Gary Nairn (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party, Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

and that was put in place by the previous, Labor government. The original decision is now more than five years old and there is a need to maintain the real value of the entitlement. Thus the cap has been increased to $150,000. We believe that MPs should keep the public informed of major issues in their electorates, as well as their rights and responsibilities. In the case of my electorate, the new cap of $150,000, if I were to use it all, would amount to $1.60 per constituent per year for me to correspond with my electorate. I do not think that is unreasonable at all.

I note that this disallowance motion by the member for Wills, who took off after he spoke, is also disallowing the change for senators. The member for Wills did not mention the senators’ printing allowance at all. He talked about government advertising—I did not interrupt him, like the member for Oxley has been trying to interrupt me—because he got way off the mark. He was talking about a motion for disallowance of printing, but he went off and talked about government advertising and all sorts of other extraneous things. But he did not talk about the senators, whose printing this motion is attempting to disallow as well.

Let us deal with senators. Senators previously had an allowance of 5,000 printed sheets per month which was administered by the Department of the Senate, which in turn vetted all material. This was administratively inefficient and on a bipartisan basis it was decided to extend to senators the same rules that applied to members. I say ‘bipartisan’ because it is. Let me quote some of the things that were said by senators in relation to this. In Senate estimates on 26 May 2004, Senator Robert Ray said:

…the difficulty here is that, whilst you are limited to 5,000 a month and 60,000 a year, you may have only one large print run a year but you cannot do it. You have to have it spread over all that time. Don’t you think it would be much better to move all these things to come under one administration? You have already moved travel allowance. This is just an anomaly sitting there.

That was Senator Robert Ray in 2004. Black Rod, who has to administer this, said:

The only other stress that we have with it is this ongoing ‘censoring’ role that the Black Rod and the Deputy Black Rod perform that some senators are not very happy with.

Again, Senator Robert Ray said on 24 May 2004:

Why don’t you just dump this out of the Senate department? It has been there for 30 or 40 years. It has become a joke. Why don’t you just cut and run on this—no Senate printing allowance, leave it up to DOFA to do or Senator Abetz to do what he wants to do with it to make it equal and just get out of it. You are always going to be put in a position where you are making Black Rod the censor. It is never going to be very popular with senators and it puts you in a totally invidious position. Why don’t you just cut and run?

He was talking to the President of the Senate. So he saw the sense in making the change that we have made. Mr Harry Evans, the Clerk of the Senate, on 24 May 2004 said in response to Senator Ray:

In response to suggestions that the regulations be changed to transfer it to DOFA, I have always said that we have no objection to that. It is not a function that we want to desperately hang on to—

He went on to say:

Take it away! I am not fussed about whether it goes or does not go.

On 14 February 2005, Senator Faulkner said to Black Rod:

I think you are in the awful situation of having to be the chief censor, aren’t you?

Black Rod responded:

Yes, and my deputy.

So that is the bipartisan support for the changes in the Senate—the changes that the member for Wills wants to disallow. In the 20 minutes he spoke, he said nothing about senators, only members. Given the different nature of the jobs, however, senators have an entitlement of $20,000 per annum.

I mentioned the hypocrisy in this motion—the fact that under Labor the allowance was unlimited—and that is why this is really just a stunt. I recall that Labor and the minor parties carried out this same sort of stunt in August 2003. They joined with the Democrats and Greens to disallow an increase to the printing allowance which would have been of assistance to all members. What Labor would like us to forget, though, is that at the same time they could not quite find it in their hearts to disallow a range of entitlements that were specifically designed to help Labor and the minor parties—entitlements such as enhanced transport arrangements for opposition and minor party MPs, including new charter transport arrangements for them, business-class travel for their staff, more computers for them and more mobile phones for their staff. They did not disallow those things but they disallowed the printing allowance. So it is hypocrisy to the nth degree, absolute hypocrisy.

The ‘shadow minister for entitlements’, the member for Wills, has shown himself not to be too smart on this issue. On ABC Radio in Perth on 17 August 2006, he said ‘$125,000 is already too high’. As I said before—and as the member for Wills acknowledged earlier—the member for Griffith spent $124,999.99 of his allowance in the last financial year. So maybe the 1c is the difference between not too much and too much! On another occasion, the member for Wills said, ‘I think people ought to be able to do their communications with a budget of under $100,000.’ Well, the Leader of the Opposition spent $110,000, so they are in conflict there.

Then he went on to say that the previous cap was in the order of $62,000. It was not. That is completely false. There was an unlimited cap, as I have said a number of times. The Howard government are the only ones that have put a cap on printing. Under Labor it was uncapped. He then said:

The willingness to use taxpayers’ money for your own political advantage is something that we would not tolerate.

My goodness, put the hand on the heart when you hear that from the member for Wills! He certainly spent more than the $62,000 that he claimed was a cap, which was not a cap anyway, so he broke his own cap. And on it goes. We do not know whether it is unlimited or $125,000, $100,000, $75,000, $62,000—they are all over the shop and they do not really know what is going on. It is always ‘do as I say, not as I do’ when you look at the record.

We obviously do not support this motion. Many of the members of the Labor Party have been right up there against the cap of $125,000 that was put in place over five years ago. Change is appropriate. As I said, it relates to about $1.60 per constituent per year in my electorate and, having the very large electorate that you have, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, you would know full well the need to communicate right throughout your very large electorate. You cannot drive around it in half an hour. People expect you to answer their correspondence and provide them with the information they are looking for and at $1.60 per constituent per year I do not believe that is unreasonable at all. This process today has just been another stunt to divert attention from the fact that the Labor Party do not have any policies at all. We will be opposing the disallowance motion.

Question put:

That the motion (That the motion (Mr Kelvin Thomson’s) be agreed to.) be agreed to.

See this speech in context