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VIP Flights For MPs Top $17 Million In Two Years (Read 454 times)
whiteknight
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VIP Flights For MPs Top $17 Million In Two Years
Apr 11th, 2021 at 3:17pm
 
VIP flights for MPs top $17 million in two years   Sad
The Age
April 11, 2021


Flying politicians and dignitaries around the country on VIP jets cost taxpayers almost $20 million in two years up to June 2020, new flight records show.   Sad

Federal politicians ordered 1940 VIP flights between July 2018 and June 2020, at a cost of $17,177,562, an analysis by The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald of RAAF flight data found. The governor-general and other dignitaries including Prince Harry pushed that bill up by $2 million to $19,577,402, adding 395 flights.



The new flight data shows during the peak of the 2020 black summer bushfires, then-defence minister Linda Reynolds travelled from Perth to Canberra twice in five days, costing taxpayers $69,000 for her flights alone.

Ms Reynolds returned early from a holiday in Bali on January 3, 2020, having departed Australia quietly a week after Prime Minister Scott Morrison came back from his Hawaiian holiday amid public outrage at his absence during the bushfires.

Ms Reynolds chartered a VIP plane that can carry 30 passengers to fly her and two others from Perth to Canberra on Saturday, January 4, 2020, for a press conference to announce the rollout of 3000 army reservists to help with the bushfire crisis.

The troop deployment came as a surprise to NSW Rural Fires Service chief Shane Fitzsimmons who said he was “disappointed” no one had told him the government planned to deploy army reserves and was surprised to hear about it on “one of our worst days of the season”.


Senator Reynolds flew back to Perth on January 7, after three days in Canberra, but then took another VIP 737 jet back to Canberra on January 8, at a cost of $33,034, with two other people.

The Office of Minister Reynolds said the senator “travelled for parliamentary or government business in accordance” with the guidelines for special purpose flights.






Ministers must ensure their flights are “value for money” and, other than the prime minister and governor-general, anyone using the VIP planes must justify why a commercial flight is not viable.

In the six months to June 2020, Senator Reynolds chartered nine flights from Canberra to Perth at a cost of $171,945. Mathias Cormann and Christian Porter, who also lived in WA at the time, chartered four flights and one flight respectively over the same period, costing $96,982 in total.

Mathias Cormann will begin a five-year term as OECD Secretary-General on June 1, 2021.


The use of VIP jets has been controversial recently as Mr Cormann was flown around Europe in a RAAF VIP jet that costs about $4000 an hour to operate as he campaigned (successfully) to be the new secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Prime Minister Morrison defended Mr Cormann clocking up more than 20,000 kilometres campaigning for the job at taxpayers’ expense.

In February, the Herald and The Age revealed then-home affairs minister Peter Dutton charged taxpayers more than $36,000 to charter a jet to Tasmania to announce $194,000 worth of grants for CCTV systems for two councils during the 2018 Braddon byelection campaign.

Mr Morrison, Mr Dutton, Stuart Robert and Josh Frydenberg billed taxpayers almost $5000 in December 2019, for a private jet trip to Sydney on the night of Lachlan Murdoch’s Christmas party, the Guardian reported in December last year.

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The group left Canberra after 6pm, attended the party at Bellevue Hill then returned to Canberra before 9am the next day.

And during the last federal election campaign, Mr Morrison’s bus tour of Queensland was not as grounded as it seemed after it was revealed he and his staff were using VIP jets to cover large stretches of the journey to Townsville.   Sad

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Grappler Truth Teller Feller
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Re: VIP Flights For MPs Top $17 Million In Two Years
Reply #1 - Apr 11th, 2021 at 3:29pm
 
Still the expectation that they be treated like royalty instead of servants of the people.

Reynolds couldn't have made that announcement from Perth?  Couldn't have taken a commercial flight?
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Bam
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Re: VIP Flights For MPs Top $17 Million In Two Years
Reply #2 - Apr 11th, 2021 at 7:04pm
 
"I travel economy and I am a great man. I could travel economy for the rest of my life and I would still be a great man. But most of the people around this [Cabinet] table are pissants and they could travel first class for the rest of their life and they would still be pissants". -- Gough Whitlam.

Nothing much has changed...
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Grappler Truth Teller Feller
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Re: VIP Flights For MPs Top $17 Million In Two Years
Reply #3 - Apr 12th, 2021 at 2:31pm
 
Maybe people from WA should be barred from being Ministers..... better still - allow that dump to secede and seek to survive on its own with trade... then they'll know what it's truly like when ten people take every bit of cream and most of the milk, and the rest is just a very minute 'trickledown'...

Should shut 'em up... wait until the Chinese feast on the Rump State of WA..
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“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
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philperth2010
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Re: VIP Flights For MPs Top $17 Million In Two Years
Reply #4 - Apr 12th, 2021 at 4:02pm
 
Grappler Truth Teller Feller wrote on Apr 12th, 2021 at 2:31pm:
Maybe people from WA should be barred from being Ministers..... better still - allow that dump to secede and seek to survive on its own with trade... then they'll know what it's truly like when ten people take every bit of cream and most of the milk, and the rest is just a very minute 'trickledown'...

Should shut 'em up... wait until the Chinese feast on the Rump State of WA..


WA received 38c in the dollar back in GST for the 2016 - 2017 financial year....The next closest was Victoria who received 91c in the dollar then NSW with 99c all other States and Territories are net positive....WA would do just fine without you sponges sucking up the cream and most of the milk....Wait until coal is no longer worth anything and you arse holes in the East will rely on our iron ore, gold and gas which WA is the biggest supplier....Dickhead!!!

Roll Eyes Roll Eyes Roll Eyes

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secessionism_in_Western_Australia
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John Smith
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Re: VIP Flights For MPs Top $17 Million In Two Years
Reply #5 - Apr 12th, 2021 at 6:00pm
 
whiteknight wrote on Apr 11th, 2021 at 3:17pm:
Flying politicians and dignitaries around the country on VIP jets cost taxpayers almost $20 million in two years up to June 2020, new flight records show



Lets not forget, most of 2020 flights were grounded and parliament had the least number of sitting days in history due to covid. Everything that could be done, was being done by videoconferencing. So the $20m is most likely for less than 2 years
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Our esteemed leader:
I hope that bitch who was running their brothels for them gets raped with a cactus.
 
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