Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, of course, but there will not be any parliamentary responsibility for the outcome. For example, $30,000 or $40,000 of electorate allowance is going to go straight to salaries under this trajectory that we are seeing in this parliament now. MPs can currently spend their electorate allowance on themselves if they want to, but the at least implicit obligation is going to be removed. We all know what that means: it is going to mean that in the electorates where there will not be an electorate allowance there will be less money going to the electorates. There are people who spend more than their electorate allowance on their electorates at the moment, and there are some who spend almost nothing of that electorate allowance on their electorates, but what this does is validate the second component of that: it validates that money being transferred into MPs' packages with no strings attached, not even an inherent obligation to spend the money on the electorates.

I know what will happen next: there will be legislation coming into this parliament a couple of years down the line to restore electorate allowances on top of the new salaries. That is something for the majority in this house and the other house to do if they wish. I believe that this legislation removing our responsibility and, indeed, the debates that have regularly occurred about MPs' salary increases are a shedding of our own responsibility to the electorate to be moderate in our assessment of our own worth. We are paid well and we do have good allowances compared to other parliaments around the world, but we have a responsibility, after an independent tribunal makes recommendations, to ensure, for example, that that is in keeping with what other people, who have voted us into the parliament, are getting.

I will not labour this point. I support the new measures of accountability of the tribunal—that it should publish its reasons and that it should be able to assess base salaries—but really the crucial point of this legislation is ridding ourselves as parliamentarians of the need from time to time to get up and contribute to a debate about how much we are worth, how much we should be paid and how closely that is related to the value of other workers in our community. I reiterate that the Constitution puts that obligation on us very early, and it is one that we should be keeping, not trying to shed off our shoulders through this piece of legislation.