By ABC's Jonathan Green
Photo: Tony Abbott rides in the Port Macquarie Ironman in 2010. (AAP)
The Coalition was elected to "cut the waste", but voters have found that this set of pollies is just as prone to trough-snorting self-serving excess as the mob they replaced, writes Jonathan Green.
I'm trying to imagine Sir Robert Menzies whisking up the daughter then flying off to Tamworth for the Country Music Festival, enjoying all that golden guitar madness, then billing his maximum entitlements for the chartered air travel and accommodation to the taxpayer.
Mr Abbott claimed $349 in travel allowance and $941 for flights to compete in an ironman event in the New South Wales city of Port Macquarie in 2011.
This is, admittedly, a simpler task than conjuring a mental image of Menzies as a speedo- and lycra-clad participant in the Port Macquarie Iron Man race, an event that in today's money might have netted the Liberal legend a cool $1,300 in entitlements, never mind the deficiencies of the Menzies swim leg.
Attorney-General George Brandis last week repaid nearly $1,700 he had claimed from the taxpayer to attend the wedding of radio announcer Michael Smith in 2011.
Not that there is any reason to imagine that Sir Robert would not have claimed his full whack of MP allowance in his various travels, whatever that might have been. Less than now, it's fair to assume, and you have to wonder whether the general contemporary philosophy of employee-takes-all was as well advanced in Menzies' day as it so clearly is now.
Mr Abbott repaid more than $1,000 he claimed for a trip to [Sophie] Mirabella's wedding ... he also repaid more than $600 he claimed to attend [Peter] Slipper's wedding.
At federation, our freshly minted federal MPs began their terms of public service on a modest stipend, as duly noted in Section 48 of the Constitution: "Until the Parliament otherwise provides, each senator and each member of the House of Representatives shall receive an allowance of four hundred pounds a year, to be reckoned from the day on which he takes his seat."
Former Attorney General Mark Dreyfus was forced to repay $466 claimed while he was away from Canberra on a skiing trip in August 2011 which his spokeswoman said was "an administrative error."
The Parliament did, duly, otherwise provide. And has done many times since, eventually removing responsibility for the setting of pay and allowances from their own vote and bestowing that authority on an independent tribunal, whose routine increases in salary and allowance MPs have traditionally agreed, with due reluctance but equal regard for the punishing necessities of modern parliamentary life, to approve.
Mr Abbott has defended his expense claims yesterday after it emerged he had charged taxpayers to travel to Port Macquarie to compete in an ironman event in 2011 at a cost of almost $1300.
Which brings us to this current discussion of weddings, long lunches, triathlons and the public purse, and the very clear impression created by our young Abbott Government that when it comes to milking the maximum out of a public always a little reluctant to pay, they are no worse - if not quite a bit better - than all the rest of them.
Former Trade Minister Richard Marles claimed flights to Labor MP Michael Danby's 2008 Parliament House wedding but said he had meetings in Canberra the next day.
Never mind all the talk of waste and parsimony in opposition, in government they have turned out to be politicians of our moment, a world in which the concept of "entitlement" hangs heavy around us. A world in which we almost automatically, if somewhat despairingly, expect to have every allowance and loophole gamed for maximum benefit.
Department of Finance records also show Mr Abbott has used travel entitlements to take his family to AFL Grand Finals and Derby Day in Victoria. The family trips cost taxpayers more than $10,000.
Might it be too much to expect our politicians to set an example of modest restraint?
A charter flight to the Tamworth Country Music Festival, which Mr Abbott attended with one of his daughters, last year cost $8800.
Well, yes, and given this kerfuffle over expenses the possibility now exists that our representatives might be moved to action, though on very recent past experience - the rapidity with which changes to accountability and transparency over MP remuneration and expense were scotched in the term of the previous government - we shouldn't hold our breath.
Wayne Swan, when acting PM in 2010, took his two children to both the AFL grand final replay and NRL grand final by VIP aircraft, costing taxpayers more than $17,000 in one weekend, according to Mr Abbott's office.
There's risk in this of course for the new-broom team of Tony Abbott's Coalition, a team that has already given voters clear benchmarks of performance - stop the boats, end the tax, build the highways of the 21st century and cut the waste - and seems to be making precious little early progress on at least two.
In 2012 [Tony Abbott] went to the famed Lorne Pier to Pub race in Victoria and claimed $1,444.
Other keystones of rhetoric from opposition - our so called "budget emergency", for example - seem nowhere near as keen in government. An economy apparently on the brink of collapse in early September has now been left to fend quietly for itself for weeks. The "invasion" of asylum seekers that a month ago threatened the very sovereignty of our borders has been swept quietly under the carpet of calm regional consultation. Even the heated rhetoric that scuttled the Malaysia solution has been called to account, apologised for, and fobbed off as little more than robust politics; confected outrage by implication.
In August 2012 Mr Abbott went to Coffs Harbour for its cycle challenge, claiming $1,002.
What will the simple voter make of those, that voter who might have invested in the Abbott Government on the basis of what they claimed through opposition and campaign to be true, only to find that now in government the situation seems nowhere near as dire, the rationale for change nowhere near as obvious, and the replacement set of pollies just as prone to trough-snorting self-serving excess as the mob they replaced.
On another occasion in 2010, Mr Abbott claimed $9,400 in travel expenses while promoting his book Battlelines. The money was later repaid by the book's publisher, Melbourne University Press.
And it will only get tougher. The usual politeness of a media pack due to move on from the expense rort story any day now will probably be circumvented by the new avenues by which concerned citizens can continue to dig and declaim, long after the mainstream caravan has shuffled off to whatever new media managed figment of half reality lies round the bend of next week.
The next month [Mr Abbott] went to Wagga Wagga for its Lake to Lagoon fun run and claimed $515.
You get the sense with this story that the public might not be of a mind to just let it go.
It could be too that the industrious champions of public interest in the blogosphere - like the one who bothered to compile this list of Tony Abbott expenses - will continue to dog and expose. That the outrage of ordinary taxpayers, long duped into funding weddings, triathlons, anything, might be stoked for some time yet.
Jonathan Green is the presenter of Sunday Extra on Radio National and a former editor of The Drum. His book, The Year My Politics Broke, is out on October 1. View his full profile here.
