Page 1180 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 22 August 1989
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house is 1.5 staff members, if you like - an amount of about $45,000 - except in my case, with the Abolish Self Government Coalition, which has one member only and an allowance of some $31,000.
Ms Maher: And Bill.
Mr Whalan: Bill has only got one.
MR STEVENSON: I did mention party allowance. I do not particularly think it is necessary to go into the matter of Mr Wood.
Mr Whalan: Why not? He is a very important person.
MR STEVENSON: Indeed, Mr Wood is an important person. But I think it is not particularly necessary to suggest that, because Mr Wood is a member of the Labor Party, there may be such things as questions asked of Ministers - and there was a good example of that today - that Ministers are well aware of, basically dorothy dix questions.
So to look at the only relevant party that the Coalition can be compared to, the Residents Rally, the Rally has six staff members for four elected members, a total of $184,000-odd, which divided by four - in other words, per person - is something like $46,000. That is the allowance that my party should also receive.
What happened was that the matter could not be resolved by me until I received the full allowance and I was able, as a part-term situation to fill the gap, to hire a consultancy. I effectively got three for one staff member pay. I saved thousands of dollars, because the consultancy pays for holidays, superannuation, insurances and other things. Now, what did the Chief Minister do after I had hired the consultancy? She said that there are concerns about hiring a consultancy, notwithstanding that these concerns are apparently not relevant in her own requirement for hiring consultants.
There are concerns about insurance and tax minimisation. The insurance and minimisation should not need to be commented upon but nevertheless insurances are controlled by the consultancy. They are not a concern of the ACT Administration. As far as tax minimisation is concerned, the ACT Administration uses consultants. It is not a problem there. The Chief Minister will use consultants, if the Bill goes through, and it is supposedly not a problem there. I must make the point that tax minimisation is legal, unless there is something in store for the businesses in Canberra that I do not yet know about.
So I put a submission in on this five weeks ago. A week or so ago I was told by the Chief Minister's secretary that it had been lost. What happened, effectively, was that my staff were fired last Friday. Is this an example of the first 100 days? If so, I am concerned about the second 100.
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