Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for the rhetoric. I stand by the comments I made earlier and I would simply ask you again: is Mr Henry still a member of the public service? If not, when did he retire, what is his position and what are the terms and conditions of his appointment? How is it possible that the government can legitimately ask the Governor-General to appoint Mr Henry at a salary of $535,000 a year without knowing what the job is?

He is no longer a person employed as the head of a department where the salary of $535,000 is established by the Remuneration Tribunal. He is now someone who is merely being appointed to assist the Prime Minister with advice of a political nature and he is being paid at the same level as the head of Treasury. I think the Australian people are entitled to know why the appointment is being made with no terms and conditions, no understanding of what the contract is or what his responsibilities are. And how you can possibly justify him being paid at the rate of the head of Treasury? I think it is an absolute disgrace but typical of the attitude of this government that thinks it can do anything in a panic to try and get some advice, which it thinks might help it out of a hole. If Mr Henry is still a member of the Public Service then I would like to know why he was not appointed in the ordinary way as a member of the executive service. Why was the decision taken to use section 67? Was it because this was the only way in which he could be paid this extraordinary amount of money, and otherwise he would be captured by a determination of the tribunal?

The parliamentary secretary can sit there and smirk all he likes. The bottom line is that this is taxpayers' money. We heard from the shadow minister for finance today that we are in debt wholly and solely due to the incompetence of this government—and, I might add, under the watch of the same Mr Henry as the head of Treasury, who backed up the extraordinary expenditure. We have only to look at your track record. We have only to look at pink batts, the waste of money in the BER or the $900 that went out to dead people or to people who lived overseas, only for us to be told, 'Oh, this is all perfectly ordinary.'

I asked you to give me one—just one—example of where anybody else had appointed a political appointee—that is, someone who was not part of a determination and was not someone like the sorts of people that you identified as being appointed quite properly under section 67. I asked you to give me one name of somebody who was appointed to a golden job with no job specification at $535,000 a year while still on leave, and you do not expect me to be outraged by that. Of course I am outraged by it. So I ask you again: is he still a member of the Public Service? If not, when did he leave? What are the terms and conditions? When will we know the terms and conditions of this supposed job? How can you possibly justify that salary when there is no job for him to go to? And what are the terms and conditions of his leave?

I simply sum up by saying that this epitomises the attitude that this government has to the people of Australia: you are totally unaccountable and totally without consideration of the way things should be done properly, whether it is sending people in a trade of human flesh to Malaysia to be subject to birching or to have a label attached to them like an animal, or the incompetence in putting any program in place. This appointment epitomises all the things that are wrong with this government and why, on the question of the carbon tax, we need to have that plebiscite to let the Australian people speak.

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