Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I will ignore that interjection from someone whose judgment one would call into question here. I repeat that the Leader of the Greens deliberately prevented me from asking this question, no doubt because he has extra pay, extra allowances and extra staff, so it did not really worry him. In an unprecedented way he has refused to let me ask the question at the appropriate time. But I think it is relevant to do so on this motion before the chair. It just shows how much the Leader of the Greens lives in relation to his former political associations: freedom and democracy are not important.

Getting back to the issue, ministers have staff here next week, so it does not really matter to them, but we senators have a travel budget for bringing staff here based on the number of days in the schedule, and we are going to be in a very difficult situation next week. I ask the Special Minister of State, in considering this motion, and perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary for Social Inclusion and for the Voluntary Sector, in responding, to indicate that additional allowances will be made to senators and members to allow them to bring staff to Canberra next week to assist us in the debate on a very important topic before the chamber. I appreciate that the parliamentary secretary may not have the information, but I cannot imagine that the government would object to that. Every minister has a huge team of staff here in Canberra to assist them. Other members in the chamber—apart from the Greens leader, who clearly has a lot of staff and a lot of allowances—do need the assistance of staff, and we find ourselves budget constrained unless the government will extend the travel allowance to allow us to bring staff to Canberra. I would ask that Senator Ludwig seriously consider that and perhaps respond sometime during the day.

Question agreed to.

Ordered that the bills be listed on the Notice Paper as separate orders of the day.