Fed: Labor attacks PM over travel costs

AAP General News (Australia)
08-02-2004
Fed: Labor attacks PM over travel costs

CANBERRA, Aug 2 AAP - Prime Minister John Howard was behaving like a Middle Eastern
oil sheikh on his farewell tour by running up a massive bill for taxpayer-funded travel,
Labor family spokesman Wayne Swan said today.

Mr Howard has reportedly smashed the record for taxpayer-funded overseas luxury travel,
with a bill of $5.2 million over a two-year period.

According to official travel documents obtained by News Limited newspapers, the bill
includes a record $3.975 million for 2002, plus more than $1.3 million last year.

The newspaper said that since coming to power in 1996, Mr Howard and his official party
had passed the $13 million mark for overseas touring, while a 10-day tour of Indonesia
and the US in January 2002 cost taxpayers $100,922 a day.

Mr Swan said that at $100,000 a day there was a marked contrast between what Mr Howard
was doing and the way he had treated carers in the community - 30,000 of whom had been
stripped of their $90 a fortnight allowance.

"The prime minister's behaving like some sort of Middle Eastern oil sheikh, travelling
around the country in an extravagant way on his goodbye tour," Mr Swan told reporters
in Canberra.

"There's just such a double standard between the prime minister's performance abroad
and his policies at home domestically where he's taken the axe to carers on carers' allowance."

While Mr Swan said he had no problem with Mr Howard's official function in Townsville
today, where he will welcome home Australian troops, running around Europe on extended
goodbye tours was not what we needed of our prime minister.

"We all understand that prime ministers have to travel for official purposes, it's
just that this prime minister has taken a lot longer this time - you can only conclude
that he's waving goodbye," he said.

Mr Swan said the public was sick of the extended phony election campaign and Mr Howard
should come clean on the election date.

"I think the public are sick of the politics that they've seen from the prime minister,
sick of the politics that he's playing with the election date and sick of the phony war
that he's engaged in," he said.

"They'd rather him look after the long term interests of the country, not the short
term interests of the Liberal Party."

AAP db/bes/jlw

KEYWORD: TRAVEL SWAN

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