Josh Frydenberg on Q&A: entitlements changes 'shouldn't be unreasonable'
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Version 0 of 1. Any changes made to politicians’ entitlements should not be “unreasonable” and the public should understand MPs spend a lot of time spend away from home, Liberal party assistant treasurer Josh Frydenberg told the Q&A audience on Monday. Frydenberg was the first government minister to appear on the ABC program since Tony Abbott lifted his ban on frontbenchers appearing on Friday. Related: Tony Abbott on travel expenses: go by what would be acceptable in business But on Monday there was no mention of the divisive Zaky Mallah affair, which brought about the unprecedented prime ministerial ban. Instead, the focus was on politicians’ entitlements, which are now under review. Asked by a member of the audience why politicians should expect taxpayers to “further line their already bulging pockets”, Frydenberg admitted some of the perks enjoyed by his colleagues were “outside public expectations”. But he said, “I think it’s important for the public to understand, politicians do spend a lot of time away from home.” “So the rules are now going to match community expectations are they?” asked host Tony Jones. “Well, that’s for the review, not for me, to decide,” Frydenberg said. It was a relatively calm return to normal programming for Q&A after the ABC received a “bit of a pat on the back” from Abbott on Friday for agreeing to his condition for the return of government ministers to the show. The ABC board decided on Thursday to shift the Q&A program’s operations from the television division into the news division by 2016. While Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield was the undoubted rockstar on a dull panel, it was Jones who received the biggest round of applause of the night. Frydenberg and the Labor spokesman on vocational education, Sharon Bird, were in furious agreement despite their politics, both hesitant to comment on the review of entitlements and slow to condemn any excesses. Related: Tony Abbott bans cabinet ministers from Q&A program “Sharon and I are on the unity ticket tonight on your cynicism,” Frydenberg said to Jones. Jones: “I suppose I’m on a unity ticket with the Australian voters.” Hadfield took the conversation beyond domestic politics, talking about how his perspective on life changed when he left Earth. “When you first get to space it’s actually kind of comical,” Hadfield said. “You get to the window and you look at things that you know. “Then somewhere along the way you start to realise that your parochial view of the world gets less and less important. It is just so unconsciously gorgeous.” Jones reminded guests, who also included News Corp columnist Joe Hildebrand and commentator Anne Summers, to be careful what they said because their statements might be fact-checked. Academic website The Conversation has agreed to make Q&A panellists more accountable by fact-checking their most significant claims. Last month the ABC published a correction, sourced to The Conversation, of Alan Jones’s statements about the cost of energy. Jones was found to have grossly overstated the cost of wind power. |