Gallipoli Tax

by | May 3, 2024 | ANZAC Day, Australian History, Gallipoli, Military History, Political History, Social History, World War 1 | 0 comments

Ah, taxes, one of the only two things they say are certain in this world, the other (of course) being death.

So perhaps it is appropriate that it was recently revealed that a bunch of Victorian MPs, thirteen, to be exact, and one federal MP, used taxpayer funds to take a supposably patriotic jaunt off to Gallipoli on ANZAC Day 2024.1 ANZAC Cove has seen more than its fair share of death, after all. Perhaps to the well-renumerated politicians, the whole thing seemed like a funny joke. Death and taxes! We should go to Gallipoli to see the dead soldiers on the tax payers’ dollar! Ha ha ha! Aren’t we so clever? Pop the champagne!

OK, maybe I’m being a bit unfair.

Or maybe not.

I’m certainly angry and revolted by the whole thing, I’ll give you that.

Money, Money, Money

The base wage of a Victorian state MP is $198,839 per annum; for comparison, the average annual wage of an employed Australian is $74,495.20 per year, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.2 If we assume this is gross (i.e. before tax) then the number drops slightly. The MP will pay $60,144 in taxes over a 12 month period, while our average working Australian will pay $14,678 in the same time. This means that every year, the MP will take home $134,718, and the working Australian gets $58,328.3

Continuing on our jaunt down Salary Lane, we need to factor in the cost of living. According to data from Expatistan, which analyses the cost of living in hundreds of cities and countries around the world, the average monthly cost of living for a single person in Australia today is $4,847.4 Of course, this increases for couples and families, but because we looked at individual wages, we’re going to compare them to the individual cost of living. The monthly base wage of an MP (after tax) is $11,226.50, which means that, after cost of living expenses are deducted, they still have approximately $6,379.50 left over. After taxes, our average Australian earns $4,860.67 a month, which means they have just $13.67 left once they’ve paid their rent and utilities, brought food, and put clothes on their back.

Did someone say cost of living crisis?

Not if you’re an MP, it would seem!

Now, of course, these figures are averages. Everyone’s individual situation is different, and lifestyle factors will play a part in how much your take home pay is, yadda, yadda, yadda, that is not the point! The point is that Victorian state MPs earn more than double the average wage and can easily afford to pay for their own overseas trips.

And it gets worse (or better, if you’re an MP).

In addition to their extensive salary, MPs receive what is called an “additional salary” if they hold certain positions in parliament. One of the MPs who went over to Gallipoli was the state Veterans’ Affairs Minister, who on top of her base salary earns an extra $167,132 per annum. That’s a total annual wage of $365,971; after subtracting taxes and average cost of living expenses, the minister takes home approximately $165,125 a year.5 The other twelve state MPs did not hold special positions, so were all on the base salary of $198,839.

All MPs also have an overseas travel allowance of $10,765 per annum.6 According to a quick search of Webjet, to fly economy class from Melbourne to Istanbul on a return ticket will cost between $1,983 to $2,747, or $5,882 to $12,907 to fly business class. We don’t yet know if the MPs flew commercially, or if a plane was chartered, although we know that the MPs “paid” for the trip using their international travel allowances.7 Reporters from The Age asked how the trip benefitted the constituents of the individual MPs, but received no response from any of them. The only comment came from the Veterans’ Affairs minister herself, and that was only to confirm that, yes, the MPs had used tax-payer dollars to fund the trip, and that they would (of course!) be accounting for the spending of their travel allowances in reports submitted to Parliament.8 I want to point out that they’re not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they have to by law. They also told the media that they have sixty days to submit the report, so they’d take all the questions on notice.9 I can’t wait to hear how they justify that trip.

Australia’s Dead Soldier Problem

As I’ve written about before, Australia has a serious problem with venerating dead soldiers, while completely neglecting the often complex needs of living ones. The Royal Commission into Defense and Veteran Suicide was opened (very reluctantly) by the Liberal Government in September 2021, and recently finished hearing testimony from current and former personnel from all branches of the Australian Defense Force, their friends and families, and experts in mental health and veterans affairs.10 They are due to report in September of this year, yet there will be little in the report that those who testified have not been saying for years, even as their friends died around them. One of the biggest problems, which was well known before the commission started sitting, is that the hyper-masculine culture within Defense discouraged current and former personnel from seeking help, and many of them felt they had to suffer in silence. However, another issue which the Royal Commission has raised (and which was also previously identified) is that there are not enough services for those who do come forward, and some of those attempting to access help end their lives while on waiting lists to access treatment.

Yet, these dead soldiers are not given even half as much attention as those who died more than a hundred years ago. In 2015, which marked the centenary of the Gallipoli landings, the Victorian Government set aside $1.4 million “to mark the ANZAC centenary and the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings,” out of a total veterans’ budget of roughly $7.6 million.11 Not a cent of that money was set aside for veterans’ health, unless it was being offered through the RSL, which received a $400,000 grant.12 Evidently, the dead of Gallipoli (and every Gallipoli veteran was dead by 2015) were worth far more than those Australians still living and fighting overseas (at the time, we were still embroiled in the War in Afghanistan). Little has changed, although governments do now tend to set aside money for veterans’ health and/or mental health, although come ANZAC Day every year, they’ll talk about the dead before they mention the living. In the 2023-24 Victorian state budget, $800,000 was ear-marked for “22 projects aimed at enhancing the wellbeing of our veterans and their families,” out of a budget of more than $41,000,000!13 None of the money was specifically ear-marked for health or suicide prevention, with the Victorian Government saying they would wait to hear the recommendations of the Royal Commission before making changes in this area. Meanwhile, of course, veterans are still dying by their own hand. According the the figures reveled by the Royal Commission, that means approximately 27 veterans have died by suicide since the beginning of this year, and the Victorian Government has not committed to do anything about it until September!

Meanwhile, a dozen Victorian ministers went galivanting off the Gallipoli on the tax-payers dime, and one of them was the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs! She is literally the person responsible for veterans in this state and, instead of a plan to tackle the ever increasing numbers of veterans who continue to die by suicide, or expand their access to mental health services, she went on an overseas holiday and called it work. I refuse to call it ‘work’ because she could have gone to a dawn service or commemoration locally, and her trip had absolutely no benefit for her constituents, the dead at Gallipoli, or (most importantly) the living in Australia. She (and the rest of her colleagues) wanted pics for social media, to make them look like good, patriotic Aussies – that’s it. Every single one of them should refund the tax payer for using government funds to go on holiday, and then resign, especially the Veterans’ Affairs Minister. They won’t, of course, and they’ll claim it was a very necessary and legitimate work expense, but I can live in hope.

Money and Military History

The issue with this trip is two-fold.

Firstly, during a major cost of living crisis which is seeing people forced to choose between paying rent or buying food, politicians on massive salaries took an overseas trip on the taxpayers’ dollar. Other than the fact that their salaries are obscene (which is another topic for another day) it makes them seem completely out of touch with what ordinary people are facing.

Secondly, it is part of a wider problem where we spend much more of our time and energy nationally on seeing our military history through rose coloured glasses, while ignoring the reality of the living. War is not pretty, and those who go through it, be they service personnel or civilians, often come out of it with a range of complex physical and mental health issues which need to be addressed. If government’s are going to keep going to war, then they also need to bear the cost of taking care of those who return, and the families of those who don’t.

We can’t keep funding commemorations or memorials if we’re not going to properly fund healthcare for those affected by aggressive foreign policy. Dead soldiers make great political tools, for the very fact that they are dead. They can’t argue, they can’t talk back, and they can’t tell the politicians who sent them off to war to fuck the hell off! The living ten to be more cynical and less willing to be politicised (although there are notable exceptions) and this is a distinction my great-grandfather remarked on when he came home from WW2.

Bebe (as I called him) wrote in his journal that there were two kinds of people who came back from war: heroes and soldiers. Heroes came back in coffins, or as names on a condolence letter, and were used ever after by politicians as examples of grit, character and sacrifice. Soldiers came back marching, limping, crawling, and breathing, and gave war a face that didn’t match with the glowing ideals the politicians had attributed to the heroes. So they were silenced, ignored, pushed to the side and told to “shut it!” unless they were needed for a glittering ANZAC Day parade. Bebe never marched on ANZAC Day; I believe (from things I have read and what I have been told) that he almost certainly had post-traumatic stress from the war and people who knew him directly have told me he never spoke about it at all. He lost his three best friends in the conflict, although didn’t find out until he came home and tried to catch up with them for a drink, and struggled to find work when he was discharged.

Bebe’s experience was not restricted to WW2 – it is still a reality today and we have a chance to do something about it.

Or, we will, if the politicians pull their heads out of their arses and start putting money where it is most needed, rather than asking us to fund their overseas holidays.

Sources

  1. N. Towell & K. Napier Ramen. “Taxpayers pick up tab for MPs Gallipoli jaunt.” The Age. 3 May 2024. https://www.theage.com.au/national/taxpayers-pick-up-tab-for-mps-gallipoli-jaunt-20240502-p5fohy.html ↩︎
  2. Victorian Independent Remuneration Tribunal. Members of Parliament Salaries and Allowances. Last updated 1 July 2023. https://www.vic.gov.au/members-parliament-salaries-allowances; The Australian Bureau of Statistics. Average Weekly Earnings Australia. Last updated 22 February 2024. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/average-weekly-earnings-australia/nov-2023. ↩︎
  3. Australian Government Money Smart Income Tax Calculator. https://moneysmart.gov.au/work-and-tax/income-tax-calculator. ↩︎
  4. Expatistan. Cost of Living in Australia. Last updated 2024. https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/country/australia. ↩︎
  5. Victorian Independent Remuneration Tribunal. Members of Parliament Salaries and Allowances. Last updated 1 July 2023. https://www.vic.gov.au/members-parliament-salaries-allowances. ↩︎
  6. Victorian Independent Remuneration Tribunal. Members of Parliament Salaries and Allowances. Last updated 1 July 2023. https://www.vic.gov.au/members-parliament-salaries-allowances. ↩︎
  7. N. Towell & K. Napier Ramen. “Taxpayers pick up tab for MPs Gallipoli jaunt.” The Age. 3 May 2024. https://www.theage.com.au/national/taxpayers-pick-up-tab-for-mps-gallipoli-jaunt-20240502-p5fohy.html ↩︎
  8. N. Towell & K. Napier Ramen. “Taxpayers pick up tab for MPs Gallipoli jaunt.” The Age. 3 May 2024. https://www.theage.com.au/national/taxpayers-pick-up-tab-for-mps-gallipoli-jaunt-20240502-p5fohy.html ↩︎
  9. N. Towell & K. Napier Ramen. “Taxpayers pick up tab for MPs Gallipoli jaunt.” The Age. 3 May 2024. https://www.theage.com.au/national/taxpayers-pick-up-tab-for-mps-gallipoli-jaunt-20240502-p5fohy.html ↩︎
  10. Australian Government. Royal Commission into Defense and Veteran Suicide. Last updated 11 August 2022. https://defenceveteransuicide.royalcommission.gov.au/. ↩︎
  11. Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. Inquiry into the 2015 – 16 Budget Estimates. Victorian State Government. Last updated 19 May 2015. https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/49489a/contentassets/8cc2c0026f6647a7a1e9303c2fa3a9e4/ veterans_-_verified_2015-16_beh.pdf ↩︎
  12. Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. Inquiry into the 2015 – 16 Budget Estimates. Victorian State Government. Last updated 19 May 2015. https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/49489a/contentassets/8cc2c0026f6647a7a1e9303c2fa3a9e4/ veterans_-_verified_2015-16_beh.pdf ↩︎
  13. Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. Inquiry into the 2023 – 24 Budget Estimates. Victorian State Government. Last updated 14 June 2023. https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/494981/contentassets/2fdc246c907047e9ad2e55be6cd55048/ paec-2023-24-budget-estimates–14-june-veterans.pdf ↩︎

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *