Full response from Kon Karapanagiotidis

In response to questions from The Conversation in relation to this FactCheck on parliamentary entitlements and the Newstart allowance, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre’s Kon Karapanagiotidis said:

First, I heard it spoken of during the week on radio last week on an ABC current affairs segment (Sorry, I can’t remember which one). Then I researched it to see if I could confirm it and came across this article, which did.

My interest in it is as the Federal Government is about to cut $2.3 billion from our safety net (welfare) funding, forcing people already below the poverty line into further destitution and hardship. The hypocrisy – when our pollies are living gold class lifestyles with no debate about their bloating entitlements, with no real accountability, at the same time they are asking bootless people to lift themselves up by the bootstraps. It just appalls me. Especially when you hear about the tax nots and taxed, while the same people double dip, rort the entitlment system and often, with no consquence, don’t even stay within their budgets. They ask us, the Australian public, to live within our meagre means while they live the good life off our taxes.