Senator ROBERT RAY(9.51 p.m.) —I am sorry if I am interposing between a couple of other speakers, but I have another commitment very shortly.

Let me say at the outset that I am an unreconstructed amalgamationist. I have had the view for about 10 years that I thought four or five parliamentary departments on the scale of things was a ridiculous concept. I am always massively disappointed when I go into a committee hearing with those fixed views and have my prejudices overturned by compelling evidence. I have to admit that on this occasion that is simply what has happened.

We looked at a proposal for amalgamation of the parliamentary departments which had its genesis in the National Commission of Audit's report. The more we looked at it, the more we realised that the commission of audit had only scanned this particular issue and come to conclusions without any evidence or long-term thought.

The second thing that came up was that the way forward, the way ahead, was done genuinely and with good intentions by the group that put it together. But it is not an in-depth document, and virtually every submission our committee received opposed amalgamation. So I had to think about this compelling evidence and, I must say, it convinced me on this occasion that this model is not the way ahead.

I should put on the record that this parliament, in the last four or five years, has contributed something like a 14 per cent savings regime back to the budget—the $10 million cut plus the efficiency dividends have meant something like a 14 per cent cut to the money available to the parliamentary departments. When you measure that against all other departments, it is not a bad effort. I would especially draw your attention to the savings that have been generated in these parliamentary departments with that of Treasury. Treasury does not cough up too much money. When resources need to be transferred to it, they always go at 100 per cent.

I also draw your attention to not a particularly brilliant line of questioning I did at estimates with the Department of Finance, which is outsourcing everything. When I put it to that department, `You have out sourced everything, why don't you merge with Treasury?' there was absolute shock and horror, `Oh, no, we could not do that, Senator, that is not on.'

So just arguing that amalgamation or big is better must be sustained by the facts. I know how much this report is going to be demonised by the Department of Finance and by some people in the House of Representatives. By refusing the amalgamation of parliamentary departments, we are going to be called recalcitrants—people looking after only our own self-interests, people who are not concerned with reform. But that is a most unfair characterisation.

The proposition is that if you amalgamate all the corporate services and go to a two departmental structure you will generate savings. But the savings are not calculated. The guesstimate is, at the very top, that you will save $2.5 million. But you will not save that in the next outyear or the outyear afterwards. Probably in three to four years time you will reach the $2 million to $2½ million savings. In the meantime, there will be much more money going out because of redundancies—and it takes a while to recover that.

What the government is saying is that for a one to 1½ per cent saving to the parliamentary budget it is going to turn this place over—it is going to start turf warfare amongst the people to see who will survive the musical chairs; it will have redundancies. This will take place against an atmosphere where, at the same time, we will be putting in workplace agreements, service level agreements and where there will be a divorce of all the employees in this building from the Public Service Act, which is proposed by the government.

So there will be a very destabilised period over the next three to four years for what really constitutes minor savings. None of us scoff at savings. None of us is so arrogant to say, `Even an extra million dollars worth of savings is not worth while.' But the fact is that there are alternative savings methods that will cause far less disruption than the amalgamation proposal. It has been pointed out in evidence that things such as joint procurement and the joint use of a variety of different facilities around the building in specialised areas will generate savings which can be used to offset other costs around the building.

But it does not matter whether you amalgamate the parliamentary departments and make savings or not, this building is going to run at a deficit for the next decade. We have an intrinsic problem here that there is no provision for proper asset replacement. In other words, the total global budget of this building can be moved around to make up various deficits as they occur. But there are not sufficient prospective savings, either by the method this committee recommends or by way of parliamentary amalgamations, that will fund the asset replacement to keep this building going. The security equipment, the phone system and the sound and vision system all require more money than any of the potential savings options available will provide.  Even if we got to that stage and said, `Amalgamation is a possibility just on the basis of economic efficiency,' we then have to take the next step and say, `How does the place run on a two department structure?'

The proposal to set up a board of four to run the place is wrong in principle. I do not believe that the presiding officers should have to share their power responsibilities with non-elected clerks of the building. I do not think the clerks in this building would particularly aspire to that role either—they are the appointed employees, equivalent, I suppose, to a department secretary, to do administrative tasks and not to rule or make decisions on policy matters. As Senator Faulkner said, all sorts of divisions could appear.

We know at the moment that the President and the Speaker have a very harmonious relationship. For most times in the past that has been true, but not all times. If we set up this sort of structure in the future and we suddenly get personality clashes between the Speaker and the President, how would this structure work? For the first time ever we would have people from the Department of the House of Representative—staff, the Speaker—determining the resources for the Senate, and vice versa. That could cause a lot of pain.

In the actual division of the two other departments into the House of Representatives and the Senate, the Senate would inherit all the sick children. The Senate would inherit all those particular groups that would require a lot of money in future. There is no particular goodwill from that point of view. We might think, at first view, that the request is not bad, but in the end I think you will find it is a fairly poor deal.

The report does recommend some changes. It goes to the issue of having the four parliamentary departments put in a joint submission to the ERC. That will have the benefit of looking at the total expenditure of all four departments—or five if you insist that, but it is really four—and being able to shift money between one or the other, which happened this financial year. The Joint House Department was able to move money across to the Senate and House of Representatives to fill in the shortfall. Some time in the future it may be the other way round—some money from the Senate or House of Representatives departments may move across to the Joint House Department.

I again say that I think this report has great potential to be demonised and misunderstood. It is one of those genuine reports where a lot of people went in with pre-existing prejudices and came out the other end with a different view. That view was based on the facts and the knowledge of the way this building works.

I say in conclusion that this cannot have been an easy report for you, Madam Presi dent, to have presided over, because of the dual roles that you play. I should put on the record that you adopted the very appropriate method of not having a chairman's draft but of having a draft by the secretary of the committee come to the whole committee. I think that was a most appropriate administrative way of handling it. I hope that in future people from executive government are not critical of you over this report.

I think it is fair to say that it was virtually the unanimous view of the committee, with some degrees of enthusiasm or otherwise, to come to these conclusions. I repeat: this report is not a case of senators going away and looking after their self-interest; it basically says that, the amount of savings involved here being very minor, it is not worth turning this place over just for the sake of change.