Is it any wonder they get them wrong?

It’s a pity that none of them thought to apply their conscience or a sense of decency to the situation but with their super busy gladhanding lives they wouldn’t have time to do that and we can’t expect it.

So let’s fix the situation with another set of rules that are simple and clear and can end this question of entitlements.

But wait, I can still hear Joe Hockey thundering “the age of entitlement is over”.

Of course we now know that he didn’t mean that exactly and that he forgot to say the final three words: “except for politicians”.

Politicians, even treasurers, can be so forgetful.

So let’s have another set of rules and let’s call the charges what they are: expenses.

They are not allowances handed down from Mount Sinai; they are costs charged to the taxpayer for carrying out a service.

Let’s have them devised by an independent body that applies concepts of appropriateness and decency; let’s not have them organised by the claimants as a way of justifying what they want to get away with so that they are never in danger of having to appeal to a sense of fairness or conscience again.

And let’s not allow the double dipping ploy of renting your wife’s or other family member’s negatively geared Canberra house when parliament is in session.

So many of our pollies are adept at this way of filling their family bank accounts directly from the taxpayer.

As this whole expenses affair rolls out we see that all our politicians are in it: Brandis, Cormann, Dutton, Ley etc. all junketing around OZ at taxpayer expense.

While they rob taxpayers for thousands themselves they are hard at work clawing back two bob here and there from pensioners and the elderly and threatening them with legal action if they don’t pay up.

The hypocrisy is stratospheric.

Turnbull’s baby steps to clean the situation should be laughed at.

Australia has, per head of population, one of the most expensive democracies on the globe and that needs to be addressed.

We have got to get rid of the notion that representing people is a career.

Public representation should be restricted to two terms, like the American President and politicians in some other countries. Once elected twice you are ineligible to stand again.

The experience of being represented by professional politicians has been proven an expensive failure except for the politicians themselves who end up being wealthy at taxpayers’ direct expense.

Above all we need a properly funded and independent national anti-corruption ICAC style watch-dog of the type that caught up with spivs O’Beid, Tripodi etc. in NSW Labor.

Why won’t the major parties agree to the formation of such a body? We are now seeing why.

And why was the recently departed Baird hard at work trying to neutralise the NSW ICAC? We can justifiably suspect why.

Additionally, overseas representatives and ambassadors should be appointed by the Department of Foreign Affairs after calling for applicants. They should not be the gift of Prime Ministers who want to pay off a mate or get rid of someone who has become an embarrassment.