Gifts overfloweth: Why Richard Marles has two offices in Geelong

The ABC reported in 2024 that Richard Marles is the only minister in the Albanese government with a standalone ministerial office in his electorate, with all other ministers having combined electorate-ministerial offices or using Commonwealth Parliament Offices (CPO) in capital cities for their ministerial duties.

No one can blame Marles for not wanting to use the Melbourne CPO as his ministerial office as it’s over 70 km from his Geelong electorate, but why couldn’t he have leased a combined local office?

Open Politics has been told that it’s because Marles had too much stuff in his electorate office, including gifts and mementos, and didn’t want to move it all to a new premises. Marles’ social media shows his Canberra office also has plenty of mementos, even a collection of lanyards and his crazy snow dome collection.

Another bonkers aspect to all this is that Marles decided to convert his heritage-listed electorate office into his ministerial office and rent another premises only 240 metres away for his electorate office. Information obtained by the ABC under FOI shows taxpayers were slugged over $650,000 for the setup of the new electorate office.

Additional, undisclosed costs were incurred by Defence officials to ensure Marles’ old electorate office met the security requirements of a defence minister’s office. Heritage-listed buildings are notoriously expensive to modify with so it’s a fair bet the security upgrade was costly.

It seems that what Marles wants, Marles gets, regardless of the cost to taxpayers.