Expensive babysitting?

ICAC are investigating our local MP, Angela D'Amore, for expense rorts.

One former staffer, Karen Harbilas, who worked for Ms D'Amore in two periods, between 2003 and 2004 and again during 2006, as a relief worker, said Ms D'Amore asked her to falsify two claims.

She said she was asked to write the name of another staffer, David Nicoletti, instead of her own on the form making it appear as though he was the one working in parliament.

In fact, it was her working at Parliament House, babysitting Ms D'Admore's child, an activity also carried out on occasions by Mr Tripodi's mother, Ms Adamson said in her opening address.

Ms Harbilas admitted she knew it was wrong to claim the money but said Ms D'Amore had told her to do it.

Bloody hell, it's not like she is paid so badly that she can't afford to pay for a baby sitter out of her own pocket.

Ms D'Amore's lawyer Alexander Street told the hearing the MP denied any wrongdoing and was careless rather than corrupt.

"She did not read the forms, she was careless," he said.

OK, so she's stupid and incompetent rather than corrupt. That's nice to know.

I've signed a lot of timesheets and expense claims and credit card statements and phone bills and vehicle log books in my time as a manager. Thousands of the bloody things. One thing is for sure - I made sure that all my staff had filled in all their paperwork properly (and on time), and I checked the bloody stuff before I signed it (as painful as that was). I had several dozen staff at one point, scattered all over the state, and I had to know where they were and where they'd been and what they had been doing before I signed anything. I had to satisfy myself that they weren't misusing their time or the company's assets or credit cards before I approved any claims or expenditure.

Because if I didn't, I would have been hauled in front of Internal Audit or ICAC and sacked.

The problem with these Labor hacks is that none of them have managed or administered anything before they got into parliament. They have no idea how anything works, or how to run something. They're clueless. It's no wonder they fail so utterly and so spectacularly. Pity they ruin our finances in the process.

More:

Ms D’Amore was not at the inquiry today but she has previously stated she will “vigoriously defend” the allegations.

The inquiry heard that Mrs Harbilas never worked in the electorate office in 2006, she only worked at Parliament House.

I've worked on a couple of corruption inquiries. I'll bet that the first thing the investigators grabbed were the diaries. When Angela gets on the stand, she'll be shown a stack of diaries and taken through them one by one, and if they show Mrs Harbilas being at Parliament House on the days in question, she'll be asked to "please explain".

I'd love to be there to hear her answer that one.

If Mrs Harbilas was issued with a mobile phone, the bills will quickly show where she was making calls from. If those calls all originate from the CBD rather than Five Dock, Angela will have even more problems.

And then there'll be things like Cabcharge taxi claims and so on. Plus details of when the various parties logged on to different computers at each location. They might even subpoena bank records, looking at the location of credit card purchases and cash withdrawals. Electronic toll payments are another thing that brings people unstuck.

It's amazing what they can do with all that data. Hopefully, they'll use it to rid us of this troublesome parasite.