South Australian MP Fraser Ellis has lost a bid to have deception charges against him dismissed.
The Yorke Peninsula MP is due to stand trial later this month.
The Liberal-turned-independent is seeking to contest allegations he made 78 fraudulent claims for an accommodation allowance totalling more than $18,000.
He was one of two MPs charged and several investigated for their use of the allowance by the state's Independent Commissioner Against Corruption after a series of exclusive ABC News stories.
Mr Ellis had argued the case against him should be dismissed, because the allowance claim forms which are the subject of his alleged deception have been tabled in parliament, making them subject to the "absolute protection of parliamentary privilege".
This morning, Magistrate Simon Smart dismissed Mr Ellis's application to stay the charges.
The state's ICAC Act was significantly amended in November last year, after Mr Ellis was charged.
Amongst the wholesale changes, the protections of parliamentary privilege were strengthened, so that ICAC cannot exercise any powers "in relation to any matter to which parliamentary privilege applies".
Mr Ellis's lawyers had argued the protection of parliamentary privilege had come into force, when previously secret claim forms for the Country Members Accommodation Allowance were tabled by the Speaker amid public debate sparked by the ABC's stories in 2020.
However, Magistrate Smart was not persuaded by this argument.
"The claim forms were plainly brought into existence solely for an administrative purpose," he wrote.
"Once tabled, the accused's claim forms and the statements made therein were subject of no question or debate.
"In the context of a debate concerning parliamentary allowances, and following a call for the tabling of such documents, apparently for reasons of public transparency, it would represent an incongruous outcome if the representations made in those forms could not later be challenged as untruthful."
