An Australian father so fed up with the taxpayer-funded travel perks given to politicians that he asked them to fund his family’s holiday has received an overwhelming response from the public.
Father-of-three Stephen Callaghan established a GoFundMe page titled: “Please pay for my kids’ holiday,” asking Australian politicians to give his children the same travel entitlements their own receive.
Callaghan was not asking for donations from the public, but they have now contributed more than A$6,000 (US$4,350) to his cause, well above his A$5,000 target.
“Bloody hell. You people have put every Australian politician to shame,” he wrote on the page on Tuesday.
On his blog, Callaghan wrote that community anger over the travel entitlements given to Australian politicians had started after then-Australian speaker of the House of Representatives Bronwyn Bishop used a helicopter for a short journey at a cost of A$5,000, but grew as other entitlements came to light.
“Angry at the casualness with which politicians spend our money jetting their kids around in business class, I started the above mentioned GoFundMe and it garnered a bit of interest,” he wrote.
“I have raised a lot more than I expected ... given that I did not expect to raise any money at all,” he said, adding that most donations came from ordinary people “just as pissed off as I am.”
He said he would keep some of the money so he could take his three children on a trip to Uluru (Ayers Rock) in central Australia as he had long planned to do and would invest in safer tires for the car journey.
However, “we will be making a substantial donation [more than 50 percent] on your behalf to Stewart House,” he said, referring to a Sydney charity that gives school children in need a break from their everyday life.
Callaghan says the trip to Uluru with family friends will still go ahead, and has promised his social media followers updates on the journey of four adults and seven kids with “one portable chemical dunny [toilet] between the lot of us.”
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