'Malta trip a waste'

A parliamentary visit to Malta has attracted controversy in Australia. Anna Patty writes for Australia's Daily Telegraph:

A State MP who went on a taxpayer-funded study tour to Ireland and the US yesterday questioned the value of a Labor MP's visit to Malta. Democrats MP Arthur Chesterfield-Evans said Illawarra MP Marianne Saliba, who chairs the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, visited Malta to examine the voting system there. "Put it this way, if I was working out where to spend 10 days in the world to look at electoral systems, my gut feeling is you wouldn't go to Malta," he said. "I would have thought that some of the American states with different voting systems might have been a better place to go." The committee's overseas trip began on June 30 when its officer Stephanie Hesford and Ms Saliba went to Malta to visit MPs and the electoral commission for two days...