Councillor's travel expenditure

It must be pick on local government week again with lots of aticles in the paper about local government and hauling in the so called rorts that we enjoy. Once again the state government says that we must come in line with the expectations of state politicians. This is fine by me but it seems that state politicians now get an annual allowance to cover all travel and how they spend it is up to them. There are few checks and balances. As a Councillor  I can claim travel expenses through my taxes or ask for reimbursement from Council. We are also allowed to spend up to $8,000 each Council term on conferences+ travel and accomodation. The amount spent by each Councillor can be found here. This tells you everything spent without detailing the actual training and development opportunities embraced by each councillor.