Prime Minister Tony Abbott is under fire after telling government MPs he scheduled a visit to a cancer research centre in Melbourne on Tuesday so he could justify billing taxpayers for a Liberal Party fundraiser in the same city the night before.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has seized on leaks from the government partyroom saying they show the Prime Minister is unfit to govern the country.
Tony Abbott stunned MPs when he told them he scheduled a visit to a cancer research centre in Melbourne on Tuesday so he could justify billing taxpayers for a Liberal Party fundraiser in the same city the night before.
Mr Shorten told reporters on Wednesday the Prime Minister should “never need an excuse to visit a public hospital in Australia”.
But he said the division within the government was the real story and not the Prime Minister’s travel schedule.
“What is most telling about these reports is that there are Liberal Party members leaking against the Prime Minister. A party and a leader that cannot govern itself cannot govern Australia,” he said.
Mr Shorten became Opposition Leader after the party lost office in 2013, largely as a result of Labor infighting and leaking over the leadership.
The issue of Mr Abbott’s schedule arose when government senator Ian Macdonald took Mr Abbott to task for showing up an hour late to the party room meeting on Tuesday.
Cabinet minister Malcolm Turnbull told ABC Radio on Wednesday that Mr Abbott was “upfront” about his reason for being late.
“He said he was in Melbourne and he did go to a private function … I think Tony was quite upfront; he said he had been in Melbourne and he had been to a fund-raiser the night before,” Mr Turnbull said.
He said he could not recall whether Mr Abbott had mentioned entitlements.
However, several sources have confirmed to Fairfax Media that Mr Abbott cited entitlements as a factor in scheduling an interstate function on a parliamentary sitting day.
Speaking on his way into Parliament on Wednesday, Liberal MP Steve Ciobo said it was an “absurd proposition to suggest the Prime Minister is doing anything other than remaining focused … to advancing medical research and to engaging with the community”.
He said any other suggestion was a “slur” and added that “all of the Prime Minister’s travel is within entitlement”.
As Prime Minister, Mr Abbott is entitled to travel in his taxpayer-funded plane to any function because of his security requirements.
However, using taxpayer-funded entitlements for the sole purpose of party fund-raising is usually avoided and leaders will try to book fund-raising events around official work rather than the other way around.
Mr Abbott has received some unexpected backing from Palmer United Party leader Clive Palmer who said any prime minister should be “entitled” to travel for whatever purpose without question.
“I think it’s a very poor situation that our national leader couldn’t legitimately go anywhere to talk to any Australian, be it a political or other function or whatever because he is the Prime Minister of this country,” he said in Canberra.
source: smh.com.au
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