LW is drinking Socialist Propaganda brew again. You'd think he'd be patriotically quaffing Hawkey's drop.
Now who has Shorty been earbashing ?Parliamentary Reports Reveal Bill Shorten Really Needs To Upgrade His Phone Planby JACKSON BARRON 22 MARCH 2017
Yap Yap Yap!!
How many federal politicians have you texted this week?If the answer is “none of them” then you missed your one opportunity. It turns out the Department of Parliamentary Services accidentally published the private phone numbers of nearly all federal MPs. Once they were notified of the issue they pulled down the documents, but we still found them pretty easily.
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But the bigger surprise is how much our MPs are spending on their phones. Bill Shorten, who has clearly never heard of capped price phone bills before, spent a staggering $107,600 on phone usage in the 18 months, including nearly $40,000 from January to June in 2016 (the most recent period in which data is available). That’s an average of of nearly $6,000 a month.The Department of Parliamentary Services publishes the Parliamentarians’ Mobile Telecommunication and Data Services Expenditure report every six months. Even though the individual reports of each MP have been pulled off the site (because they contained everyone’s phone numbers) the total amount spent is still up there and Shorten’s mammoth bill tops the list of MPs’ spending.
Shorten is followed by ex-PM Tony Abbott, who jumped from a standard $116 a month while prime minister, to paying $2097 a month once he was relegated to the backbench. Clearly he’s whinging to someone on the moon for losing his perch atop the Liberal Party.
Liberal MP Andrew Robb retired from politics at the last federal election, and in his final six months in office he racked up $10,000 in mobile phone bills. He must have been responding to all those messages thanking him for his fruitful 12-year career.
Sir John Gorton was prime minister between 1968 and 1971. He passed away in 2002, yet he still has a $27 phone bill. It’s actually being incurred by his widow, Nancy, which is apparently a thing. He also has a $1,186 printing bill — also at the expense of his wife, also somehow a thing.
But how are they spending so much money? It can’t be data — there’s free WiFi in Parliament House, and, even in Shorten’s huge bills, the data costs sit constantly at $68/month leaving the majority of his spending coming from general phone usage.
Federal politicians are on corporate mobile and data plans provided through Telstra. It allows them to use their phone anywhere, including overseas — but unlike personal plans, the cost isn’t capped. Because politicians themselves don’t pay the bill (the public does) there’s no incentive for them to minimise cost. They can go on a trip to Paris, call their mates for late-night chats and bill the taxpayer.
But just because politicians can rack up expensive phone bills doesn’t mean they should. There are surely better options.
A simple Google search reveals that you can get unlimited calls, texts and a large amount of data from pretty much every mobile provider. And it will cost you far less than $6,000 a month.
For example, Telstra will charge you $195 a month for unlimited national and international calls and texts plus 30GB of data. They’ll even chuck in a handset. Compared to Bill Shorten’s expenditure that’s a saving of over $100,000 over 18 months.
Or there’s Amaysim who will swing him a SIM (so he can keep his own phone) with 9GB of data and unlimited national calls for just $49.90 a month. What about international calls? They can jump on WiFI and use Facetime, Skype or email like everyone else.
It might even help them relate to us normal people a little bit better.
http://junkee.com/parliamentary-reports-reveal-bill-shorten-really-needs-upgrade...