[Peetwo]

Budget Estimates QON/AQON??? -   

No surprises really but finally the Budget Estimates RRAT QON/AQON for the DITRCA is slowly dribbling in a week after they were due in. 

Yet to fully decipher but as yet there appears to be no QON addressed to CASA or the ATSB. However as a point of interest I note that there is one written QON, addressed to AMSA, from the Chair Senator Sterle that has already been supplied with an answer...  

Topic: AMSA - Expenditure for Senate Estimates attendance
Senator Glenn Sterle asked:

Would you please provide the committee with full costs incurred by AMSA for:

1. Preparing for estimates
2. Full wages etc.
3. Number of personnel
4. Costs while staff/officials waiting in Parliament house on 25 November 2022
5. Parking costs
6. Other expenses
7. Travel
8. Any other costs if you were waiting on any other day.

Answer:

1. Preparing for estimates
2. Full wages etc
AMSA estimates that the wage cost of preparing for Senate Budget Estimates is
$37,473.78. AMSA does not record a detailed breakdown of these costs, and it
would require significant staff time to estimate.
3. Number of personnel: 45
4. Costs while staff/officials waiting in Parliament house on 25 November 2022:
Four AMSA Executive attended parliament house to appear as witnesses for Senate
Budget Estimates on Friday 25 November, and waited for one hour before being
excused, at a cost of $605.36.
5. Parking costs: $28
6. Other expenses: Nil
7. Travel: Nil
8. Any other costs if you were waiting on any other day. Nil.

Hmm...extrapolate AMSA's expenditure for Estimate's across all the taxpayer teat feeding and industry funded endless Alphabet soup Govt agencies, the bill for Senate Estimates must be mind blowingly astronomical... However that is the system we have, so what is the Chair's point in highlighting AMSA's wasted expenditure for the last Estimates? Is he suggesting that AMSA (and maybe other Govt Agencies) should, like the ATSB, get a free kick thru any real Parliamentary Scrutiny??

One has to ask how the lack of scrutiny of the ATSB (in the last 2 years of Budget Estimates) is working out, when you consider that Popinjay continues to cry poor and refusing to investigate fatal RAAus accidents, while continuing to investigate pointless defined known cause accidents and covering up the internationally sensitive DFO approval process investigation, all at significant cost to the ATSB (taxpayer)... 

MYF...P2