Too tricky Greens

WHAT should parliamentarians be able to use their taxpayer-funded communications budgets for?

Information about public services, changes to local infrastructure for instance, or the best way to get on to the NBN.

Politicians being politicians they are always going to sail close to the wind.

They will use their ‘comms budgets’ for materials that might see them pictured standing heroically near the local infrastructure or a giant spool of NBN tubing.

What seems totally unacceptable is to use these budgets for outright political campaigning — for themselves or others in their party.

We may soon see whether a seemingly egregious local example of this breaks the rules.

But it certainly does not pass the pub test — indeed most taxpayers will likely find it outright objectionable.

Greens Senator Janet Rice has produced and distributed in Geelong letters outrightly backing local candidate Sarah Mansfield for Geelong council.

Granted the words ‘Vote for’ are not used, but the message — beneath an image of Senator Rice and Ms Mansfield — is crystal clear.

As one complaining resident said: ‘this is clearly party business’. If the Parliamentary watchdog for these matters agrees, then it is a breach of the rules and there could be consequences for the Senator.

What is less clear, and possibly a new scenario to be tested, is whether there would be consequences from the ultimate beneficiary of all this — council candidate Ms Mansfield.

For a party that seems to claim a monopoly on righteous indignation this is, at best, a very sloppy state of affairs.

Senator Rice presumably with the tacit compliance of Ms Mansfield has either recklessly spent her taxpayer funds in a very suspect way — or it’s much worse and this was done in an informed way with the hope no one would notice.

If the intention was that the public know the merit of the Greens candidate — well, consider that achieved.