Resounding silence from both sides of politics has greeted the news that Liberals Vicki Dunne and Giulia Jones ignored strong advice from the ACT Assembly clerk not to allow a staff member to travel overseas on the public purse.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Ms Jones took her senior adviser with her to Europe and South Korea to study prostitution laws, despite clerk Tom Duncan advising her against the move. He wrote to Speaker Vicki Dunne (who also went on the trip with her husband) to tell her no such travel had ever occurred in any Australian parliament, and it was all the more unjustified in light of plans to abolish the study travel allowance.
Allowing the adviser to travel on public funds would be a new frontier, he said, warning that it would attract immense scrutiny and criticism from the government, the media and the public, and should not be approved.
His prediction that the trip would attract criticism from the government has turned out to be resoundingly wrong, with Chief Minister Katy Gallagher declining to comment. The trip was approved by Mrs Dunne as Speaker, and she said Labor Deputy Speaker Mary Porter had agreed with her decision. Mrs Porter has also declined to comment.
No comment also from the two men charged with considering issues of ethics and standards in the Assembly. Ethics and integrity adviser Stephen Skehill said he was required to keep advice to Assembly members confidential. Standards commissioner Ken Crispin said he could only act and report if a matter was referred to him by Speaker Vicki Dunne.
Ms Jones accused Mr Duncan of getting it wrong when he said overseas staff travel was unprecedented in other jurisdictions - never taken other than by ministerial staff (although allowed in the Northern Territory). Ms Jones said it was expressly allowed in South Australia and the Northern Territory. But Mr Duncan said he stood by his advice.
Since 2011, staff travel has been allowed in the ACT under the members' guidelines, after the Greens Shane Rattenbury relaxed the rules. But before the prostitution trip, it had only ever been used for domestic travel -14 times in all, costing $6900, with another trip yet to be accounted for. In April, the study travel allowance was abolished altogether for politicians, spouses and staff.