Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have just done a radio interview with an announcer in Sydney. I had one of those moments where I thought, ‘Gee, I wish I had come up with that.’ I was doing an interview in my capacity as chair of the Labor Party Waste Watch Committee. He ended the interview with, ‘Gee, there’s a lot of waste to watch.’ I thought that that summed it up just magnificently. Yes, there is a hell of a lot of waste to watch from this government.

We are only three days into Senate estimates and already there is an avalanche of waste to watch. On day one we learnt about the proposal to extend the Prime Minister’s dining room. You may say that that is off the drawing board, but at the time it was not. At the time $540,000—that is half a million dollars—was going to be put towards extending his dining room from a 16-seat dining room to a 20-seat dining room. This dining room comes on top of the Prime Minister’s dining room at the Lodge and at Kirribilli, and there are restaurants and private dining rooms in this building et cetera. I am not sure how many dining rooms one man needs. I have a tiny one in Box Hill. It suits me. We are talking of an excessive waste of money—indeed, an obscene waste of money. This is more money than people spend on their homes. It was being contemplated seriously enough by this government to spend $65,000 on an architect to design it. This comes on top of a litany of spending by this government.

Over the last 11 years $20 million has gone into the upkeep and maintenance of the Prime Minister’s two residences. Again, why does the Prime Minister have two residences? Surely there is one capital of Australia. It is here in Canberra. That is where the Prime Minister of this country should reside. But the cost of the maintenance of his two residences actually pales into insignificance when we look at the cost of this government’s spending on advertising. Currently the Australian government is the largest buyer of advertising in this country. Indeed, the government is trying to purchase so much advertising at this point in time that it is pushing up the price of most ads being bought on TV, on radio and in newspapers. Most ads have gone up by 20 per cent. That might not sound a lot, but when you multiply it out, that is an extreme amount of money being pushed up. The government is trying to purchase so much advertising that Harold Mitchell, the media ad buyer, has said that he cannot purchase enough space to put in the ads.

In the last 11 years of this government, $1.7 billion has been spent on advertising. Where could that money have gone? But that is nothing when you look at it in the excruciating detail of what this government has spent in the last financial year, from 1 July 2006 until 31 March 2007—$111.2 million. But that is nothing compared to the $4.1 million they spent in one week. There was $4.1 million spent on Work Choices advertising in one week. Of course, it is not Work Choices anymore; it is advertising to rid us of that name so it goes out of the Australian consciousness.

Kicking and screaming through Senate estimates we have discovered there has been $1.9 million for bushfire awareness, $4.8 million for national security, $2.9 million for family law reform, $2.6 million for quarantine matters, $15.8 million for simpler superannuation, $500,000 for regional telecommunications, $17.4 million for Defence Force recruiting, $12.9 million for Skills for the Future, $4.1 million for workplace relations in one week, $7.5 million for smarter travel, $1 million for asthma awareness, $6.1 million for cervical cancer, $300,000 for pregnancy support, $14.5 million for private health insurance, $3.1 million for drought assistance, $2.1 million for citizenship, and $13.1 million for ending violence against women. Some of this advertising is justified, but it is the extreme amount of it and the abuse of the taxpayers’ purse. If you want to get re-elected, use your own funds. Dip into the Liberal Party’s purse, not the taxpayers’ purse. This is an obscene use of taxpayers’ money which could be going into desperately needed areas. (Time expired)