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Taxpayers paid $2000 for Stuart Robert to attend Hillsong conference

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Dubious Travel Claims | Liberal Party | QED
Liberal Party

Taxpayers paid $2000 for Stuart Robert to attend Hillsong conference

July 2015

Taxpayers paid for Stuart Robert to attend a Hillsong mega church conference with his wife, who has since become a Pentecostal pastor on the Gold Coast, Department of Finance records showed. Mr Robert says he was asked to represent the government at the five-day conference. 

Taxpayers stumped up $2326 for his travel and accommodation, including $672 for his wife Chantelle. Mr Robert was a guest speaker at the Pentecostal church’s Hillsong Conference Nights event in Sydney, in July 2015. He delivered a ‘Pillars of Influence Masterclass’ lecture on how ‘innovative individuals’ are ‘influencing their pillar with the message of Jesus’. As the Daily Mail reported, ministers usually meet bureaucrats or stakeholder groups related to their portfolio during such visits. In this case, however, he was asked to represent the government at the five-day Hillsong conference.

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What's a rort?

Conflicts of Interest

Redirecting funding to pet hobbies; offering jobs to the boys without a proper tender process; secretly bankrolling candidates in elections; taking up private sector jobs in apparent breach of parliament’s code of ethics, the list goes on.

Deceptive Conduct

Claiming that greenhouse gas emissions have gone down when the facts clearly show otherwise; breaking the law on responding to FoI requests; reneging on promised legislation; claiming credit for legislation that doesn’t exist; accepting donations that breach rules. You get the drift of what behaviour this category captures.

Election Rorts

In the months before the last election, the Government spent hundreds of millions of dollars of Australian taxpayers’ money on grants for sports, community safety, rural development programs and more. Many of these grants were disproportionally awarded to marginal seats, with limited oversight and even less accountability.

Dubious Travel Claims

Ministerial business that just happens to coincide with a grand final or a concert; electorate business that must be conducted in prime tourist locations, or at the same time as party fundraisers. All above board, maybe, but does it really pass the pub test? Or does it just reinforce the fact that politicians take the public for mugs?

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