Page 3015 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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members’ lounge and the possibility of utilising the opposition party room by volunteers and some staff when not in use as a party room. A stated reason for their request for additional accommodation was that the number of staff and volunteers could not be accommodated in the available space.
On 23 September 2009 the opposition leader’s chief of staff emailed me to again raise these issues. Permission to use the members’ lounge was not granted and the proposal to remove and reconfigure certain office partitions was not pursued.
On 14 March this year the opposition leader’s chief of staff emailed my senior adviser—following an earlier oral request, I understand—to advise that between then and mid-May the number of workstations required by the opposition for all staff, volunteers and interns would be 24, which was two more than the opposition had been allocated.
Following that request, I am advised that discussions ensued between the leader’s office and relevant Secretariat managers to clarify the numbers of people to be accommodated. Those discussions identified that only volunteers who were formally engaged under the Assembly’s volunteer policy could be counted, and at that time the Secretariat confirmed that it had records for just two such volunteers.
The total number of volunteers this calendar year in members’ offices is seven. Under the Assembly’s volunteer guidelines, proposed volunteer agreements must be approved by the Clerk or corporate manager. I have been advised that one of the conditions that the Secretariat will seek to verify before approving a volunteer agreement is that there is an appropriate workstation and adequate space is available.
The third instance is that in May this year, following the resignation of the former Chief Minister, a request from the executive to reconfigure the Chief Minister’s, Deputy Chief Minister’s and Minister Corbell’s office to better utilise space was received. It was identified that the proposed rearrangement would also address and identify work safety risk, and approval was granted for the rearrangement to proceed.
Finally, in responding to Mr Hargreaves’s supplementary about which members approached me for additional space, I am mindful that any proposal to engage a volunteer could be regarded as a request for resources for volunteers. As such, I will table the list of volunteers engaged by the non-executive members in the Seventh Assembly as well as the documents I referred to in my earlier answer. I table the following papers:
ACT Legislative Assembly—Office accommodation—Copies of emails (5).
Mr Barr interjecting—
MR SPEAKER: Members, while I have the floor, I have been reminded twice in the last two days by the Clerk that there is no longer a Minister for Children and Young People; it is now the Minister for Community Services.
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