Labor is unlikely to pursue formal Senate action against the Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie for not disclosing 16 flight upgrades over her time in parliament, despite parliamentary rules around declaring travel requiring disclosures within 35 days.
The independent senator David Pocock said it highlighted the need for reforming parliamentary transparency rules.
“Senator McKenzie’s failure to declare multiple upgrades would appear to constitute serious contempt under parliamentary rules. But we lack adequate accountability mechanisms to deal with such lapses in integrity,” Pocock said.
McKenzie, the opposition transport spokesperson, apologised on Wednesday for failing to declare 16 flight upgrades received over the last nine years, belatedly updating her official register of interests to disclose instances of business class travel.
Two of those were in July and August this year, just months before she claimed to have never been offered an upgrade on a Qantas flight. Another five upgrades were on personal flights between Australia and New Zealand, including four in 2018 while she was a cabinet minister.
The newly declared flight upgrades, between January 2015 and August this year, span four separate parliamentary periods. The 2022 version of the handbook for senators on interests, published on the federal parliament’s website, says senators must declare any update to their register of interests “within 35 days of the alteration occurring”.
A Senate resolution states any senator who “knowingly” fails to notify any changes to their register within 35 days, or who “knowingly” provides false or misleading information to the register, “shall be guilty of a serious contempt of the Senate and shall be dealt with by the Senate accordingly”.
Such a matter would need to be raised by a senator with the Senate president, whereupon the matter could be considered by the senators’ interests committee and then potentially referred to the privileges committee.
But Guardian Australia understands there has been no push inside the government’s leadership to refer McKenzie’s flight disclosures for further investigation. It came as US election results were being published, and during a week of Senate estimates which has dominated the attention of members of the upper house.
Guardian Australia understands McKenzie is also not expected to face any internal sanction from inside the Coalition.
Pocock sought advice from the Senate office responsible for the register, and was told no action has ever been taken by the interests committee on a matter of not disclosing within the 35 day timeframe.
McKenzie was approached for comment. A spokesperson said the senator had updated her register within 24 hours of all airlines providing her with a full log of the upgrades she had received.
The former senator Rex Patrick claimed the Senate’s systems on disclosure rules were “weak”. Commenting broadly on concerns about late disclosures, and not specifically on McKenzie’s situation, the former South Australian senator – who is seeking re-election as a member of the Jacqui Lambie Network – claimed the disclosure scheme was “not enforced”.
“It relies on honesty and it is a matter for the Senate to deal with circumstances when somebody doesn’t comply with the requirements,” he said. “A failure of the Senate to do that is, in itself, a poor reflection on all senators.”
Politicians of all parties regularly miss deadlines to update their register, and face no sanction. On 7 November, the Labor senator Lisa Darmanin disclosed a flight upgrade on a Qantas domestic flight from 18 August; on 31 October, Labor’s Tim Ayres disclosed tickets to the Midwinter Ball from 3 July; while the Labor senator Glenn Sterle on 19 September disclosed accommodation and hospitality from 17 March at a transport association conference.
The opposition’s home affairs spokesperson, James Paterson, said “unfortunately, it is a relatively frequent occurrence that senators and members update their register in a way that is not always timely”.
“Senator McKenzie… is not the first to do so and I suspect she will not be the last. We should all take our obligations to declare things properly, very seriously and I always seek to do so,” he said at a press conference.
Paterson suggested there should not be major penalties for breaches of obligations to disclose register updates.
“You have to think through very carefully the implications of how they would be enforced and what the penalties would be. At the end of the day, senators and members are elected to represent their constituencies, and those constituents should not be denied representation even if someone makes an error with their register,” he said.
Pocock said politicians should be “doing everything they can to regain the community’s trust and rebuild trust”.
“Pretty spectacular failures on all sides of politics to act in accordance with community expectations – whether that’s soliciting perks for personal travel or failing to declare multiple upgrades – just erodes that trust even further.”
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