Former Illawarra federal MPs have spent more than $200,000 on 508 taxpayer-funded flights in a seven-year period after leaving office.
The information is found in documents obtained by Fairfax Media from the Department of Finance and shows 272 former federal MPs or their widows took 20,000 taxpayer-funded flights around Australia between 2001 and 2008 worth more than $8.3 million.
Under the Life Gold Pass scheme, former politicians are allowed free business or first-class airline travel within Australia with their spouse.
Full list of former Illawarra MPs' flights Full list of all taxpayer-funded flights taken by former MPsThere are no limits on those who qualified before 1994, but those who qualified after 1994 are restricted to 25 return trips a year.
Former ALP member for Hughes Robert Tickner spent the largest amount of the seven MPs with links to the Illawarra - $64,000 for 162 flights.
The Mercury yesterday unsuccessfully tried to contact Mr Tickner, who left Parliament in 1996, via his role as CEO of the Australian Red Cross.
Former Liberal Macarthur MP Michael Baume - who spent $54,000 on 144 flights - was also unavailable yesterday afternoon, his wife said.
Mr Baume is a special counsel for public relations firm Jackson Wells.
Former ALP Gilmore MP Peter Knott, who has not taken any taxpayer-funded flights since leaving office, said some MPs used the flights to find themselves a new job after leaving politics.
Many cases would be legitimate and each MP's travel should be looked at individually, he said.
"There's a bit of a hole when you leave politics and I think some MPs look to continue ... seeing people and groups and working for them," he said.
"Not all examples of the travel would be cut and dried."
Mr Knott said he was allowed one year of travel after leaving Parliament in 1996, but declined to take advantage of it.
The biggest spender on the overall list, former National Party leader and speaker Ian Sinclair, took 701 flights between January 2001 and June 2008 - an average of two flights every week.
Mr Sinclair's bill came to $214,545, although he repaid $11,731 in December 2001 after he claimed 296 flights that year.
Mr Sinclair has spent much of his post-political career helping community groups and charities.
One in four MPs on the list have claimed more than 100 trips each, with 11 chalking up a bill in excess of $100,000. This is on top of generous superannuation benefits.
But many former MPs defended the scheme, saying they used it to perform charity and community work or to help out national institutions.
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