Preference whisperer Glenn Druery in lavish travel spend - The Age

Controversial “preference whisperer” Glenn Druery charged taxpayers more than $150,000 in travel and other expenses while working as an adviser to then-senator Derryn Hinch, and also running a lucrative cash-for-votes business in state elections.

Travel expense records obtained by The Sunday Age after a two-year Freedom of Information battle reveal a dramatic hike in trips Mr Druery took to Melbourne in 2018 coinciding with the Victorian election, where he made hundreds of thousands of dollars helping micro parties win the balance of power in the state’s upper house.

Self-styled preference whisperer Glenn Druery.Credit:Andrew Meares

Details of the travel spending came as multiple micro parties confirmed they are already organising with Mr Druery for the Victorian 2022 state election, despite the furore around his vote harvesting tactics in 2018.

Liberal Democrats upper house MP Tim Quilty was one of nine upper house MPs Mr Druery claims to have helped get elected in 2018 despite primary votes as low as 0.6 per cent.

He confirmed his party was in discussions with Mr Druery about the 2022 elections: “We have talked to him and we will probably work with him,” Mr Quilty said.

The Sunday Age has also confirmed that Mr Druery is heavily involved in the current state election campaign in Western Australia.

The spending on flights, taxis and travel allowance cover a two-and-a-half year period when the Sydney-based Mr Druery worked for then-senator Hinch.

It is far in excess of that reported by other Victorian backbench or crossbench senators on staff travel.

It is against federal government rules for a parliamentary staffer to personally benefit from publicly- funded travel. Breaches of the rules can be investigated by the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority and even referred to the Federal Police. Mr Druery did not respond to detailed questions from The Sunday Age.

Mr Druery has fought the FOI release of the travel records since 2018 including through an appeal to the federal Information Commissioner. The documents were finally released in late 2020.

They show Mr Druery flew to Melbourne from Sydney on July 31, 2018. The following day he ran a candidates’ forum where he told a group of micro party parliamentary hopefuls they needed his help to win seats at that year’s state election.

Mr Druery, who lives on a 55-foot yacht at Clontarf marina, flew back to Sydney the following day. The trip including fares, travel allowances and cabs cost taxpayers $1742.

Among other notable expenses was a publicly-funded flight to Maroochydore in Queensland on December 15, 2017. A post on the exercise website Strava shows Mr Druery sailed a yacht from Maroochydore down the coast for several days and then caught another flight back to Coffs Harbour. The trip cost taxpayers more than $1100.

An image from Druery’s yacht trip to Coffs Harbour.

In 2018 Mr Druery helped a record number of parties win seats in the Victorian upper house and in a later media interview he declared the 2018 Victorian poll his best ever election result after more than 20 years of preference harvesting at federal and state level.

His method is to bring micro-parties together as a preferencing bloc able to leapfrog larger, more substantial parties. In 2018 the Greens for instance were left with just one upper house seat, down from five.

The method relies on group tickets and electors voting above the line for the upper house, resulting in preferences being allocated according to deals struck by Mr Druery and party bosses.

In a recent submission to the Victorian government, prominent Tasmanian election expert Kevin Bonham described the Victorian upper housing voting system as “farcically broken”, resulting in preference flows that did not represent voters’ intentions.

Glenn Druery’s yacht Aphelion.

The federal government and some state governments have legislated to curb group voting. Victoria and Western Australia are the only jurisdictions left where group voting allows Mr Druery’s strategy to work.

Many in Victorian politics anticipated reform after Mr Druery’s clear influence on the 2018 poll.

But after two years of successful horse-trading with the disparate crossbench, the Andrews government has shown little appetite for change.

In 2020 the Labor-chaired Electoral Matters Committee considered the upper house and group voting problem in its review of the 2018 election but found the issues so “serious and complex” they needed a separate inquiry.

Committee member and Greens MP Tim Read said Labor had “kicked the can down the road” on upper house voting reform. “The government must ensure an inquiry is completed in time for reform before the next election,” he said.

Meanwhile, Reason Party leader Fiona Patten has pushed for her own version of reform.

She and Mr Druery had worked together in the past but in 2018 the two fell out and Ms Patten lodged a formal complaint about him which Victoria Police followed up but then dropped.

At the time, Ms Patten said Mr Druery had asked her team for a $5000 upfront fee to join his family of minor parties and a success fee of $50,000 for each candidate elected.

In 2020 Ms Patten tabled her own bill aimed squarely at Mr Druery which would outlaw profiteering from elections. The bill has not yet been voted on.

Victorian upper house MP Fiona Patten Credit:James Brickwood

This week Ms Patten said Victorians were “appalled” by the idea that someone like Mr Druery could profit from manipulating group voting tickets.

“You don’t want people making tens of thousands of dollars by setting up preference deals that don’t reflect the platforms of those parties and, therefore, that don’t reflect the intention of the person who voted for those parties.”

Mr Druery was key to the election of former radio personality Derryn Hinch and his Justice Party to the Senate in 2016 with a primary vote of 5.6 per cent. Mr Hinch then employed Mr Druery until his loss at the 2019 election.

An analysis of Mr Druery’s travel records shows that in 2017 he made 16 round trips to Melbourne costing $9406, but in the 2018 election year the figure rose to 31 round trips costing $25,785.

Through this period he held multiple meetings with micro party officials and candidates for the state election. There was also a big increase in his use of taxis in Victoria, from 18 trips in 2017 to 78 the following year, ahead of the state election. Many of the trips were around suburban Melbourne.

The travel expenses incurred by Mr Druery – worth $154,929 between mid 2016 and the end of 2018 – were part of a pattern of high spending by Hinch’s staff.

Parliamentary expenses data shows that in 2018, Mr Hinch’s staff spent $234,000 on travel expenses, far in excess of fellow senate crossbencher Stirling Griff from South Australia who spent $70,967 while Rex Patrick, also from South Australia, spent $97,654 on staff travel.

Mr Hinch spent nearly five times more than fellow Victorian senators Kimberley Kitching and Jacinta Collins (Labor) and Janet Rice (Greens) who spent just over $50,000 on staff travel. Liberal Senator James Paterson spent just under $70,000.

Other publicly funded trips by Mr Druery include attending Mr Hinch’s political party AGM in late August 2018 and Mr Druery charging taxpayers $1099 in “motor vehicle allowance” for a three-day 1746 kilometre round trip to Melbourne from Sydney in early 2017.

In a written response, Mr Hinch said the then-president of the senate Scott Ryan had approved Mr Druery living in Sydney while working for the Victorian senator. “All expenses were approved by IPEA (Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority).”

“When Mr Druery did private business he paid his own expenses. I have no idea what other cross-benchers applied for or were granted. All Hinch expenses are out there as they should be,” he said.

In 2018 then-senator Hinch said he believed Mr Druery kept his business dealings separate from his work as an adviser.

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2021-01-30 12:30:00Z
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