Liberal Senator Lucy Gichuhi Charged Taxpayers To Fly Relatives To Her Birthday Party
She also told media her $200,000 salary is "not a lot of money".
Liberal party senator Lucy Gichuhi is getting absolutely slammed this week, firstly for charging taxpayers to fly relatives to her “50th” birthday party, and then for telling media that her $200,000 salary is “not a lot of money”.
If nothing else, she’s certainly on-brand — nothing says Liberal party values like wasting public funds to provide benefits to the rich at the expense of everyone else.
As the Sunday Telegraph reported back in April, Gichuhi billed taxpayers $2139 for two return flights from Darwin to Adelaide, which were used to fly family members to her birthday party in October last year. She has since agreed to pay that cost back in full, saying it was “an administrative error involving misunderstanding of travel rules”.
And while we’re on the point of corrections, it wasn’t even her 50th birthday party — Gichuhi is 55. She actually titled the birthday party her “50 plus GST” birthday, the omitted 5 years being the GST. In the speech she gave at the event, which is inexplicably available on her website, she told guests that “I have now also taught you to deduct 10 percent off your own age — if you want to!”.
Regarding the media reports about my travel expenses, this was an administrative error involving misunderstanding of travel rules.
I’ve raised an invoice from the department to pay the costs of $2139 in full.
— Lucy Gichuhi (@senatorlucy) June 17, 2018
Gichuhi has also come under fire for billing taxpayers around $12,000 for a number of trips to Sydney, which she listed as “electorate business”, despite her electorate actually being in South Australia.
People are especially angry about all this because Gichuhi told Kenyan media in January this year that her $200,000 year base salary is “not a lot of money”. Parliamentary expenses are in addition to that salary.
Meanwhile, the median Australian salary is $55,000. We wonder what Lucy Gichuhi thinks of that.
Feature image via Lucy Gichuhi’s official website.