Motions

Members' Vehicles

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (16:37): I move:

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 that are available to all members of parliament on a cost-recovery basis and which can be booked for use on parliamentary or electorate business.

This motion is self-explanatory and it draws our attention to what I believe is one of the greatest rorts and wastes of taxpayers' money that exist in this parliament, and that is the practice of providing in many cases consolation prizes to members of parliament in the nature of chauffeur-driven cars and drivers.

The wording of the motion notes that this practice is longstanding and the recipients of taxpayer largesse in the form of chauffeur-driven cars include the Premier, the whole ministry, leaders of the opposition in both houses and, I think, the deputy leader as well in the other place. There are also a number of parliamentary standing committees where the chairs of those committees are given chauffeur-driven cars, not to mention the presiding members of both houses.

What I find most galling about this situation is that the provision of chauffeur-driven cars is entirely a matter of status and it is not in any way connected to the need of the holders of those offices for a private chauffeur-driven car. That is not to say that all members of parliament, from the Premier down, do not need to be able to travel in a secure environment where they might, for example, be making confidential telephone calls.

I think we all understand that and we understand why for the Premier, for example, a public taxi hailed in North Terrace might not be the appropriate form of transport. But having said that, the amount of money that is involved in providing this service is quite staggering and there are millions of dollars in savings to be had.

I should say at this stage that I am not critical in any way of those members of the Public Service who find themselves as drivers of parliamentary cars. They are just doing their job and when in the motion I refer to the fact that the vast bulk of these vehicles and their drivers sit idle most of the time and are not required for work purposes, that is no reflection on any of those people. It is just the reality that when you get someone whose only job is to go from, say, Mitcham or Prospect, drive into the city, deliver someone to work and then effectively wait around all day to deliver them home again at the end of the day, I think it is quite outrageous.

Some members might think that the system is more efficient than that and that they are out and about doing a whole lot of other important government work, but the reality, as we all know, is that they are not. We know where they are. It is not their fault; it is the work conditions that they have been given, but it is an incredibly inefficient way of spending taxpayers' money.

This is not a particularly original concept. In fact, those of you who remember the Sustainable Budget Commission report from four years ago would know that one of the recommendations there, which would have saved close to $2 million per year, was simply to reduce the number of chauffeur-driven cars from 26 to 17. To quote the Sustainable Budget Commission, this involves the removal of chauffeur-driven vehicle services to the President of the Legislative Council, the Speaker of the House of Assembly, the chairman of committees, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the chairman of the Environment, Resources and Development Committee and the chairman of the Economic and Finance Committee. The Sustainable Budget Commission recommended that the Premier, the Deputy Premier, cabinet ministers and the Leader of the Opposition would continue to have access to a chauffeur-driven vehicle. That was their particular recommendation.

I think we could actually go further than that, and that is why the motion that I have before the council draws the line at the Premier. That is not to say that those other people, if this motion was successful and if the government accepted it, should not be entitled to a quality transport service. What my motion recommends is similar to the system that applies in other parliaments, including the commonwealth parliament, where a pool of vehicles are available to members to use on official business, parliamentary business or electorate business. I have no problem with such a system being on a cost-recovery basis and no problem with it being on a bookings basis. It seems to me that we could save many millions of dollars of taxpayer funds if we simply removed the exclusivity of these chauffeur-driven vehicles.

I also note that another recommendation made by the Sustainable Budget Commission was for ministers' drivers to be required to fill out logbooks, because apparently we were, and I assume we still are, paying about $1 million more than we need to in fringe benefits tax, simply because ministers' drivers did not complete Australian Taxation Office compliant logbooks. That was a minor saving, but this motion calls for something far more significant. I think that, whilst all members here might harbour notions that one day we might aspire to the ranks of those who get the chauffeur-driven white car, I think if we did reflect, we would realise that there are alternatives, that the status symbol that that represents is not required and that we could all get about our business in a safe and secure environment without it costing taxpayers as much as it currently does.

The other point to note is that, especially when it comes to the chairs of committees having cars, there is no requirement that the car be used for committee work. For example, a former chair of the Environment, Resources and Development Committee's use of the car involved driving to and from home—in Whyalla—simply because that person happened to be a chair of committee that had a car attached to it.

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins: It used to go all over Giles, actually.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL: Well—

The Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins: Yes, it did.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL: The Hon. John Dawkins interjects with a longer memory of how these things worked. The point I am making is that the system at present is elitist, it is arbitrary, it is wasteful, and there are better ways of moving members of parliament around that do not cost taxpayers as much. So, with those words, I commend the motion to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.S.L. Dawkins.