Page 1179 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 22 August 1989
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should have been immediately given to this Assembly. The answer did not come until more than two months later, and that was on 1 August. Two months it took. How on earth are we supposed to represent people when we cannot get information?
A matter of far more importance than the time it took is what the information was that the Chief Minister gave this Assembly. The information - and this was on 1 August - was that the ACT Executive's staff budget was $548,769, just over a half a million dollars. This was after two months of waiting, two months of preparation of this document, if you like, and it said it was $548,000-odd.
The total staff number, in another document I have, listed 14 personal staff for the Labor Party excluding Mr Wood, yet, effective from 1 August, there is a document entitled "Industry, Employment and Education Portfolio: Ministerial and Senior Officers Telephone Numbers". Incidentally, I know members will be aware that we have our telephone numbers in this document as well. When you count up the number of personal staff for the Ministers in this book, you arrive at not a figure of 14 but a figure of 21 - 50 per cent extra.
If we look at the amount of money for the first 14 as being $548,000, the second 50 per cent would be a sum of $274,384 - more than a quarter of a million dollars greater than the information given to this Assembly by the Chief Minister. The total budget under that sum for the Ministers for personal staff only - not to mention the other 17,000 advisers - is $823,153.
We have got two documents on the same day that are clearly misleading, one presented in answer to Mr Moore's question to this house showing that the budget for the Ministers was just over a half a million dollars, but we find that effective from the same day there was 50 per cent more than that.
The Legislative Assembly (Members' Staff) Bill 1989 was recently presented by the Chief Minister. In presenting that Bill, the Chief Minister introduced it as a Bill to provide for the employment of consultants and staff - consultants and staff - by Ministers, certain office holders and members of the Legislative Assembly. When we look through the Bill we find that it does mention consultants. It mentions consultants underneath "ministerial consultants". Nowhere else in this Bill is there an allowance for consultants. The introduction by the Chief Minister is misleading. It is not a Bill to provide for the employment of consultants for certain office holders and members of the Legislative Assembly, but only for Ministers.
That brings me to a point that members are all aware of: the effective firing of my staff. This is one of the things that has happened in the first 100 days of this Assembly. The average minimal allowance per member for parties in this
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