Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I have a question for you. My question regards visitor passes. The recent tightening of the eligibility for unescorted visitor passes has had a negative impact on particular groups of people who conduct mass lobbying exercises. I think particularly of Science Meets Parliament and also the efforts of the council of humanities and social studies, where they have large numbers of people coming to parliament and talking to many—if not all—members of parliament. I understand that the two things that have effectively changed as a result of these people being required to have escorted passes are, firstly, that they have to be escorted by a staff member or an MP from one office to another and, secondly, that in breaks between appointments with individual members they are required to go back to a committee room as a kind of home base.

I do not particularly have a problem with the second of those, but I do think it is a bit unreasonable for organisations of this kind to not be able to go from my office to another office down the corridor, for example, between two consecutive appointments without one of my staff members actually walking with them. So I am wondering whether you could examine this issue and see whether there is a middle ground that could be applied with respect to what is ultimately going to be a very small number of instances where you have now well-established and, I would argue, very positive efforts that enhance the parliament as well as the interests of those organisations in lobbying members of parliament.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Melbourne, and I appreciate the spirit in which he raises that question. I will look closely at the points he raised and get back to him as appropriate.