition and Labor parties to agree to pass legislation that blocked three crucial government departments – the Department of the House, Department of the Senate and Department of Parliamentary Services – from freedom of information (FoI) laws.
The office of the Australian information commissioner, which is the watchdog for FoI laws in Australia, issued guidelines in 2012 that said all parliamentary departments were subject to open access laws.
The commissioner's findings paved the way for the Sydney Morning Herald to obtain documents about the expenses claims of Peter Slipper and other politicians until the act was passed.
The current expenses controversy surrounding expenses for wedding trips by the prime minister, Tony Abbott, and other senior Coalition figures has been uncovered through the examination of expenses lodged with the Department of Finance and Deregulation. But a separate fund for entitlements is available to federal politicians that provides additional expenses for salaries, communication costs and some travel expenses.
The Greens senator Lee Rhiannon moved for a number of amendments allowing access to expenditure information, but they were all rejected.
"We're calling on the government to come clean with full details. There's increasing public concerns about how parliamentarians are using their money," Rhiannon said on Tuesday.
The Greens will introduce legislation for the introduction of a national integrity commissioner to investigative the use of travel entitlements. The Greens leader, Christine Milne, said: "This scandal has reached the highest political office in the country and must end now. The Greens will move our integrity legislation again as soon as parliament returns.
"It's clear MPs need someone with whom they can discuss the appropriateness or otherwise of particular claims."
The bill to exempt parliament was also at odds with the Labor government's own report into freedom of information laws conducted by Dr Allan Hawke in 2012, who recommended that the departments should be subject to FoI for "documents of an administrative nature". This would have included material relating to expenses and allowances.
Peter Timmins, an FoI consultant, said the law should be amended to specifically include public disclosure of all parliamentary expenses.
"There's a big gap in our current framework of transparency and accountability to have blanket exemptions for three departments that are established to support the parliament, but that are put on a completely different level from all other executive agencies," Timmins said
Information released by the Department of Finance and Deregulation provides little detail about the type of expenses claimed.

Rhiannon said she would use Senate committees to gain more information from the department about the expenses allowance.
"If the parties don't agree to pass legislation I'll be using the estimate process to question how this information is released and to ask for it to be released to the appropriate Senate committee," she said.

Expense claims kept secret: a team effort by Labor and the Coalition | Politics | theguardian.com