Pollies and a funeral. A caller to 6PR yesterday said that some politicians were concerned about using their travel entitlements to fly to Western Australia for the funeral of Liberal MP Don Randall tomorrow in light of the furore surrounding Speaker Bronwyn Bishop’s use of her parliamentary entitlements to attend her colleague’s weddings, and are looking for other reasons to head west as well. While most of us would think that attending the funeral counts as official business, it’s interesting to see how the tables have turned.
On the topic of travelling to Randall’s funeral, we noticed that the Prime Minister may need a Hogwarts-issue Time-Turner to attend all his commitments across the country tomorrow. The PM is expected to attend the service tomorrow morning, but he is also scheduled to launch Education Minister Christopher Pyne’s book tomorrow night (yes, the party they said we couldn’t come to), which is meant to start at 5pm in Melbourne. With a four-hour flight between Perth and Melbourne and the traffic on the Tullamarine on a Friday night, we asked Abbott’s office if he still planned on honouring both commitments, but didn’t hear back.
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