Page 1368 - Week 07 - Thursday, 24 August 1989
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MR DUBY: I have not had any consultant come into my office, sit there from 8.30 to 12.30, clock off for lunch and go home at 5 o'clock. That is totally different, Mr Kaine, and you are well aware of it. And if you cannot understand the difference, Mr Kaine, you do not deserve to be the Leader of the Opposition.
Mr Kaine: It does not make any difference if he is a consultant or he is being paid salary money.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Please address your remarks through the Chair.
Mr Kaine: It is a rort, Mr Speaker.
MR DUBY: It certainly is a rort, the fact that you are there with an extra 30-odd grand for whatever reason. In addition, I have subsequently found out that consultancy fees do not come out of the salaries vote. It may well be that on the occasions on which I have used salaries I have used them incorrectly or in a wrong fashion, not in any way attempting to rort the system, but I should have put those persons on staff and had them paid a salary, and I well appreciate the fact. The fact of the matter also is that we had entitlement to those salaries and those positions have not been filled. We have done nothing.
Mr Kaine: The same with us. We have not filled them either.
MR DUBY: Not with this, though. That is the difference. Can you not see the point?
Mr Stevenson: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. I object to being referred to as "this".
MR DUBY: What would you like me to refer to you as - "this member"?
MR SPEAKER: I am not sure that that is a valid point of order, Mr Stevenson.
MR DUBY: No, it is a ridiculous point of order. Anyway this is what you are letting yourselves into. Believe me, as I stated before an interjection, under the MOP(S) scheme that applies in the house across the hill the only persons empowered to hire consultants are Government Ministers, and those persons that they hire do not come in and work as persons in their office. They have a contract.
There is a vast difference, and for you people to make out that you cannot see it is clearly ludicrous. What you are doing, of course, is kowtowing for the day that you lot want to get together and form a government with Dennis Stevenson as Minister for Racial Purity or whatever he will be in your government, and that is all it is.
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