FREQUENT FLYER POINTS

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (15:13): I seek leave to make an explanation before asking the Leader of the Government a question about frequent flyer points.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: The leader will remember that on 17 October I asked him a question about frequent flyer points. It was a relatively simple question about how many frequent flyer points he personally had accumulated from any taxpayer-funded travel and whether or not he had used those frequent flyer points. I think that question had been on notice for some eight months or so. The minister's answer, in part—and I think he displayed an undue degree of sensitivity in relation to the question—

The PRESIDENT: Order! There will be no opinion.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: There will be none at all, Mr President, only facts. The minister said:

The problem with sorting those out is that it is not an easy exercise to determine their source.

He went on to say:

As I said, when one gets a statement from Qantas, the points are accumulated and all grouped together whether it is private travel or personal—

The Hansard report stops at that particular point. As a number of members will be aware and from their interjections at the time, when one looks at the frequent flyer point monthly summary (which was provided to members and the minister) that statement is not correct. The minister then went on to claim:

I know that I am very careful of what points I earn privately and I have only cashed in those frequent flyer points.

The minister indicated that he had cashed in frequent flyer points but he had been very careful and he had only cashed in the frequent flyer points that he had accumulated from his personal credit charge usage. My question is: if the minister continues to claim that he cannot answer the question on notice because he cannot distinguish between points earned through his personal credit card and points earned through his taxpayer-funded travel, how on earth can he assure the parliament by saying, 'I know that I am very careful of what points I earn privately, and I have only cashed in those frequent flyer points.'

The Hon. P. HOLLOWAY (Minister for Police, Minister for Mineral Resources Development, Minister for Urban Development and Planning) (15:15): The answer is that, when you get a credit card statement each month, it will give you the number of points accumulated on that credit card. So, if you go back and add up those points for each month, you know what they are. However, on the statement you get from Qantas, you get points from a number of sources. As I said when answering a question the other day, I make sure that my points are within my credit card limit. However, there is also private travel.

I would have to go back over statements for the past five or six years, and these are personal statements; they are not sent to the government office or anything but are sent to me personally. I would have to go back to every trip to, say, Melbourne or somewhere, and determine whether it was a private trip or a government trip. That is the easy explanation. Yes, you can keep tabs, although it is still a reasonably complicated exercise having to go back over a period of some time and, frankly, I have a lot better things to do than to go back and check those details. However, I like to ensure that, if I cash in any points, it is within the total of my private credit card. In relation to other sources, such as private travel that goes on to the total, you would have to go back to the source and distinguish whether or not it was government travel. That is the explanation.