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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, First Session (53-1)
2014-12-03 Daily Xml
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Motions

Members' Vehicles

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. M.C. Parnell:

That this council—

1. Notes—

(a) the practice of the government over many years to provide taxpayer-funded chauffeur-driven cars to ministers, opposition leaders, presiding members and various other party-political appointees;

(b) the vast bulk of these vehicles and their drivers sit idle most of the time and are not required for work purposes; and

2. Calls on the government to replace all chauffeur-driven cars for members of parliament (other than the Premier) with a pool of vehicles and drivers which are available to all members of parliament on a cost-recovery basis and which can be booked for use on parliamentary or electorate business.

(Continued from 4 June 2014.)

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (23:24): I indicate very briefly that Dignity for Disability does support this motion. We have also previously been in conversation with the Hon. Mr Parnell about whether we might amend it to include measures such as ensuring that there is a number of wheelchair accessible vehicles available in the government fleet and also that there be a fleet of government bikes as well to promote true diversity in transport.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT: Mr President, several people are interjecting on me. I would appreciate your protection.

The PRESIDENT: It is very rude; that is right. The Hon. Ms Vincent has the floor.

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT: Thank you as always for your protection, even if I needed to ask for it. Hopefully we can get that amendment up in the new year and maybe perhaps move this motion again in an amended form. With those brief words, we support the motion.

The PRESIDENT: Mr Lucas, this is the one I got confused about. It was not puppies; it is actually chauffeur-driven cars.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (23:25): Mr President, far be it for me to say that you are often confused, but you certainly were on that particular occasion. I was never at any stage interested in talking about puppy farms, but my colleagues have asked me to speak on their behalf about this particular motion. I am sure the Hon. Mr Parnell would acknowledge there is a degree of interest from my colleagues in his motion. There is probably a range of views, but when the parliamentary party room discussed this issue, it resolved not to support the motion that has been moved by the Hon. Mr Parnell.

In saying that, can I indicate that whilst the party room has no concluded view should we arrive in the fortunate position of being in government, I would indicate that my personal view would be that there is room for tweaking or improving the current arrangements in relation to the cost of the fleet. I think there are genuine questions in relation to the length and breadth—this is a personal view I am expressing here—of the number of cars that are provided.

The proposition that the Hon. Mr Parnell is putting is, in essence, that with the exception of the Premier, for example, other ministers, such as the Deputy Premier, Treasurer and ministers with senior responsibilities, would have their chauffer-driven vehicles removed from them and replaced by a pool of vehicles that are available to everyone on a cost-recovery basis.

Whilst I understand that the Hon. Mr Parnell has never been a minister and whilst, as I said, in the past I might have said he is never likely to be a minister, I certainly would not say that now because all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds have waited by the phone and have received and accepted the offer to become ministers in a Labor administration, so I certainly would not say that the Hon. Mr Parnell will never be a minister. That is for him to say, should he so choose, but let's just say my personal view is that it is probably unlikely that in my lifetime the Hon. Mr Parnell is going to be a minister. I do not think that the Hon. Mr Parnell appreciates the complexity and the hard work of ministers, particularly in relation to the job and the task that they have.

Senior ministers move from appointment to appointment to appointment, and I am sure that the Hon. Mr Parnell, as someone who does not have a chauffeur-driven car, and I am in the same circumstance, would agree that as an ordinary member of parliament—if we can describe ourselves that way—there is the never-ending challenge of organising the appointments and finding parks all over the place. Again, without labouring the detail at this hour of the night, I think there is a powerful argument—and this is a view from the Liberal parliamentary party room—that the effect of the Hon. Mr Parnell's amendment would mean that many people who merit the current level of support in terms of driver and car would not get it.

There may well be some argument in relation to the chairs of a couple of committees, and that is an argument that is worthwhile exploring as to why two particular committees are supposedly more meritorious and important than the other four or five standing committees we have. It might even be more. I should not say it escapes me because I know the history of these things, so I understand the history as to the various cars and how the Chairman of Committees in the House of Assembly got a car. It is probably best at this stage that I do not put on the public record as to—

The Hon. K.J. Maher: Do it! Do it!

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: I do not think it would do your cause much good, the Hon. Mr Maher, because it relates to a Labor member of parliament.

The Hon. K.J. Maher: Don't do it!

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: Yes, exactly. Should there be a Liberal government after 2018—we can always live in hope—that would be an area of merit worthy of discussion as to whether or not there can be some tweaking in terms of the provision of cars. I think the sledgehammer approach that the Hon. Mr Parnell is suggesting is not worthy of support.

The other point I would make in relation to the Hon. Mr Parnell's motion is that he says this pool of vehicles would be available to all members of parliament—so that is the 69 members of parliament—which could be booked for use on parliamentary or electorate business. What the Hon. Mr Parnell is saying is that we are going to have a fleet of cars available for all 69 members of parliament for any electorate function or business that they attend.

The Hon. M.C. Parnell: You pay for it.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: We are still going to have to have a fleet of vehicles available for 69 members. For each of the 69 members of parliament, if they are going to the Hallett Cove Football Club on a Sunday morning and then to the shopping centre for an electorate function in the afternoon, or whatever it might happen to be, the Hon. Mr Parnell is saying that every one of the 69 members of parliament, for an electorate function, could have a car provided by the state on a cost-recovery basis.

I am assuming there is going to be a fleet of government drivers and cars on a cost-recovery basis. There would be a lot of drivers of taxis, I suspect, or Ubers, who may well have a particular point of view that the Hon. Mr Parnell is proposing a much bigger fleet—in essence, the government taxi service—available to 69 members of parliament, not just to the 20-odd or whatever the number happens to be—

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins: Kind of like COMCARs.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: It would be 'COMCAR plus' because it is much wider than COMCAR. The definition the member is talking about here is any electorate business. If the local member attends the local church on an electorate basis, anything in the electorate would qualify under the Greens' scheme for a government-funded taxi service for all 69 members of parliament.

It is novel, it is innovative. I give the Hon. Mr Parnell credit for that. I think if he wants to progress this he might like to do some costings on the up-front costs for the state in terms of how many cars and how many government drivers would need to be made available. The government is going to have to go into the business of trying to estimate the demand for government cars because the state is going to have to provide, on demand to all members, as the Hon. Mr Parnell says, 'on a cost-recovery basis'.

The state would have to go into business, work out what charges it was going to make and then hope that it gets it right, because if it actually pitches the cost to the Hon. Mr Parnell and says, 'Mr Parnell, we have got this car for you but it is going to cost you $100 to drive from Belair to the Blackwood shopping centre for your electorate function,' the Hon. Mr Parnell might say, 'Well, okay, I might actually hop on my bike and ride,' or, 'I might actually get a taxi, because it is only going to cost me $15,' or whatever it might happen to be.

The state is then going to be left with 100-plus cars and drivers, and all of the members have decided that it is way too expensive to actually use this bold new initiation of the Greens—the Greens-inspired government funded taxi service—that is being proposed.

I would not trust this Labor government with running any business, let alone running a whole new business such as government-run taxi service. I suppose the Hon. Mr Koutsantonis might be the perfect person, now that I think of it—the Hon. Mr Darley should stop laughing over in the corner there—to run this particular taxi service. But, I would not trust him with that either.

I think it is a good head nod for talkback radio, and I am sure the Hon. Mr Parnell will get a head nod from people, if he has not already. But if you actually think it through and work out what it actually means, then our viewpoint is that it does not make much sense. In conclusion, we will not be supporting it, but we do acknowledge, as I said, that there is a genuine issue in relation to the provision of cars for some committee appointments, in particular, which is an issue that parties, government and opposition, should debate as to why, for example, a couple of committee chairs are supposedly more important and more prestigious than the other chairs of committees.

The Hon. T.T. NGO (23:37): I rise to speak on behalf of the government to vote against this motion. As a former adviser to then treasurer, the Hon. Jack Snelling MP, I was given the role of looking after Electorate Services, and this included managing ministerial drivers. I concur with the Hon. Mr Lucas's comments that this motion has not been carefully thought through, because there are cost implications that come with this proposal.

Let me talk a bit about the ministerial chauffeur service. The ministerial chauffer service provides an effective and efficient chauffer service focusing on quality customer service to the Premier, the Deputy Premier, cabinet ministers, the Leader of the Opposition, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the President of the Legislative Council, the Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council, the Speaker of the House of Assembly, committee chairs and VIPs.

There are 23 full-time ongoing weekly paid public sector ministerial chauffer positions. In addition, four casual chauffers are utilised on an as-required basis for relief and to maintain continuity of service. In case a driver or two are sick, these casual drivers can fill in at the last moment. Ministerial chauffeurs are employed subject to the Chauffeurs (Ministerial) Public Service Award and the South Australian Public Sector Wages Parity Enterprise Agreement: Weekly Paid 2013.

All chauffeurs are bound by the Code of Ethics for the South Australian Public Sector and subject to the professional conduct standards within that. The Department of the Premier and Cabinet currently administers the leasing of 24 Holden Caprice vehicles through a third party supplier and the employment of staffing resources utilised to provide the chauffeur service. The ministerial chauffeur service is funded by a budget allocation.

As the Hon. Mr Lucas has said, being a minister you very often have to attend meetings and a lot of those meetings are often extended or go longer than you expect. Likewise, if meetings happen to finish early the minister requires drivers to pretty much be ready, so that he or she can make a phone call and they can pick up the minister and take them to their next appointment.

It would be very difficult if a driver had to leave the minister to go and pick up another MP, and there was a traffic jam that made the driver late coming back to pick up the minister. It would make the job of the minister very difficult. Drivers also often carry a lot of confidential information, such as cabinet submissions, urgent letters for the minister to sign or important briefings. These are often lying around in the ministerial car, so if they had to pick up another MP there is the potential for that information to land in the wrong hands.

Another important piece of information that the Hon. Mr Parnell has not thought of is that every five years a driver has to fill out a log book for three months to declare the fringe benefits tax. I believe (although I have to clear this up with the Hon. Mr Ridgway) that the minister or opposition leader would have to pay that fringe benefits tax themselves. If MPs or backbenchers were to use the vehicles, as the Hon. Mr Parnell suggests, they would also have to pay fringe benefits tax, and I do not know how that would work out. If the minister paid the fringe benefits tax would that mean he or she would try to claim part of that from the member of parliament who was also using the car? So, there are complications with this motion.

There is also the setting up costs involved in employing another one or two members of staff to sit around and wait to organise what cars are available and coordinate all these vehicles for MPs to be picked up and the driver to return and pick up their minister. There is a cost implication in employing these people. As a member of parliament I would not want to be using that service either, because I would have to pay all those costs, and it is easier to split it.

If there were only 10 MPs who wanted to be in the scheme the cost would be enormous. As the Hon. Mr Lucas said, most MPs would figure out that it would be a lot cheaper just to catch a taxi, so what do we do with that then? To sum up, I think it sounds good in theory, but generally there are problems with it, as I mentioned previously. So, on behalf of the government, I will be voting against this motion.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (23:44): I thank the Hon. Kelly Vincent for her support, and I accept her offer to sit down over the next few months and work up with her something that is a little bit more detailed and covers more situations. I have to say about the Hon. Rob Lucas and the Hon. Tung Ngo that they doth protest too much. They have taken a simple motion and interpreted it in a way that suits their case, which is for the status quo to remain because, one day, they might get one of these cars.

The Hon. Tung Ngo said that it is an efficient system. There is nothing efficient about someone in a massive car driving someone from Lower Mitcham or Prospect into the city to parliament, hanging around all day in the Blue Room or somewhere else, and then driving them home at the end of the day—no meetings, they are in parliament, they are not going anywhere else. It is a ridiculous system, and I think all members deep down know that it is.

The challenge for us is to be a little bit more imaginative about how we can provide a quality transport service that has drivers who understand confidentiality, similar to the COMCAR system that members are familiar with. I do not accept the Hon. Rob Lucas's analysis that we replace these 23 plus the casuals with 69 cars so that, if it happened that every member wanted to get a chauffeur car that they were prepared to pay for and all wanted to go to different spots at the same time, you would have to have 69 cars. It really would not work like that, but I think people have read far too much into this.

On a more positive note, even the Hon. Rob Lucas accepts that there is this rort of the consolation prizes of a couple of chairs of committees getting chauffeur-driven cars that are completely unrelated to their work and are purely to keep disgruntled backbenchers happy and an attempt to stop them from undermining their ministerial colleagues with their cars. It is an absolute rort. The Hon. Tung Ngo refers to logbooks. We all know that the Budget and Finance Committee some time ago said that, if you made ministers fill out logbooks, we would save $1 million instantly.

The Hon. T.T. Ngo: They do.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL: No, they don't. Three months every four years is not a consistent filling out of logbooks. We would save $1 million. I really do think we need to come back and look at this again. I would ask members to look at it through the lens of the taxpayer rather than through the lens of, 'Maybe I could get one of these if I play my cards right in years to come.'

As the Hon. Kelly Vincent said, you could extend it to a bicycle loan scheme and a whole range of things. As members know, I am a big fan of Borgen. If you have not seen Borgen, it is The West Wing with subtitles. It is a political drama about Danish politics. In series 1, episode 1, the future prime minister turns up to parliament house on her bicycle. Mind you, when she becomes prime minister, she does end up with a car and she sleeps with the chauffeur, but that is another episode.

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS: Point of order: I think the Hon. Mark Parnell is implying that the Hon. David Ridgway is sleeping with his driver, and I just think that is outrageous!

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Give the Hon. Mark Parnell the respect he deserves.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL: Thank you. The point that I am making is, with a little bit of imagination and a bit of commitment to saving taxpayer resources, we could actually have a much more efficient system that covers its costs and provides a quality transport service. Whilst I appreciate that we do not quite have the numbers tonight, with only a couple of us supporting the motion at this stage I think, I am not going to let it go. We will bring it back next year.

If members would prefer the motion to run over several pages and to take the form of detailed rules of the road and regulations we could do that, but I would ask members to be just a little bit more generous in terms of thinking through what the intent is. I will take some generosity out of the comments that were made. The system is broken, and it does need to be fixed. We can save taxpayers' money, but I can appreciate that it will not be progressed any further tonight.

Motion negatived.

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