Burke submits expenses to Finance

Philip Ruddock has claimed nearly $20,000 in recent years for him and his family to travel to far north Queensland, where he reportedly owns an apartment in a beachfront complex.

“I don’t see any great benefit of having a running commentary on MPs’ entitlements”, he said.

“I haven’t done anything wrong”.

He also charged taxpayers $48,951 for a six-day trip in 2009, including first-class flights for a senior staffer, to attend a Barcelona food security forum as agriculture minister, The Australian said on Friday.

Mr Burke’s office said he was on official business and held meetings in his capacity as environment minister, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported.

Tony Burke previously admitted his decision to claim taxpayer money to fly his children business class to Uluru in 2012 was “beyond community expectations”.

Mr Pyne said ongoing stories about Mr Burke’s travel claims have not proven the Labor MP broke any rules.

A spokesman for Burke said it was “a private trip involving no taxpayer funds and has been appropriately declared on Mr Burke’s register of interests”.

Despite the trip being within the rules because it included a series of work-related meetings, he told reporters in Sydney on Thursday he had decided to refer his expenses record to the department for a check.

At the same time Mr Burke has decided to refund the $90 cost of travelling by Commonwealth vehicle to a Robbie Williams concert previous year.

But government frontbencher Josh Frydenberg says Burke is holding coalition MPs to one standard and himself to another. PM Abbott has defended the taxpayer-funded travels of his MPs by pointing out that they have political, governmental and parliamentary responsibilities to take care of.

“The problem is a system under which things have been inside the rules but outside community expectations and that is why we need root and branch reform and that is exactly what will happen”.

“Should you use a helicopter to get there?”

FEDERAL Labor frontbencher Tony Burke has submitted his travel expenses to a review by the Finance Department.

“Ben Chifley… was a very significant Australian and we’ve had speakers at those events who are not even Labor people”, Mr Shorten told ABC radio.

Labor wants the entitlements review expanded to include the rules surrounding the government’s use of the VIP jet and other special goal aircraft.

The spending habits of the Shadow Minister for Finance have come under intense scrutiny after he was a leading critic of Bronwyn Bishops’s misuse of travel entitlements which led to her stepping down as Speaker of the House.