Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am sure you would have. I appreciate that. Anyway, if the parliamentary secretary thought that was a possible interpretation, I hasten to make it clear that that was not my intention. It was a light-hearted aside in what is otherwise a serious point—that every other Australian worker would have to front up to negotiate who was prepared to do the most for the least but that ministers do not have that rule applied to them. I do not think they should have, but I think we ought to have some decent application of common standards and principles. What we apply to ourselves we should apply to others. I think that is a pretty good principle.

I had and retain what was around this place the unpopular view that the changes to the superannuation provisions for members of parliament were correct—not because they are without criticism, not because they are perfect but because they are applying to members of parliament the same principle that applies to other Australians. We should apply the same rules to ourselves that we seek to impose on others. That cannot be exactly the case because we do not do exactly the same thing as others. I think more than a decade ago there was an attempt to tie members’ salaries to a particular category in the Public Service so that the general principle that applied to others outside the parliament applied to us in the terms of a determination of income. That has not been able to be applied absolutely because of the changes in the way Public Service salaries have been set since that time—that common benchmark, to some extent, evaporated—but the general principle still broadly applies. And, in my view, the more it can apply, the better it is.

So I feel very strongly—not that there is anything wrong with the provisions of this bill; like all other members of the opposition I will vote for this bill, as it is a bill that reflects the fact that ministers’ salaries are determined by an independent tribunal, as they should be—and deplore the fact that the salaries of the ministers who have barefaced brought in the bill should be determined in common by an independent tribunal and they should get over the years decent sized pay rises as a result while at the same time low-paid workers should have to go to the Fair Pay Commission and get what the Fair Pay Commission and the government expect to be a significant reduction in the rate of increase and that ordinary workers should not have access to such a tribunal or to such collective agreements.

I come back in conclusion—I did promise both the minister and the member for Grayndler that I would speak for only 10 minutes—that, in support of the amendment of the member for Wills, I sometimes do look across in amazement at the lack of performance of many on the frontbench. I think some of those people on the backbench on the government’s side must shake their heads and ask, ‘How is it that these people are there ahead of me?’

See this speech in context