More than 40% of Abbott-era Coalition MPs ended up with taxpayer-funded positions after leaving politics or losing their seats, an Inq analysis shows. This reveals the extent to which the government has used public office as a retirement gift or compensation.
Of more than 120 Coalition MPs and senators elected or serving in the 44th Parliament, 57 have since left politics — either by losing their seat, losing preselection or retiring (WA MP Don Randall passed away in 2015). Of those, 26 were able to secure a new job at the expense of taxpayers.
Seven of these 26 landed diplomatic positions: Joe Hockey and Arthur Sinodinos became ambassadors to the US, George Brandis was appointed high commissioner to the UK, Brett Mason became ambassador to the Netherlands, David Bushby is Australia’s consulate-general in Chicago, Sharman Stone is Australia’s ambassador for women and girls, and Mitch Fifield is a UN ambassador.
Four more secured Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) positions as part of the Coalition’s rampant stacking of that body, two became territory administrators, and three were at least temporarily employed as ministerial advisers.
Most, however, ended up in the wide range of board positions available to governments: Warren Truss is head of the Australian Rail Track Corporation; Louise Markus chairs the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare; Michael Ronaldson went to Australia Post and Snowy Hydro; Fiona Scott and Ewen Jones to the National Film and Sound Archive; Jamie Briggs to Moorebank Intermodal.
Tony Abbott himself was appointed to the Australian War Memorial Council in 2019.
All governments appoint former members to diplomatic roles and government boards, but this government has been unusual — not merely in the extent to which it stacked the AAT, but in its determination under Malcolm Turnbull to compensate MPs who lost seats in 2016.
Only five MPs who lost their seats at elections have not taken government positions, while 12 continue to be paid by taxpayers in some way.
Eight former MPs or senators are lobbyists, work at industry peak bodies and/or provide “strategic consulting” services. This includes Joe Hockey, now a K Street lobbyist in Washington, cashing in on the connections he forged as ambassador there; Julie Bishop, whose post-political career involves a number of corporate, consulting and lobbying roles along with the chancellorship of ANU; Christopher Pyne, who has a “strategic advisory” role via Pyne and Partners, including for EY; Ian Macfarlane at the Queensland Minerals Council; Luke Simpkins, who now heads the NSW Irrigators’ Association; and Bruce Billson, who has been busy with industry bodies since leaving politics (and is now administering Whittlesea Council in Melbourne).
Only a few former MPs have left any sort of involvement in politics or policy behind. Wyatt Roy runs the local arm of US big data firm Afiniti; Steve Ciobo is at a private equity firm; Andrew Southcott returned to medical practice; Craig Laundy returned to his family’s pub empire; Michael Keenan joined the board of a WA start-up.
Otherwise, public life continues to appeal for many — even after voters have discarded them.
Do we need better restrictions on what jobs politicians are allowed to hold once they leave Canberra? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.
Interesting how they all love to bash the public service but can’t tear themselves away from it.
Also how they always tell us what financial sacrifices they made by entering politics because they could have earned so much more in the private sector. Yet when they have been liberated from the duty and shackles of public service, they can’t seem to find their way to the private sector.
Perhaps, like long-term jailbirds, they just become institutionalised.
Actually, public servants have to earn their positions. They have to be experts. Often their expertise is ignored. They often work over successive governments and are concerned with long term outcomes… with politicians ignoring their advice for short term wins. Then the public servants, who have agreed when employed that they will not speak, can be blamed for the inaction of the politicians.
I would rather an actual expert public servant over a politician any day.
The idea that the public servants earn their positions used to be true, however with the politicization of the public service this is no longer the case. The public service in Australia has been right behind the neo-liberal agenda which has seen the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich.
If smart people in the public service couldn’t see how neo-liberal economics with it’s premise that only markets can produce prosperous outcomes for everyone was NOT a self serving reinstatement of the 18the century class system by the rich, then how smart are they?
Its not just politicians who cash-in after leaving office, as Ken Henry has shown with his appointment as executive director at NAB and his appalling performance at the Banking Royal Commission, that public servants who supposedly earn their position are just as egregious as the politicians.
John Howard’s Chief of Staff, Sidonidis on leaving this job joined the organization of the Vampire Squid, (Goldman Sachs) and then turned up in Parliament. He’s now the US ambassador to the US. I can understand how he got the ambassadorial gig. But Goldman Sachs? Payment for services rendered perhaps and for services that might be forthcoming as a consequence of his contacts with Canberra’s politicians and public service particularly the treasury where he worked in his earlier years.
The fact that public servants have agreed not to speak when employed is something that should not be allowed in a democratic society. Representative government with the gagging of dissent or the exposition of the truth is NOT democracy. Public servants should NOT be able to express opinions or personal values without concrete evidence, but they should be able to correct the facts when politicians lie about them or present only partial facts that suit the politicians political agendas.
When politicians lie or omit material parts of the factual evidence they should be brought to account by the public service. We can’t. The media can’t. So who’s going to do it. Are out political master scared of the facts, scared of the truth? Of course they are.
The problem with all power is that it leads to corruption. The revolving door of politics, the public service and big business must be shut down. Rewards for services rendered is not democratic.
Again with the PS bashing Robert. The public servants tha May refers to did earn their jobs on merit, and have to wind their way through the morass of bone headed political appointments. Genuine public servants couldn’t turn around the neoliberal experiment when govts everywhere were pushing it so hard. It would be like asking someone to turn the Queen Mary around using an oar.
There are still many fine public servants saving us from the worst of pollies stupid ideas, but you heard Morrison, he just wants public servants to act, not think, because they aren’t elected. Apparently being elected suddenly turns you into a savant on all subjects.
And Ken Henry, one of the smartest men in the country, who as Jack Robertson pointed out gave the Royal Commission festival of theatre the respect it largely deserved. That was unfortunate. Again, you’re picking out a former public servant for not having turned around an entirely corrupt industry, when there were 50 years of corporate bankers and financiers creating the mess before he got there.
Your contributions, quite erudite, would hold more sway if you got off this PS bashing bandwagon. It just makes it too easy to dismiss your worthwhile points, and your general analysis is clouded by this in-built bias.
I have long held that ministers (as in the USA) should not be allowed to hold a position associated with any portfolio they for at least three years so they are unable to transfer current privileged information that may be of commercial value to their prospective employer. Any such transfer of information is tantamount to insider trading. Reith I understand went to work for Tenix after defence and Downer for Woodside in an advisory roll (no doubt highly paid) after the Timor plot, this behavior is unacceptable and needs to stop.
We must be in a bad way when the example of better legislative precautions against political corruption is the USA.
The fact that that little twerp Briggs got looked after demonstrates the extent of the joke.
“Sorry, no Mayo for you. Would you like gravy instead?”
Billson … speaking of little twerps?
“… Some animals are more equal than others.”
The bones were always there on show from “Travel Rorts” (Hockey, Randall, Ley, Abbott, Bishop, Jethro, Brandis, Morrison, Irons, Robert, et al), this is just the fleshing out.
“The death of the Age of Entitlement” was exaggerated – by the self-judged entitled.
I am less concerned with the younger generations, who at least missed out on the repulsively lucrative (unfunded) pre-2004 pensions-for-life of those older ones who still just qualified – supposedly as both compensation for lost private sector earnings, and also to obviate any need for exactly this kind of soft-corrupt double-dipping. The likes of Pyne, Bishop, Abbott, Andrews, etc – and plenty on the ALP side, too, yet to retire. The numbers are scary: there are something like 340-ish long-retired freeloaders on (unfunded) taxpayer handouts for life – fully indexed, mostly under-the-radar, no means testing, no limitation on how much extra loot they can drag-haul in on top of it. The total cost won’t peak until 2033/4, and will probably cost over a $1 billion before the last of them/their spouses die off.
Pyne and Bishop are especially odious cases – given they made the calculated gamble to pull the pin pre-election (sure the LNP would lose) in order to retire on a Minister’s pension-for-life rather than mere backbencher’s (like Abbott). How selfless, how noble, yes, how worthily deserving of our lifelong continued funding unto the grave. To rub our taxpaying noses in it, these two utter political lightweights – whose ‘public service sacrifice’ turned out to be no more substantial than (respectively) making cute jokes on the ABC and modelling Clair Underwood’s activewear wardrobe, while jointly surrendering the moderate wing of the Liberal Party to the coal-n-tinfoil Hard Right nutjobs without a fight – remain in the prime of their earning life. Presto, both are duly out there making hay, slurping up the big whore-coin on the very back of their outgoing portfolios, not even bothering to pretend to observe a shred of conventional code-of-conduct decorum. It’s…obscene.
Nice one, Jack.
I think one of the perks was free first class travel, incl.spouse on Qantas forever… but I might be wrong.
Actually, my apologies – Bishop retired as a backbencher, didn’t she. My bad, sorry and withdrawn. (Still a political lightweight, though…)
And I’m pretty sure Abbott gets a PM’s pension, not a backbencher.
Yes, DF, you’re right. Good god, I just double checked…under the PCSS (Parly Contributory Super Scheme, the pre-2004 one), the calculations are complicated, but repulsively so. It’s based on years served x MP salary. PLUS 6.25% loading for ministerial roles, etc. So Abbott is on something like $295K for life, and Bishop likewise will be on a big whack…but get this: it’s not indexed, it’s linked to current MP salaries…so any Parly pay rises b/w now and these freeloaders dying…their pension goes up commensurately. Given that the current MP Super schemes are nowhere as unrealistically trough-slurpy, the likelihood is that pay rises will come thicker and faster from the remuneration tribunal than they did back in the day. So not just double dipping, likely triple-dipping. And yes, May Muldoon, plus all the perky fripperies, like free offices, travel, spouse travel, etc.
Apology withdrawn, Julie B. Come on, you lot: we can’t retro-change the gross $$-rules, I guess… but you can at least have some decency, have some damned shame. And voluntarily stop extra-lining your already-taxpayer-lined pockets by scooping up all the creamiest – usually soft-corrupt-access – private sector gigs on TOP of your handouts. Especially with unemployment headed for 20% +…
Bishop is on about $213K annually, and Pyne about $173K. For life, then presumably to a nominated spouse until they die, and to go on rising commensurate with contemporary MP salary rises. Explain why any of these lucky people need to seek out big corporate or (any size of) other taxpayer funding on top of this? Explain how we as taxpayers can justify it?
That’s what the inaccurately described Future Fund is for? Although promoted as a and compared with e.g. Norway’s ‘sovereign wealth fund’, it draws from general tax revenue to pay out pensions for retired MPs and senior public servants?
Great example of neo-liberalism, socialism for the ‘top people’ with benefits to match, neo liberalism for everybody else with 9.5% SGC and increasing constraints on the aged pension…..
Australians really have become meek and accepting of the powers that be doing whatever they want while we are expected to be ‘quiet Australians’?
I’ll be drawing down on my super shortly, but cannot work more than 10 hours per week while doing so, and then a maximum of 21 after I turn 60.
Why these rules for me and they can go off and do whatever they like and keep drawing a pension?