Robert Ray (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This document, the annual report 2005-06 on consultants engaged under section 4 of the act, is required, deriving from the Members of Parliament (Staff) Act 1984. The act requires, annually, a description of which consultants are employed in government. Now that this report is down, it is fairly easy to establish that the government has one consultant, a Mr Geoffrey Cousins, whose period of engagement is from 1 January 2005 to 31 December 2005 and again from January 2006 through to 31 December 2006, although I do understand—I think only from press reports, but I am sure it is right—that he is no longer employed as a consultant to the Prime Minister.

Mr Cousins’s tasks were, firstly, to advise and assist the Prime Minister in relation to the formulation of communications strategies to promote government policies; and, secondly, to undertake tasks from time to time as specified by the Prime Minister. Mr Cousins was engaged on a part-time basis and paid a salary. Not surprisingly, on a number of occasions Senator Faulkner and I have asked about Mr Cousins’s role in assisting the Prime Minister and the government, and all we have ever really had in response is masterful dissembling. We have never had any accurate answers as to what real role Mr Cousins has played—not to say that he was an overpaid consultant, because he worked part time. But we did ask what his duties were, where he had worked and what contribution he had made, and we could never ever get an answer to those particular questions.

I think we should note that Mr Cousins was employed to help communicate government policies, not to give advice on government communications policy. I think that is an import distinction. In other words, Mr Cousins was a spin doctor for the government. He assisted, as we understand it, ministers in their public presentations. At one stage, hot on the hunt, we thought Mr Cousins was the famous non-existent smirk consultant for the Treasurer, Mr Costello. But of course that proved to be a furphy. Apparently no-one was ever engaged as a smirk consultant to the Treasurer. In fact, I remember a press release coming from the Treasurer’s office that denied this, and I accept that—the evidence is still there. Obviously, if Mr Cousins had been employed for that purpose, it did not work.

All along we have suspected that, as Mr Cousins was a close mate of the Prime Minister, this position was a bit of a sinecure, a bit of a pay-off for campaign services rendered—not an expensive pay-off, I must stress. We have seen consultants paid heaps of money over the years. Mr Cousins has come relatively cheap to Prime Minister Howard and his government over the last nine years that he has been employed on and off as a consultant—more on than off.

But of late Mr Cousins is a matter of notoriety. He will be appointed to the Telstra board—or I assume he will be. With 51 per cent of the vote, I cannot imagine how he could lose. It is the old conundrum, isn’t it: where does a gorilla sleep? Wherever it likes. So he will be appointed to the Telstra board at their annual general meeting. The thesis goes, apparently from critics all around and from the other Telstra directors, that he may have been put on this board to just run the government’s agenda, just to be disruptive.

I concede that that is a possibility. But, given his track record of employment by the Prime Minister, there is another possibility: that he was just given this position as a sinecure; that he is going to sit on the board and do absolutely nothing; that, in line with the appointment of Senator Alston to London or Mr Reith to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, this is just another job for the boys. I hope people consider that. It is equally as plausible as those conspiracy theories that say that Mr Cousins has been put on the Telstra board to do the Prime Minister’s bidding. It does not work like that in this government. If you have some association, especially with the New South Wales branch of the Liberal Party, you get a job. It is the most guaranteed employment in this country. If you buy a raffle ticket from the New South Wales branch of the Liberal Party, you are on a promise, and it is a promise that is always delivered. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.