![\"BXk0REGCAAAttYD\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/BXk0REGCAAAttYD.jpg?resize=600%2C338\")
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By Rosie Williams 11 November 2013<\/p>\n It is going to be a big week leading into the return to parliament. On Tuesday night 12th from 8pm DST (7pm QLD) I will be running the second\u00a0#BudgetAus Twitter chat<\/a>\u00a0focusing again on the rorts. This is the day our new parliament sits for the first time so it is bound to be an interesting evening.<\/p>\n There are 96 responses to the\u00a0CARE (Citizens Against Rorting of Entitlements) survey<\/a>. The answers are not mutually exclusive of one another so it is not the case that because more people voted for one option that another option is not also important. \u00a0It is safe to say that all answers were popular with respondents.<\/p>\n The most popular option with \u00a085.42% was a Code of Conduct for politicians. You can find background reading on this option\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n With a rate of 84.38% came the desire for more detailed and timely publishing of expense claims to include place, time, date and purpose.\u00a0\u00a0The existing research projects set up by the\u00a0Fairfax<\/a>,\u00a0The Guardian<\/a>\u00a0and also\u00a0myself,<\/a>\u00a0all rely on data which is published in a format that requires a lot of work to get it into a database where readers can work with it to find matters of interest.<\/p>\n This is not in line with current practices around the world for\u00a0open government<\/a>\u00a0and budget transparency. The\u00a0Open Government Partnership<\/a>\u00a0that Australia finally joined in May last year requires that our government fulfils commitments toward providing easy access to government data for the purpose of accountability and engagement by the public.\u00a0InfoAus<\/a>\u00a0demonstrates 4 projects which use government published data to provide transparency to Australians and asks the government to continue to work toward improving the file formats that enable this information to be put in databases where the public can interact with it.<\/p>\n A separate agency to regulate suspected rorting of entitlements received an endorsement rate of 81.25% with some concern of the cost of this to taxpayers. 69.79% of respondents liked the idea of forcing politicians to claim their expenses the same way other taxpayers do, satisfying the same rules the ATO applies to the rest of the population.<\/p>\n 65.63% of respondents were in favour of a cap on entitlements with one respondent suggesting that it would have to be quite large to allow politicians to make themselves available across the country.<\/p>\n There was support among the suggestions for revoking the Minchin Protocol- the legislation \u00a0which, according to\u00a0The Guardian<\/a>\u00a0was\u00a0introduced with the aim of avoiding accusation of partisanship when an expense claim is suspected of breaching guidelines. The speciousness of this reasoning was revealed by\u00a0The Guardian<\/a>\u00a0where the newspaper explains the collusion between the major parties to conceal information relating to entitlements spending from public access:<\/p>\n Tony Abbott made an announcement <\/a>on Friday of\u00a0changes to the entitlements system, but still\u00a0only the\u00a0public and media\u00a0<\/a>that can (with a lot of hard work) chase down details to find dodgy-looking claims.<\/p>\n That is obviously why we are in the situation we now find ourselves when there are claims coming to light that many of us feel ought to be well outside acceptable limits.<\/p>\n Obviously unless those limits are changed then the current situation where the\u00a0public<\/a>\u00a0and media have to track down errant claims is likely to continue. There is a lot more scrutiny on expenses and travel now and the main stream media along with my own site will mean that politicians will need to be a lot more conservative in their claims or face the scorn of the public.<\/p>\n The role of\u00a0Citizens Against Rorting of Entitlements – CARE<\/a>\u00a0is to give the public a voice in the policy changes. As such I encourage people who care about this issue to send the links for this and related blog posts to their\u00a0Senators and Members of Parliament<\/a>\u00a0via email and also \u00a0on Facebook and Twitter. Also attend Tuesday night’s Twitterchat to create buzz around the issue and debate Tony Abbott’s announcement.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Rosie Williams Source:\u00a0infoaus.net 11 November 2013 It is going to be a big week leading into the return to parliament. On Tuesday night 12th from 8pm DST (7pm QLD) I will be running the second\u00a0#BudgetAus Twitter chat\u00a0focusing again on the rorts. This is the day our new parliament sits for the first time so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":11113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,522,61,62,67,585,1496,1452,439],"tags":[513,2611,834,1449,1341,531,772,325,424,470],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/BXkDfUFCAAAuY0v-e1384168232619.jpg?fit=595%2C382&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-2T7","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11105"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/a>Source:\u00a0infoaus.net<\/a><\/p>\n\r\n \r\n “There’s a big gap in our current framework of transparency and accountability to have blanket exemptions for three departments that are established to support the parliament, but that are put on a completely different level from all other executive agencies,” Timmins said\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\n