Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee, , 2:04:07 to 2:08:04
Details regarding the PBO's relocation to West Block and the associated $1 million asset write-off for infrastructure left behind at Parliament House.
Topics: Procurement, Government spending
Speakers: Sam Reinhardt, Hon James McGrath, Speaker 3, Unknown Speaker
>> Thank you. Can Moving on. Can I um your latest annual report records a $1 million just over asset write off associated with your relocation to West Block. Is is that correct?
>> That's correct. So that's essentially when when we move there's a number of things that we can't take with. So desks and things like that were organized for us in West Black West block and there are things that we had to leave behind in the accommodation here. Um I will try and articulate what they are. They include cables in the wall. Okay. >> So all of that comes to a million dollars unfortunately.
can you remind me who made the decision to relocate you from um within Parliament House to West Block?
So, we work with the Department of Parliamentary Services and and they, as you're aware, they have to do renovations to the building given the age of the building and we work with them about moving to West Block. Um, everyone recognized it's not ideal for us to be outside the parliament. We are quite close and we have found that we can we still have an office up here where we can bring people up during sitting periods. uh and we do come up a lot as needed to meet with parliamentarians and advisers.
>> Is the relocation intended to be
It >> it's a temporary relocation and one of the recommendations of the independent review was that there be a kind of reporting on when the plan what the plans were for us to relocate back to
Parliament House. Um, Senator Bragg, it's been my very firm view that PBO returned
>> Do we have a do we have a date president at all?
>> Miss Reinhardt might know better than me or it's perhaps a question for DPS.
>> I think it is a question for DPS, but we don't have a date at this point.
>> Okay. For DPS listening, if you could um have that um answer ready, please. Um uh I've got some other questions I can put in. notice in relation to that. Can I just go to staffing please? So in terms can you give an update on the current number of PBI staff and where they are located because you mentioned you do still have a small footprint here.
>> Uh yeah so we have an office here which we populate with around four staff for each sitting period. We have staff in west block together otherwise because we're a relatively small organization. So we're currently sitting around 48 I think might be a 48 uh ASL at the moment but um we we keep them all together in Westborg. We do have one staff member who works out of Brisbane. That's an unusual circumstance where someone has moved away from CRA and we have kept him working for the organization for at the moment but otherwise we're all in
So um has has your overall staffing reduced in the last financial year?
>> Uh so each um each election we receive half a million sorry each year that an election is expected we receive half a million additional on our standard budget. That's not index. That's been since 2012 that's been the kind of election uplift. Other than that, our um our annual appropriation is indexed by I think 3.38 a year. Staffing uh wages go up by uh 3.7 a year and there's an efficiency dividend of 1% a year. So if you add all those numbers up, that's a slight decrease over time.