New travel expenses rules would still let MPs attend sporting events, Scott Ryan signals

The special minister of state, Scott Ryan, has signalled that it will still be possible for parliamentarians to go to party fundraisers or sporting events using taxpayer-funded entitlements if the travel meets a new test to be legislated by the Turnbull government.

The Coalition party room on Tuesday, after a brief debate, rubber stamped legislation for a new system of managing expenses and entitlements in the wake of rolling controversies, including the use of helicopter travel by the former House of Representatives Speaker, Bronwyn Bishop.

The new system will establish a “dominant purpose” test to ensure travel occurs within the scope of the rules.

Ryan equivocated when interviewed on Sky News on Tuesday about whether the system would prevent politicians going to fundraisers or sporting events using their parliamentary entitlement, saying he did not want to pre-empt the ruling of a new tribunal set up to manage it.

He said if MPs were travelling on legitimate parliamentary business but then subsequently attended a party event: “I don’t think that would be an issue.”

Ryan said the key measure was the dominant purpose of the visit.

Pressed on whether it would be against the new rules for politicians to attend party fundraisers, he said: “It is not possible to provide a prescriptive rule in every single circumstance.”

The debate and rubber stamping of the new expenses system came in a party-room meeting that followed a decision by Malcolm Turnbull to withdraw a proposed extradition treaty with China after a brief revolt in Coalition ranks.

The Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz, who told Coalition colleagues he was prepared to cross the floor to sink the extradition treaty, raised objections about the treaty in Tuesday’s party-room meeting.

Before the party-room meeting, the former prime minister Tony Abbott also intervened to argue that the treaty should not proceed.

The government was forced to pull the treaty because of a combination of internal objections and a decision by Labor not to support the ratification of the extradition treaty, which was confirmed on Tuesday morning.

The boilover was triggered by the former Liberal senator Cory Bernardi’s decision to move a disallowance motion to scuttle the extradition treaty on the basis that people would not have their human rights protected in China’s legal system.

On Tuesday night Bernardi was demanding the government come clean about why it had brought on the treaty for ratification, given that the proposal had kicked around unresolved since the Howard era.

Bernardi told Andrew Bolt on Tuesday night there was “something tricky, something a bit sneaky” about the timing of the extradition deal.

The treaty was tabled in early March, before last week’s visit by the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang. The tabling opened the opportunity for Bernardi to move the disallowance motion scuttling the deal.

The numbers were there for the disallowance, with Labor, the Greens, some crossbenchers, and potentially, some Liberal senators, to vote in favour of scrapping the treaty.