Page 1367 - Week 07 - Thursday, 24 August 1989
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you that if everyone is working on the basis that you are all being paid at 1.5 ASO5s per head, my party will be insisting on 4.5 ASO5s. So to service our three, we are going to have a salary in the order of 150 grand. For God's sake; why not?
Mr Jensen: You have got $86,000. Is that not enough?
MR DUBY: We do not have that. You are misinformed, Mr Jensen, for the fourteenth time.
MR SPEAKER: Order!
MR DUBY: That is the case. You are setting a ridiculous precedent here on the matter of 1.5 staff per member. That is what you are doing. What you are doing also in relation to consultancies I can only advise you is clearly a very, very dangerous thing to do.
There is no question about the fact, no question whatsoever that Mr Stevenson's staff of John Hesketh, his wife and his stepson were employed on that basis and were employed on a gross salary as a consultancy for no other reason than to minimise pay-as-you-earn tax. It is an incontrovertible fact.
I notice that Mr Stevenson mentioned that one of the people was a volunteer. Well, what is to stop him from still volunteering? He is welcome to come in any day and work for nothing. Good on him. The situation is also that, now you are allocating Mr Stevenson $46,000 to hand out gross - no pay-as-you-earn - there are no checks whatsoever on where that money is going or whom it is going to. For goodness sake, all sorts of situations can arise. You are leaving yourself wide open for the system to be rorted. That is the only word for it.
It has been mentioned that I have hired a consultancy. I certainly have. There is a total difference between someone working in an office from 8.30 in the morning until 5 o'clock in the afternoon, five days a week, 52 weeks in a year on a salary basis, on an employee basis, providing office services and, as you people maintain, a consultancy that can then hire it out to the lowest bidder or whatever. Not to have someone working on a salary basis, on a proper wages system that all your employees work under, that all my employees work under, is clearly ludicrous.
Mr Kaine: How did you get your consultant? Where did that money come from?
MR DUBY: As I have frequently told the house, Mr Kaine, my party is entitled to three staff. We have chosen to employ two full-time people. I have not - - -
Mr Kaine: So you use salary money for consultancy. There is no difference.
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