Listen to the audio here: 3AW Mornings 21_10_11 Ryan
Neil Mitchell: This is extraordinary, how can anybody think it was sensible to spend $100,000 selling two tables that were worth $5000.
Senator Ryan: Well Neil, every year I sit back when we have these hearings and I get a new surprise. These tables were sold apparently more than a year ago and this was all been on chasing up a review on a review into an inquiry as to why they were sold and we’ve sort of lost track.
Mitchell: Is there something special about them?
Senator Ryan: I think they were brought up from old Parliament House, Labor Senator John Faulkner has been the one pursuing it and he has been around a lot longer than I. I think they were brought up from the old Parliament House and they have some historic value.
Mitchell: Bob Hawke would have played snooker on them. He played snooker on every table in Canberra.
Senator Ryan: Well I imagine in the old Parliament House they probably had a cigarette and a beer around them as well.
Mitchell: What about these sleep seminars? Were your surprised by these?
Senator Ryan: The Department of Parliament spent a couple of million dollars on health-related classes for public servants and included sleep classes. The first thing I thought when I saw it in the annual report was ‘well I’m going to be a father for the first time in a few weeks so I might need some’, but I don’t think I would ask the tax payers to pay for it. There is a culture here, right across the public service, where we don’t value the tax payers’ dollar enough. Where we have consultants and reviews and these staff training sessions. When I worked in the corporate world everyone used to hate going to these sessions anyway, you wanted to go back and do your job.
Mitchell: We are seriously paying public money to teach them how to sleep better?
Senator Ryan: That was part of the course. That was part of the health lessons, good sleep habits.
Mitchell: What else?
Senator Ryan: The best example is one I’m chasing up today, one of my staff has asked for one of those plastic mats to put under their chair to stop the carpet being ripped away by the wheels of the chair and we have been told we have to have an ergonomic assessment in our office before they can give us a plastic mat. We don’t even know how much this is going to cost. We’re just trying to save the carpet and we’ve got to have someone come out and assess the work station, the chair and the computer.
Mitchell: To put a plastic mat there?
Senator Ryan: To put a plastic mat under the chair like any normal person and every workplace in Australia would probably have.
Mitchell: How did we get some common sense into it?
Senator Ryan: I think Neil that the challenge is you really need ministers to go into the grass of spending. The dollars of taxpayers aren’t saved by saving a billion here and there. When I worked in business my boss taught me a lesson that you take care of the little dollars, the big dollars eventually add up. So there is a culture we need of ministers sitting down and going line-by-line through what their department spends in order to treat tax payer dollars as precious.
Mitchell: I heard something about switching lights on for public servants, what’s that about?
Senator Ryan: The Department of Prime Minister spent $650,000 on training, some of it was on making public servants more thoughtful, transformed and more hopeful and the company describes its mission as ‘we’re passionate about seeing the lights go on in people’s heads’. I don’t understand why people have been taken off their job to go to these seminars. As I said, when I had a real job, you’d hate going to these classes, they were just a waste of time with consultants coming in all the time and you knew you had to go back and do your work anyway.
Mitchell: I suppose you approve of the improved redundancy deal for MPs though?
Senator Ryan: Well Neil, I think with MPs you could say none of us ever seek redundancy.