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

I think he wants me to tell him about when the Sea Shepherd, which Bob Brown was involved with, spilt oil into Cairns harbour. With all of the hoo-ha about saving the Barrier Reef that the Greens go on about, there was their leader on a ship spilling oil into the Barrier Reef, for which they were rightly fined and brought to account by the courts. Is that what you wanted me to talk about, Senator Whish-Wilson? If it was, please intervene as often as you like.

This bill, in some form, would have been useful earlier. I will go into my amendments in more detail in the committee stage, but they simply seek to include in the oversight what we define as Commonwealth government employees and, in addition to that, members of the judiciary and people who work for statutory offices. They also seek to include an officer or an employee of a Commonwealth company, within the meaning of the act. That means an employee of any Commonwealth company for which Commonwealth ministers are the sole shareholders. We have them appear at estimates and we have annual reports from them. This involves not the cleaner or the receptionist but the senior SES officers in some of those statutory authorities. It would be interesting to see what they might receive.

Whilst the public are very interested in what politicians receive, a salary of around $200,000 a year, I know the public are horrified when they hear that the CEO of a Commonwealth government owned company, namely, Australia Post, which for years has lost money—I believe it made some money this year—gets a salary of upwards of $5 million. In these days of greater accountability, greater openness and greater transparency, I think it is important that that applies to all the elements of governance and government that are paid for by the Commonwealth taxpayer.