Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In my contribution yesterday, I put on the public record that in 2015-16 we expect to collect $405.4 billion, an increase of 5.5 per cent on 2014-15, and that expenses are expected to be $434.5 billion, an increase of 3.4 per cent on 2014-15. In relation to revenue, 47.9 per cent is from PAYE taxpayers, 17.6 per cent from company taxes and 15.2 per cent from sales tax, GST and the like.

A couple of concerned taxpayers contacted me and said, 'That is really good to hear, but what are you doing with the expenditure side of things?' So I thought I would take one small example from the 2014-15 budget and go into a bit of detail about the expenditure that is organised and approved through the Minister for Finance, through the Treasurer and through the normal appropriation processes. In the 2015 budget, $98.3 million was allocated to 'expanding Australia's diplomatic footprint'. About $20 million of that expenditure was allocated to the establishment of an embassy in Doha, the capital of Qatar. You could ask: why Doha? We have facilities in Abu Dhabi and in Dubai, but DFAT has decided that we need an embassy in Doha. You could say: 'Well, that is their job. That is what Foreign Affairs and Trade do.' They look around and see where we need a diplomatic footprint and they go ahead and do it. They have put a proposal, through the parliament, to the Public Works Committee, which has a process called 'medium works', which is for works of less than $15 million. The proposal is looked at and tested for being fit for purpose, value for money and in the public interest, and any revenue and the like that it may generate is examined—the normal common-sense test that should be applied to every taxpayer dollar that is spent.

Over the 15-odd years that I held the positions of director of a motor accident commission or trustee director of a superannuation fund, the really important message that came back to me time and again was: never put a dollar anywhere that you would not put one of your own. So, if it is not good enough to attract one of your own dollars, do not put anyone else's there. I think it is about time we started to look at expenditure in these terms.

We received a proposal to lease a floor in the Tornado building in Doha, in Qatar. It was a proposal to lease and fit out 895 square metres. The first submission was that the fit-out would cost $8.91 million. If you divide 895 to $8.91 million, you get a total of $9,955 per square metre—extraordinary! That is almost twice the cost of the fit-out of the CPO offices in the centre of Sydney. If you have been to the Commonwealth Parliament Offices in Sydney you will know that they are fitted out to an extremely high standard. There was a bit of discussion about that and, appropriately, a week later, the department submitted a revised costing. This time it came in at $7.036 million, which is $7,861.45 per square metre—a huge amount of money. Once again, that is far and away the most expensive fit-out per square metre that has ever been referred to the Public Works Committee.

The proposal is taking its course. But, as is often the case through estimates hearings or contributions in the chamber, interested taxpayers forward you information. I have had a number of emails from an interested taxpayer who has actually lived and worked in Qatar for the last four years. He says that you could get a villa in Qatar—as most embassies in Qatar are—at the high end for QAR$35,000 per month, which is around A$13,500. It would be cheaper if you were a good tenant—and I am sure the Australian government is a good tenant—and if you had a long-term lease—and we are looking at 10 years—you could probably do better than that.

Here we have a proposal for three Australian A based personnel, an Austrade officer and 11 locally engaged staff; we are paying $72,000 a month for the lease; $860,000 plus per annum for the floor space; and we are paying $7000 plus to fit it out. That is bad enough, but if you divide the people into the square area you come up with roughly four or five times the normal amount of space that is allocated. If you are fitting out of building you give each person 12, 13 or 14 square metres and that comes out quite nicely, but this is coming out at 60 square metres per person. The department, however, says, 'we do not need all the space, but it is the way they do things. We can only get the whole floor.'

A concerned taxpayer in Qatar says that that is quite wrong. He wrote to me that:

Tornado Tower, The Gate Mall and the Burj Qatar are three of the most expensive office buildings in Qatar, there is plenty of cheaper office space in Qatar as it is a country with a penchant for building shiny new officers and not having tenants, a result of its oil & gas wealth.

He goes on to list an example of a building that has been completed for two years and still has no tenants—'a five-star building in a very good area but again, not in the city centre'.

We have taxpayers from afar saying that this is not a good deal. We have genuine bipartisan concern on the Public Works Committee that the tests for fit for purpose, value for money, in the public interest, any revenue to be derived have not yet been met. The deliberations of the committee will continue. But throw into the mix the fact that we do nine times more trade with Mongolia than we do with Qatar—we do a little over half a billion dollars with Qatar—which will be reduced by about $58 million worth of motor vehicles very shortly. We do some live trade, some boxed meat, and we take some fertiliser and oil and gas from Qatar.

All this calls into question my original premise: if $20 million of taxpayers money is being spent, where were the finance minister and the Treasurer with their calculators and slide rules testing all of this for fit for purpose, value for money, in the public interest? Would they put one of their own dollars into a proposal like this? That is the question they have to answer. If it was a private sector business and there was ample opportunity to take advantage of vacancies in office buildings or to rent completely secure self-contained villas, as most embassies do, for a fraction of the cost, which decision would you make? Would you rent for $13,500 a month a secure private villa in the middle of the embassy precinct or would you rent for $72,000 a month, taking more space than you need, in the most expensive building in the city? That test is completely obvious to me, and I think every taxpayer out there is entitled to have every decision maker in this building treat every investment of their taxpayer dollars exactly the same as they would their own. If you would not put one of your own dollars into it, do not put a taxpayer dollar into it. Do not waste in any way, shape or form the largesse that comes in at $405 billion; we should scrutinise it to the nth degree and make the prudent and correct decisions. I sincerely hope that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is listening to this, revises its project and finds a common sense solution.