MP clocks up 200,000km of travel

For West Australians living in regional and remote towns, getting in the car and driving for hours can be a normal part of life but for Member for O’Connor Rick Wilson, visiting the far reaches of the electorate means clocking up almost 200,000km every year.

In 2015, Mr Wilson travelled more than 121,00km by air, flying back and forth to Canberra and visiting communities dotted around his vast 890,000sqkm electorate.

That’s more than three times around the earth, and it does not include the extensive number of kilometres Mr Wilson travels by road.

In the 30 weeks of the year Mr Wilson spends in the electorate, he can clock up to 60,000km on the road, a further one-and-a-half times around the planet.

“I turn over the cars at 100,000km and I’m turning over a car about every 18-20 months,” he said.

The tyranny of distance is acutely felt by Mr Wilson and the other five MPs whose electorates are more than 500,000sqkm. The reliance on charter flights to reach towns thousands of kilometres apart is an entitlement Mr Wil-son said he would defend to the death.

The issue of MP entitlements has again raised its head as the validity of a trip to a Queensland golf tournament which was charged to taxpayers by Federal WA Liberal member Steve Irons, was questioned by Labor.

After Bronwyn Bishop’s “choppergate” scandal in 2015, then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott launched an inquiry into MP entitlements.

Mr Wilson said he and the other five MPs of the big six electorates had made a joint submission to the inquiry imploring that their charter flight entitlements be allowed to remain.

“We said ‘we don’t want to lose the entitlements for our electorate because someone else has done the wrong thing’,” he said.

“I spend enough of my life on the road as it is, so spending a day driving somewhere for a half-day meeting, then turning around and driving for another day back would not be a good use of time. So we basically asked to keep our existing charter allowance.

“We didn’t ask for any more.”

As part of their submission to the inquiry, Mr Wilson said they asked for the resources to run a third office in their electorates.

“Most of the MPs (in the big six electorates) have a situation such as mine, where Esperance is a third town in the electorate and is 400km from either the Kalgoorlie or Albany offices,” he said.

“We made the case that we should have a third office and the review committee agreed.

“The Government hasn’t implemented that yet ... but they (the Government) said they would accept all of the recommendations.

“It will only be a small office with one staff member, that’s what we’ve been told.”

Rick Wilson’s travel in 2015

121,00km by air and

60,000km by road in his

890,000sqkm electorate