If we put together every tax return ever filed by Greens Party politicians, what percentage of the income do you think would be taxpayer funded?

I started thinking about that question when I read that ‘lawyer and advocate’ Kate Davis was pre-selected by the Greens to run for the Federal seat of Fremantle:

The Greens have preselected lawyer and advocate Kate Davis to run for the Federal seat of Fremantle. Ms Davis, the founder and principal solicitor of tenants’ rights organisation Tenancy WA…

It almost sounds like she’s real business person running a real business doesn’t it? Of course, she isn’t and it doesn’t take much digging to find out that her ‘organisation’ (Tenancy WA):

• is almost completely government funded – 96.47% to be precise (see page 20 of its 2015 annual report);

• has no means test governing which tenants it helps (see the bottom of page 8!) – Donald Trump could probably walk in there and get some free advice from one its 8 lawyers and 4 ‘tenant advocates’ (see page 17);

• shelled out an obscene 69.74% of its $1.07 million of annual ‘income’ on ‘staffing’; and

• creatively claimed that it earned 4% of its own revenue, when the real figure was only 3.53% (apparently decimal points are all just too hard).

The story really should have been: ‘Head of financially unsustainable and taxpayer funded quango selected by extreme left-wing party to run in Fremantle’.