Page 2487 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 7 August 1991
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The new arrangements will take effect from 14 June 1991, and Members will need to adjust their staffing arrangements within the salary amounts allocated. I would be grateful if each Member could advise, in writing, ... the names of the staff each Member will be employing, and at what level each staff member is to be paid, in order that the necessary personnel details can be finalised.
Clearly, some of us had to put staff off, to adjust things. We received significant support from the ACT Administration in that sad process. Some of us are not through the process and it has impacted seriously on the earnings of people supporting a family. In my own office one of my two secretarial staff - one works part-time - has given $80 of her fortnightly pay to adjust the salary of one other member of my staff who is contributing to the support of her family.
Mr Speaker, they are very difficult days for those staff, but the fact is that those salary caps effectively set the conditions and the salaries of the staff employed. That appears, on my reading of the Act, to come within the ambit of the requirement that such decisions not be conveyed by way of a somewhat informal letter to the Speaker but be properly determined, as did the Chief Minister in the former instance.
The document that has prompted this amending Bill set a salary allocation to "non-executive members". It gave the Speaker $101,410; it gave the Leader of the Opposition $146,268; and under a heading called, interestingly, "Leaders of Minor Parties" it gave, in this order, $49,000 to Mr Moore, Mr Collaery, Mr Duby and Mr Stevenson. Then, under a heading called "Backbench Members", it gave $42,000 to other members.
Mr Speaker, there are some serious issues raised by this document, not the least being that it has been recognised in the legislation of this Assembly, in section 4, that the Chief Minister:
... may, by writing, determine that having regard to the parliamentary duties of a member of the Assembly, the member ought to be empowered to employ staff under this Part.
Clearly, the heading "Leaders of Minor Parties" is a reference to the parliamentary duties of a member, and the Chief Minister has purported to equate the party led by Mr Moore to the party led by me. There is just the small difference there of two MLAs; but, of course, that has been brushed over. It goes on with other anomalies. Mr Speaker, the Chief Minister has given the same staffing capacity to me as the leader of the Rally, a credible political force in this community, as she has given to Mr Moore.
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