Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Macdonald, you know all about that. We also found that Mr Tavoularis donated to the LNP in the lead-up to the 2013 election. He had quite a good track record and had done many favours for the LNP in Queensland. Now he has been rewarded with the princely sum of $370,000 per annum for five years. His appointment to the AAT will go for five years. That is quite a reward for services rendered to the LNP in Queensland.

Dr Denis Dragovic is a failed former Liberal Party preselection candidate. He failed in his bid for Liberal Party preselection in the electorate of Goldstein in Victoria, he failed in his bid for the Liberal Party Senate ticket in Victoria, but he did not fail when it came to being appointed to an even more financially rewarding position on the AAT. Dr Dragovic has really hit the jackpot. He may not have got into the Senate, and he may not have got into the House of Representatives, but he is going to be receiving $300,000 per annum for seven years. That is even longer than a full Senate term, so I think he has done pretty well out of this arrangement.

The one that I am most interested in is Mr John Sosso, who all of us from Queensland know has a very long political history in Queensland. As long as coalition governments have been in power in Queensland in my lifetime, Mr Sosso has been one of their favoured people. He is a good example of the type of person who this Attorney-General considers appropriate to exercise a position of responsibility and independence on the AAT. Mr Sosso was the director-general of the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney-General under the Newman government. He was fired after the commendable election of the Palaszczuk government, but he was appointed as the director of the Justice and Attorney-General's Department under the only Attorney-General from Queensland who I could possibly imagine to be worse than this Attorney-General, and that is Jarrod Bleijie, the trumped-up conveyancing clerk from Kawana.

An opposition senator interjecting—

Is he pompous? He is pompous.