Over the last week politicians here and in the UK have been having a go at each other over certain kinds of tax-payer expenses.

In Australia, an argument about travel expenses (though overshadowed by general budget stouches) has caught my eye. The Opposition made hay on the report released last week detailing the current governments travel expenses during the parlimentary winter break last year.

The arguments are fairly standard fare:

Opposition: “You are ripping off the taxpayer by spending too much on expensive overseas trips”

Government: “We didn’t spend any more than you guys”.

Where does this leave an observer like me? Without some numbers to back up the arguments, I can’t really make a judgement either way. So lets look at the numbers:

From the original tabled report, as reported in various sources, we have the following examples of government spending on travel:

• A total of $2 million over the 8 weeks of winter break
• $226,000 for 20 people to visit Chile and the US for 11 days
• $62,980 for 3 staff (and a wife) to travel to Europe for 8 days

In reply, we have this from the government:

• John Howard spent $20 million on travel expenses during his time as PM

Clear? Not really. Seriously, this is no more helpful to me than claims by makeup ads that my new mascara will be 72% more “extreme”.

This kind of number throwing does not help make the picture clearer to anyone, and, without some kind of comparison, voters have no hope of understanding the issues. And believe me, numbers CAN be meaningful.

The Guardian Newspaper’s Datablog is a great example of the power of data access. In response to the recent scandal over MPs tax payer expenses, Datablog has published the expenses spreadsheet and bloggers have created a range of different visualisations, from charts to word clouds and google maps (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog+politics/mps-expenses).

This is a great example of the power of web 2.0 to make complex information accessible, and I look forward to it happening more and more here in Australia. The information is out there.