Personal Explanation

President's Statement

The PRESIDENT (14:19): Honourable members, before calling on questions without notice, I would like to advise the chamber that as it may well be the will of the council for the information relating to country members' accommodation allowance claims to be more available and transparent, I have instructed the Clerk to prepare the claim forms for the current and previous financial years for tabling should the council resolve.

The staff of the council will do their best endeavours to source and prepare the material, but as the volume of documents may be considerable, I advise that it would be my intention to table and publish them as soon as practicable. I remind honourable members that I have only been the presiding member for five short months. I would like to note that the tabling of this information is unprecedented in the chamber as none of my predecessors of either political persuasion have previously made publicly available these documents.