Ministerial Staff

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (15:13): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before directing a question to the Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation on the subject of ministerial staff.

Leave granted.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: For a period of two years, the opposition has been seeking to get a copy of the very confidential ministers' directory, listing all of the staff in ministers' offices. A copy of that document was finally released for the month of March 2015. Minister Hunter's office is listed as having the following staff members: one chief of staff; four ministerial advisers; a media adviser; an office manager; four ministerial liaison officers; a communications officer; a cabinet liaison officer; a parliamentary officer; a personal assistant to the minister; a personal assistant to the chief of staff and to the advisers; three correspondence officers; and two part-time receptionists; together with the ministerial chauffeur, who is obviously not directly a ministerial office staffer. This is a total of 21 persons—and also the ministerial chauffer in addition to that—or approximately 20 full-time equivalents.

I refer members and the minister to the budget papers: Agency Statements, Volume 2, Budget Paper 4, on page 151 where the minister and the government claim under the heading 'Ministerial office resources' that the Hon. I.K. Hunter has 10 full-time equivalent staff in his ministerial office. I ask the minister if he can indicate why the budget papers indicate or claim that he has 10 full-time equivalent staff, when the now released confidential copy of the ministerial directory lists 21 persons, or the equivalent of 20 full-time equivalent staff.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Sustainability, Environment and Conservation, Minister for Water and the River Murray, Minister for Climate Change) (15:15): I thank the honourable member for his most important question, but where does one start with the Hon. Mr Robert Lucas, who was such a mighty player in the Liberal Party for so long, and is reduced to asking questions about ministerial office staff? Having been a minister himself, knowing full well how ministerial offices are fitted out in terms of staff being personal political staff versus departmental staff, he knows the answers. He knows these answers but, of course, he comes in here because he has nothing else to do with his time. It is very, very sad.

Let me make it very plain to everybody: ministers' offices are staffed by a mixture of personal political staff and departmental staff. As such, some of the ones that he read out, being ministerial liaison officers, are provided by the department agencies, as are the correspondence officers. These are things he knows. Why does he come in here with these ridiculous questions? I have got to say to the Hon. Mr Lucas that his sins are not accidental: they are a trade. For Mr Lucas, they are an occupation of dissembling in this place, trying to come up with ludicrous questions which, quite frankly, demean him and the rest of us.