Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

It is the way of the world, as you know. Things do change. The wheel turns. Whilst we are having this interchange, I think it was William Butler Yeats who spoke in his Irish poetry about the gyre and how it moves. I will turn back to the issue. It would appear that this increase is needed to make use of the recent increase in the postage or communications allowance for members of parliament, which is a separate entitlement and which, with Labor’s support, the government introduced in June 2005. This increase will prove most useful for how-to-vote information, which was previously funded by political parties but will now be capable of being funded by taxpayers through this allowance.

There are concerns for the new printing benefits for senators under schedule 3. Under these amendments, printing will now be self-vetting—a copy of the printed materials is not required to be submitted to the Ministerial and Parliamentary Services Division with a formal invoice of payment to the printing account. Massively increasing the entitlement to the House of Representatives is not matched by an equivalent massive increase to the Senate, but it does have the ability to cover items previously supplied by the Senate outside the original entitlement. Figures from the Black Rod are available, and they indicate how the Senate entitlement was dealt with previously.

The big thing for our minor party—I am not sure about other minor parties—was that we used to share our Senate entitlement and so smooth out the demand. As far as I am aware we were the only party that used the entitlement to paper on this basis.

In the past, the average cost per senator per annum was $11,000 for newsletters and $5,700 for stationery. As the legislation currently stands, members of parliament are essentially able to determine their own entitlements—both the amount of money and how it is to be used—and auditing is minimal. In accountability terms this is unsatisfactory. What is required in the area of parliamentary entitlements is for them to be under the close scrutiny of a single, independent decision-making authority. In other democracies there are strict controls over the use of parliamentary allowances, and there should be here too.

Given that taxpayer money is already used to fund election campaigns—as provided for under public funding legislation—schedules 1 and 3 of these proposed amendment regulations are not in their interests. Questions certainly arise as to what I regard as an illegitimate use of incumbency to further political party interests.

Regardless of the outcome of this debate—and I suspect government numbers will be unanimous in advancing these regulations—it is time that the government and the parliament acted together to ensure the regular auditing of senators’ and members’ expenditure through these various entitlements. The last audit was opposed by the government and supported by the non-government senators. It was the only audit, I am aware of, since the foundation of the Federation.

It is true that the department carries out checks and keeps a much better eye on these matters than they used to in the past. It is true that there has been a significant improvement in accountability as expressed through the various reports that are now produced by the department that falls under the Department of Finance and Administration. Certainly, I regard the current presentation of material that is available concerning members of parliament’s allowances and entitlements as far superior to that which applied 10 years ago. But the fact remains that, from the Auditor-General’s perspective, these are not issues that are periodically and systematically audited. I think, particularly with an increase in taxpayer funds and incumbency entitlements, it would be a great improvement if that were to be introduced on a regular basis. That can easily be done.

The Democrats are deeply concerned about the nature of these additional increases. In particular, we are concerned about schedule 1. It is just outrageous that a House of Representatives member would be able to go into the next election in, say, November with a carryover plus their annual allowance, effectively having anywhere up to a quarter of a million dollars—probably closer to $225,000 if they are careful—available to them, being printing entitlements. That gives an incumbent a power and an ability to knock off competitors in the political field who are not incumbents, because of the sheer weight of available money and funds.

I applauded the Labor Party for unhesitatingly opposing this in the past. I applaud them again for unhesitatingly opposing it this time. It is obviously in their interest, in an incumbent sense, to have these funds available to them, but they recognise that the increases go far beyond the bounds of what is appropriate, decent and required in the proper servicing of a constituency by a parliamentarian.

Debate interrupted.