Page 1366 - Week 07 - Thursday, 24 August 1989
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Mr Stevenson. I would also agree very much with Mr Stefaniak that he is in a unique position of being both an individual member and responsible to a constituency which is a party constituency, and I believe that he should have a similar arrangement to, for example, the Residents Rally. I would also like to take objection - - -
Mr Kaine: I rise on a point of order. Mr Speaker, is there only one debate, or two, going on on the floor?
MR SPEAKER: Proceed, Dr Kinloch.
DR KINLOCH: I want to object to the notion that the only things Mr Stevenson has done have been to make objections about salaries. Those of us who have been on the Social Policy Committee and, I know, on the section 19 committee will recognise him as a very hard-working member of those committees.
MR DUBY (4.05): There have been quite a few misinterpretations - I think that is the way to put it - going on around here today. First of all, I am going to make two points. To say that Mr Stevenson is the only person in the house who does not have 1.5 staff members to himself as part of his party is clearly claptrap. My group have three members. We have three staff. We know that Bill Wood, a back bencher, has one staff member. I do not know the arrangements with the Liberal Party, but my thought was that there were four members on the Leader of the Opposition's staff and I think they may have four or five members to service the party.
The fact of the matter is that with larger parties, and especially with such an important organisation as the Liberal Party, it is only logical that you are going to need more staff. The same goes for the Residents Rally.
Mr Wood: They just need that much more help; that is the thing.
MR DUBY: There are four members of the Residents Rally, and I understand that they have staffing arrangements of four ASO5s and two ASO4s. That is the ASL figure. They can do with it as they wish. As a result, they have some ASO6s, they have some ASO2s, et cetera. It is only commonsense, though, that a group that likes to call itself the real Opposition needs to have extra staff to handle extra circumstances and extra duties.
What you are doing is taking out of the legitimate realm of the Government the right to allocate staff to parties and you are saying quite categorically that it has to be 1.5 staff persons at an ASO5 level of salary. Clearly, this is a ridiculous and stupid precedent to set. That is the only possible thing I can say. As for voting on this in the house, it is going to look good, is it not? Where will the claims be next? Is Mr Wood going to have a claim in for half an ASO5, a committee secretary, because I can assure
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