Singer's World Tour Deputy Lord Mayor's first year in office breaks box office travel records by 150% making him the most expensive Councillor

Preliminary analysis of the Melbourne City Councilor's published expense statements show that John So, Lord Mayor, and Gary Singer, Deputy Lord Mayor, are set to break the previous Councils record of being the most expensive highly travelled Councillors in then State.

The Lord Mayor and his Deputy have already spent in their first year more then half of what was spent during the full term of the previous Council. If this keeps up they will most certainly become the leaders of leaders in who can spend the most whilst traveling overseas on the ratepayers tab, breaking all office records.

We have seen the trailers and are now waiting for the final cut.

We are still waiting for the Council to publish the Council's Travel Register (We are told it will be published today) When they do we can analyse further the full extent and cost of Council's overseas junkets and discuss the benefits. (The Travel Register includes staff travel and unlike the Councillor Expense Statements provides a cost break down per trip.)

Most trips (if not all) have been to China. We hope to see the Directors cut and not that of the City Censor.

• We will provide you with a detailed break down of the most sort after destinations, department by department and the full costs.
• We hope to go behind the scenes and discover who's been where and with whom?
• Answers to burning questions like "Did Bamboo Rob visit Italy again?"
• Which member of staff was the lucky winner of the round the world tour last year.

We hope it has not been censored and that the data is in full and complete. We will compare it with the previous data and note the changes.

This and hopefully more when the Council administration finaly release the details of the Travel Register.

• The Travel Register that they did not want you to see.
• The Travel Register that was withdrawn from public view in the middle of the night on Christmas eve 2004.
• The Travel Register that the administration had spent 10's of thousands of dollars of ratepayers money trying to avoiding disclosure and publication. (Alison Lyon worked day and night trying to prevent its public release)
• Attempts to discredit the reviewers, they tried to shoot the watch-dog and conspired to pervert the course of justice in what was considered by some to be the biggest conspiracy scandel to hit Clown Hall since water-gate.
  

Yes the big day is expected today!

Current Council's expenses for their first year in office



Previous Council's expenses over three years five months period

Note: Missing from the previous Council's expense statements is over $8,000.00 attributed to Cr Anthony Nicholson's St. Petersburg 'Mid Summer Tour' - unaccounted for and not included in the published expense statements. We identified this problem and although the Council had paid-out this money it still is not listed in the published Councillor Expenses, WHY?

We call on the Council auditors to provide an explanation, its been well over two years and surely money paid-out is an expense and not dependant on Cr Nicholson providing receipts. If no answers are received soon we will ask the State Auditor General's department to investigate.

The published expense statements do not list:

• the costs associated with the Lord Mayor and Deputy Lord Mayor's Limousines.
• allowances paid to the Lord Mayor ($380,000), Deputy Lord Mayor ($155,454 ) and Councillors ($68,363)
• internal catering (estimated to be worth over $750,000)
• Other costs have been hidden and attributed to other budget items and not disclosed.