What Bourke used is an entitlement that was extended by Howard....

What Bourke used is an entitlement that was extended by Howard.
Family reunion provisions which originally allowed for business class return trips for family members to Canberra.

Later on they introduced a policy where those trips could be converted to family reunion trips away from Canberra if the pollie does some official business at the destination.

Which make me wonder do they plan the official trip first and take the family along or decide on a destination then find something official to do while they are there.


http://maps.finance.gov.au/entitlem....9_Family_Reunion_Travel_within_Australia.asp

In limited circumstances, a Senator or Member is entitled to ‘family reunion travel’ to enable his or her spouse or nominee, dependent children and designated person(s) to accompany or join the Senator or Member on travel within Australia, at Commonwealth expense, on parliamentary, electorate or official business.mce-anchor¹ For this purpose, ‘accompany’ means to travel with a Senator or Member to the final destination of a trip he or she is undertaking and ‘join’ means to travel to meet a Senator or Member for a period of at least three hours.mce-anchor² Where a Senator or Member is not accompanied to and/or from the final destination by his or her spouse or nominee, dependent children and designated person(s), that person(s) must arrive no more than 24 hours before the Senator or Member arrives and/or depart no more than 24 hours after the Senator or Member departs

Each Senator and Member (other than ACT Senators, the Members for Canberra and the Member for Fraser) is provided with a budget for family members to accompany or join them on travel to Canberra and to locations within their home state or territory. The annual budget is calculated as the combined value of:

• nine business class return trips to Canberra from the spouse or nominee’s principal place of residence
• three business class return trips to Canberra from the principal place of residence for each dependent child.

OR
For Senators and Members, whose principal place of residence is within 150km of Canberra by road, the combined value of:

• nine business class return trips between Canberra and Sydney for the spouse or nominee
• three business class return trips between Canberra and Sydney for each dependent child.mce-anchor¹⁷

When calculating the Canberra/intra-state family reunion travel budget, where a business class fare is not available, the cost of travel is limited to the value of an economy class fare for the most reasonable and usual route between the departure and destination points.mce-anchor¹⁸
Ministerial and Parliamentary Services calculates the value of the Canberra/intra-state family reunion travel budget for each Senator and Member on 1 July each year for expenditure during that financial year, and advises each Senator and Member of the value of their budget.mce-anchor¹⁹ Calculation of the Canberra/intra-state family reunion travel budget is dependent on the return of Form 5 to Ministerial and Parliamentary Services.