Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young is a typical example of why politicians are so detested. That is why the Greens continue to get such a low vote across the nation and why their vote is continually falling. It is because people see through their hypocrisy. It is really the hypocrisy of political parties such as the Greens political party that bring politicians as a whole group into disrepute and who make them unpopular.

It is also people such as those in the Labor Party who continue to support people who have broken the law. I mention Craig Thompson. I mention a current senator who got a benefit from a Chinese company to pay his own personal bills, not even for campaigning, not even for his political party. This is why politicians are held in such low esteem. One would think that people like that would be ostracised forever, but what happens in the Labor Party? They get promoted. That is why the general public do not like politicians. But that does not alter the principle that if you are taking away rights retrospectively that is bad, even if it is rights that belong to a group as disliked as parliamentarians.

Some people have indicated to my office that my thoughts on 'why don't we follow Hitler and Stalin' are inappropriate. My thoughts there, which I will repeat, were that if people think parliamentarians are such bad people, why do we bother with parliamentarians at all? Why don't we follow Hitler or Stalin or Idi Amin and just do away with parliamentarians? Then nobody will hate our parliamentarians, because there will be none around. Is that the sort of society we want?

I love my constituency. They voted for me regularly and often over the last 27 years. They are lovely people. Most of them understand that life is not easy. Just because something is popular does not mean it is right. It is popular to give everybody everything they want. If we were able to do that we would be loved by everyone. But, unfortunately, someone has to pay. Someone has to work out what the priorities are. Popular thought, which apparently we are following today, is that everyone should get everything they ask for. But we, as responsible parliamentarians—on this side of the chamber, anyway—have to say, 'We would love to give you everything you want, but you have to put some sense into this; you have to worry about your children and grandchildren and their generation.'

So, whilst it is easy to be popular, it is not easy for me doing what I am doing now, as you would appreciate. It is not easy, but life is never easy, as a former prime minister once said. It is very easy to be popular. It is very easy to be the Greens, because they always come in here and say, 'Give everybody everything they want. Give us everything we want.' They never have to bother about paying for it. They never have to worry about the ramifications. They never have to worry about making a country work properly in the right way, not in the popular way. People will criticise me for saying that you do not go along with popularity and what happens to be popular at the moment. I try to think that we as a government would do the right thing, not the popular thing. But it appears from the vote in the chamber today that parliamentarians are more concerned with what is popular than what is right. Taking away rights retrospectively is never right.

In this committee stage of the bill I want to ask the minister what the savings would be from taking these entitlements away from former parliamentarians and, relative to this particular amendment, what the cost is of providing it in its reduced form to past prime ministers. Could we get some detail of the costs involved so we could know what that is? Could I also pre-empt my next set of amendments and ask the minister if he and his department have been able to calculate the cost savings that there would be if the gold pass entitlement of former prime ministers was done on a basis of proportionality with their time in service. Would there be a big cost saving? I suspect that with the savings we have already made today—by my calculation, $1 million to $2 million, but the minister may be able to correct me on that—that is some saving to a $300 billion dollar plus budget, but I would like to get on the record the figures of what the savings will be from getting rid of this entitlement retrospectively; what we will save the budget and what the cost of gold pass for prime ministers will be in its reduced form—I assume that the department has made some calculations along those lines—and what the cost might be if the entitlements of former prime ministers were in some way reduced proportionately according to their length of service.