Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I support the bill but I will be moving amendments in the committee stage to include in the ambit of this authority, with the appropriate adjustments being made to the bill, effectively anyone who is on the Commonwealth financial role—anyone paid for by the Australian taxpayer. I was occasioned to consider this, I might say, by an article in TheCanberra TimesI think it was last Monday. It was quoting their own editorial of some weeks prior to that. But it did raise the point: whilst there is already quite a deal of oversight for politicians—their statements of interests, their support additions in addition to their salaries, their salaries; all of this is well known to the public, with a lot of it available on FOI—the same information is not available to the public generally in relation to senior public servants and people involved in government statutory authorities like the Human Rights Commission. That just mentions one of literally hundreds of government statutory authorities and agencies, some of which are accountable to parliament by annual reports. Most of them are accountable in a sort of way through estimates. But if you ever ask for salaries or particular employment conditions for some of the statutory authority people you get obfuscation and arguments about privacy from the bureaucrats.

Whilst we are today in this mood of a greater accountability for parliamentarians, let's extend it to have that accountability in relation to the people that have the real power in the Australian government—that is, the senior bureaucrats, the judiciary, the Defence Force. Their entitlements perhaps should be able to be seen by the public. I am not suggesting that the judiciary or the Defence Force have the real power, but anyone who has been involved in government knows that government, particularly at a federal level, is such a big organisation and has so many arms and tentacles that, really, it is the Public Service under the Westminster system that really has the power. It makes recommendations to ministers, deals with contracts and deals with supply—and those things. I think it is important to include everybody in this accountability net.

I hasten to add that over the years that I have been in this parliament and my nine years in the ministry I have met some wonderful public servants. In fact, I do not think I have ever met a public servant who has given me any cause to doubt their honesty, their sincerity, their competence, their devotion to their duty. I am terribly impressed with the work our bureaucracy does for the government of the day and for the country as a whole. I am not suggesting there are causes for concern, but of course unless you know you never know, and this article in The Canberra Times did alert me to the need for there to be wider scrutiny.

I have mentioned it before, in another debate, but I will mention it again. The ABC is one of those so-called independent statutory authorities totally funded by the taxpayer, and so many taxpayers say to me—well, the first thing they say is, 'Why don't you sell it?' but that is not an option. But I do think it is important that the public understand just what the senior people in the ALP—in the ABC. That was almost a Freudian slip there: 'in the ALP'. Some people cannot distinguish between the ALP and the ABC, and often I am one of them. I think it is important that we understand—because it is taxpayers' money you see, Mr Acting Deputy President. It would be different if it were a commercial radio station, a commercial TV station or a newspaper which makes its own money, but, where the ABC is totally funded by the taxpayer and very, very well funded, I think it is appropriate that the public and perhaps even this parliament have some idea of which people in that organisation are receiving what sort of money.

I mentioned the incident several years ago now, when Labor was in power, when we desperately tried at estimates to find out what a prominent ABC broadcaster's salary was. I think he was in charge of The 7.30 Report at the time. The government of the day, the unions, the Labor Party and everyone obfuscated and tried and tried to prevent us getting that information, but, in what was then a bit of a test case between the power of the parliament and the power of the ABC bureaucracy, the parliament eventually won out on a sort of compromise. We got a list—not by name, I might say—or a range of salaries that were paid, as I recall, to their top three presenters, so we knew what it was. It was something in the order of $600,000 or $700,000, as I recall. I think it is important for this parliament, as representatives of the people of Australia, to be able to know what Tony Jones or Barrie Cassidy receives, for example. We only see them for a couple of hours a week on the TV, and a lot of constituents say to me, 'Well, they only work for two hours a week; what pay are they getting?' I know they work a bit more than this, but—