Article in today’s The Australian newspaper questioning my entitlement to accompany Simon Crean on a tax-payer funded parliamentary study-tour to Italy. This is absolutely outrageous. It is just patently false that my unofficial capacity within the Rudd cabinet should exempt me from lavish political junkets at tax-payer’s expense, and I protest.

Anyone who has paid the slightest attention to the new Labor anti-sleaze reforms guaranteeing that Rudd’s secret backers will be generously rewarded and showered with gifts can verify the absurdity of the newspaper’s claims. Graft doesn’t come free, let’s face it. Nor do the anti-graft cosmetics which so transparently purport to stamp it out.

And another thing. Someone who insists on the literal use of the term ‘bunga-bunga parties’ instead of using its more colloquial English translation as ‘evening classes in regional Italian cooking’ is a pedant, misinformed or, most likely, a Greens supporter.