SUPERNOVA SPENDING
Former NT senator Nova Peris charged taxpayers $21,354 for flights in final 14 days of politics
FORMER Northern Territory Labor senator Nova Peris charged taxpayers $21,354 for charter flight expenses in her final 14 days before her retirement from politics.
Expenditure documents released by the Department of Finance show Ms Peris chartered planes to ferry her around Arnhem Land and from Darwin to the Tiwi Islands between June 15 and 28 last year. In all, she took 12 flights.
Those flights were the only charters she claimed in the six month reporting period.
She claimed a parliamentary travelling allowance for performing electorate business on only two nights – one in Jabiru and one on the Tiwi Islands. According to her expenditure report, those two nights were the only times she claimed the allowance in six months.
Most of Ms Peris’ charters came after Labor’s official June 19 election campaign launch.
Under expenditure rules, parties must pick up the tab for all campaign expenses – including travel costs – once the official launch has been held.
Ms Peris wasn’t campaigning for herself, but for her Federal Labor lower house colleague Warren Snowdon.
Taxpayers footed a $4660 bill for Ms Peris’ travel undertaken after her retirement from politics. She claimed six domestic flights between July and November.
As a retired parliamentarian with one term of service, Ms Peris was entitled to six months of free travel with a maximum of 12 return trips.
Ms Peris did not return calls from the NT News yesterday.
Member for Lingiari Warren Snowdon spent $256,313 in the second half of 2016.
During the same period, CLP Senator and Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion spent $275,424.
Labor Senator Malarndirri McCarthy spent $120,601. Of that, $15,331 was in parliamentary travel allowance, $24,955 in domestic airfares and $10,227 on charter flights.
The CLP’s Natasha Griggs, who lost her seat of Solomon in the July election, claimed 12 flights in the six month reporting period at a cost to taxpayers of $10,709. She claimed the most of any former parliamentarian travelling using the post-retirement scheme.
The man who took her job, Labor’s Luke Gosling, spent $133,781 between July and December, including $10,724 in travel allowance, $27,904 in domestic airfares and $5192 in family travel costs.