Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was speaking in this debate before being interrupted by 90-second statements and a very entertaining question time, where I must say we saw the government in disarray like we have rarely seen before—plucking numbers out of thin air, but those numbers did not get better. They went down, down, down—or up, up, up depending upon your view of the world. But wasn't it a sight?

I will move to another slow-moving train wreck of a policy development from this government, and that is the Fair Work Amendment (Corrupting Benefits) Bill 2017. Let us talk about this new focus group notion of 'fairness' that the government likes to trot out every now and again. I tell you what; we really see it in sharp focus when we look at the bang for our buck we got with the Dyson Heydon royal commission. Let us look at the numbers themselves. If you want numbers that do not stack up, check out these rippers! The cost of the royal commission over the course of 12 months was $46 million. That is a lot of zeros. My calculator barely accommodated them all. What did we get out of that $46 million spend? We saw 79 recommendations from former Justice of the High Court Dyson Heydon. For those who are playing this at home, that equates to approximately $582,278.48 per recommendation. That is what 79 into $46 million gets you.

Up until this point in time, almost 18 months after the event, we had not seen pen put to paper on any of those recommendations. This is the first time that the government has even really indicated it has read them, let alone acted on them. Even then, what do we see? No, not 78 of the 79 recommendations being implemented in this bill. Not even 70 or 60 or even 50. It is not even a double-digit number in relation to the recommendations that are being implemented by this government as a result of that very expensive royal commission. We see three. Three recommendations form the basis of what was a double dissolution election, what was seen as an incredibly so-called important exercise brought about by the government to try to shine a light on what it thought was systemic corruption in the trade union movement. And here we stand today reduced to a paltry three recommendations as a result of this bill that has stemmed from $46 million spent on a royal commission.

Let us do the maths again. Let us keep looking at this value-for-money notion that the conservatives like to hold so tightly and so dear. Again, plugging these numbers into your calculator, how much are these recommendations worth? $15,333,333 per recommendation. How does that sound like value for money? Forty-six million dollars was spent and countless hours, days and weeks were spent going over the evidence, trying to find that smoking gun and trying to find that needle in a haystack. What we find here are three recommendations, the subject of this bill, to the tune of over $15 million per recommendation.

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