In an outrageous abuse of public money, the South Australian Liberals have been caught out charging taxpayers more than $25,000 for internal party polling for the Black by-election.
The secret research was conducted by Sydney-based Freshwater Partners, a firm co-founded by former Liberal Party chief pollster Mike Turner.
The Government was tipped off to the presence of the spending by an anonymous leak.
The payment was made using the Global Allowance entitlement provided to former Liberal Leader David Speirs.
The entitlement is provided to support MPs in their parliamentary duties, but specifically excludes "election expenses, other than Postal Vote applications".
The payment to Freshwater is dated 9 October 2024, just four days after David Speirs announced he was quitting Parliament after being charged with drug supply offences.
On October 10, The Advertiser reported that the Liberal Party had conducted polling to "road-test" two prominent local councillors to run as its candidate for Black. The party eventually settled on the Mayor from Glenelg, Amanda Wilson.
An invoice for the polling, which describes the expenditure as "Community research – Black" was authorised on October 11, four days before Mr Speirs formally submitted his resignation via email.
Taxpayers were slugged almost $40,000 for polling, public relations support and letters to constituents endorsing the Liberal candidate in the upcoming by-election.
This compares to a total of just $11,000 in the 3 months prior.
The Global Allowance guidelines state:
An important test that a Member should apply is to ask whether any expenditure is in support of their role as a Member of Parliament (allowed) or is in support of a political purpose.
The Electoral Act requires registered political parties engaged in the public funding regime to abide by a strict spending cap of $94,482 in a by-election.
Had the Liberal Party paid for the secret polling during the campaign period rather than charging taxpayers, it would have chewed up more than a quarter of its spending cap.
As put by Stephen Mullighan
On the face of it, this is an outrageous abuse of taxpayers' money by the Liberal Party.
Why would an MP who has just announced his resignation from the Parliament, need to spend $25,000 of taxpayer's money on polling?
If there is a reasonable explanation, Vincent Tarzia must provide it. He needs to explain what role he, his office and the Liberal Party played in slugging taxpayers for this internal polling.
Clearly the Liberal Party concocted this scheme to avoid having to pay for the internal polling themselves.
South Australians dealing with their own cost of living would be horrified to see Vincent Tarzia and the Liberals billing them to prop up a problematic candidate who doesn't live in her electorate, and jacked up council rates for thousands of residents.
The Liberals must pay this money back to South Australians.
