While debate raged over the Prime Minister's dining room upgrade and Therese Rein's possible boardroom departure, David Hicks returned to Australia, a Stadium was planned then "thought about", and Alan Carpenter defended the cost of CCC.
State and Federal Politicians went over the books this week as Senate Estimates hearings dominated the parliamentary agenda.
It's often a trying time for governments, defending parliamentary spending while their opposite numbers search for any sign of excess.
And in Canberra, nothing signals excess like an upgrade to the Prime Minister's Dining Room.
A style in which one has become accustomed
Particularly when the upgrade is budgeted at $540,000 - $475,000 for materials and labour, plus $65,000 for architects - which - as Labor's Senator John Faulkner pointed out - is more than the cost of a family home.
"$475,000 and of course the Prime Minister would want it covered up," he said.
The room now seats 16 and the changes would have made room for 20. The main change involved moving a wall between the dining room and the neighbouring sitting room.
But as the hearing progressed, a spokesman for the Prime Minister announced the Government had decided not to proceed.
"There was a proposal but it didn't happen and it won't happen," the spokesman said.
Earlier that week the ALP had pledged to pursue Prime Minister John Howard over his cost of living, with figures the party released showing a cost to taxpayers of keeping both Kirribilli House in Sydney and The Lodge in Canberra open of almost $20 million.
The cost of living?
But the party later switched its focus from the cost of physical living to the government's political life, with the revelations of the purchase of over $111 million of advertising this financial year, including $4.1 million this week alone to sell its revised industrial relations laws.
The most expensive campaigns included Defence Force recruitment advertisements, with a $17.4 million media placement budget, advertisements promoting superannuation tax changes - $15.8 million - and a $14.5 million campaign promoting private health insurance, officials from the Prime Minister's department told the inquiry.
Other significant campaigns included the "Be Alert Not Alarmed" national security ads, a campaign against violence towards women and the "Skills for the Future" campaign on the Government's training policies.
Senator Faulkner said the spending rate showed where the government's priorities lay.
"National security advertising was $4.8 million over 16 months but workplace relations advertising, because the Government is in a massive political hole, has been $4.1 million of placements over just six days," he said.
But Finance Minister Nick Minchin said the government's only priority was informing the Australian public.
"This is just your pejorative reflection upon government advertising," he said.
"Workplace relations affect every single Australian, and they are entitled to know about changes to the law, and we have properly advertised those changes."
Too many Staffers?
The Estimates hearing also looked at Parliamentary Staff, with Opposition inquisitors singling out Nationals Senate Leader Ron Boswell and his budget for nine staffers.
Costing $723,000 per year, Officials from the Department of Finance and Administration were unable to answer questions from Labor senators as to what they actually did.
"There is a real accountability issue here," Senator John Faulkner told the budget estimates committee.
"It's huge amounts, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of taxpayers dollars, and no one can justify, no one knows what these people are doing."
Senator Faulkner said Senator Boswell, who holds no portfolio, employed more staff than all parliamentary secretaries and some ministers.
Senator Boswell said later that when the Australian Democrats had official party status in the Senate, they had had 15 staff whereas he had only six.
"Labor Senator Faulkner is wrong to imply that I have nine such staff working for me," he said in a statement.
"Nine have been allocated but I have filled six positions only as I saw necessary according to the work coming in.
"As Senate leader of a party that potentially has the balance of power in the Senate, my office is inundated with requests from interest groups across every portfolio."
"This attempt to smear a widely acknowledged heavy workload in my office is just hypocrisy from Labor senators who have nothing else to do except pick on others' hard-working staff," Senator Boswell said.
Wild Wednesday in WA - Carpenter in Estimates hearings...
Meanwhile, the Premier's visit to the State Parliament's Estimates hearings - largely overshadowed by a series of state government announcements occurring on the same day - revealed a $4 million spend on the Corruption and Crime Commission's Smiths Beach inquiry.
The inquiry, which largely became an investigation into lobbyists Brian Burke and Julian Grill, was followed by another inquiry into lobbyists, which will cost another $4 million.
Shadow attorney-general Sue Walker told journalists yesterday she was alarmed the activities of Mr Burke and Mr Grill, as well as former ministers Norm Marlborough, Tony McRae and John Bowler, accounted for nearly a third of the commission's $27 million budget.
"It's unfortunate that because of the unethical, dodgy dealings of ministers in the Carpenter Government with people like the disgraced former premier, WA taxpayers are still footing the bill for Brian Burke's unscrupulous ways," Ms Walker said.
The government was also condemned on Monday for a decision by Legislative Assembly Speaker Fred Riebeling not to ban Messrs Burke and Grill from state parliament.
As former MPs, the two have unrestricted access to the building.
As Ripper refuses tax review recommendations...
Also on that Wednesday, Jackson McDonald partner Jonathan Ilbery, the chairman of the state government's tax review reference group, delivered a highly critical assessment of the reform process, saying there had been a failure to pursue visionary reform of the state tax system.
He was particularly frustrated by the failure to explore the possibility of a broadly-based tax on labour services, which could be part of a visionary reform agenda.
"It is disappointing that (the Department of Treasury and Finance) have not taken the opportunity, over the two years of the current State Tax Review, to take up that recommendation."
The department acknowledged the in-principle merit of a labour tax but "merely reiterated the need for a national approach".
Treasurer Eric Ripper announced that the government would not pursue this option.
And Stadium plan is launched
But the big news of Wednesday was the handing over of a report showing Kitchener Park and East Perth as the preferred site for a successor stadium to Subiaco Oval, with Sports and Recreation Minister John Kobelke today ruling out a re-development of that site as a viable option.
In accepting the report, Mr Kobelke said the government would carefully consider the report, and consult with a wide range of sporting bodies, before making a decision.
But Opposition Leader Paul Omodei said the government could not afford to wait, and if the current government would not commit to building a stadium, a Liberal one would.
Industrial Relations
But with all that going on, the debate over Industrial Relations continued in Canberra, with this week's example of the abuse of Australian Workplace Agreements, as held up by the ALP, being the Lilac City Motel in Goulburn, New South Wales.
Reports on Thursday indicated the Motel offered staff an Australian Workplace Agreement that removed penalty rates, overtime, meal allowances and public holiday loadings, replacing them with a starting wage of just $13.47 an hour.
Industrial Relations Minister Joe Hockey said the AWA, formulated by the Hotels and Motels Association of Australia, did not meet requirements of the government's new fairness test.
"At first glance, the template AWA would not pass the fairness test," Mr Hockey told ABC Radio.
"But having said that, we are putting in place a mechanism that allows for an independent assessment of whether the AWA passes a fairness test, so that there will not be commentary on the run, provided by bush lawyers, about whether fair compensation is put in place for taking away penalty rates, overtime and leave loading and so on."
Labor was irresponsible to be criticising the motel, he said, which had received calls from angry members of the public vowing never to patronise the business after hearing of its employment policies.
But that afternoon came revelations that almost 60 staff at a job placement company run by Therese Rein, the wife of Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd, were underpaid after they were moved on to common law contracts that stripped award conditions in return for just 45 cents extra an hour.
The Opposition Leader said yesterday his wife had made an honest mistake and had compensated the workers as soon as the error was spotted.
The Prime Minister said Labor should stop attacking companies over industrial relations laws, though he declined to criticise Ms Rein directly, saying the matter was being investigated by the Office of Workplace Services.
"We did not start this. We are not making wild accusations about Mr Rudd's wife," Mr Howard told Southern Cross Broadcasting in Melbourne today.
"We are making very strong accusations about the behaviour of Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard towards other companies, some of whom have made honest mistakes.
"Now, if we're not to have a double standard, an honest mistake made by one company is as good and as excusable as an honest mistake made by another company.
"We've had too much of this use of parliamentary privilege to attack the reputations of hardworking businessmen and women.
"Vulnerable small businesses have their reputations trashed all across the country and there's not so much as an apology."
As this article goes to press, Ms Rein is flying back to Australia to discuss the future of her companies, amid debate about how much she ought to surrender for her husband's political fortune.
Australian Industry Group chief executive Heather Ridout said there would be ongoing issues with Ms Rein's business dealings, given her company has contracts with the federal government worth millions.
"Does Kevin Rudd need to go home and say, `Honey, you've got to sell the business'?" she said on Southern Cross Broadcasting.
"She's running a very substantial company ... these things do happen and they would have happened with Work Choices or without Work Choices," she said.
"Look, I'm sure they'll try and come to some accommodation between the two of them."
Mr Rudd said yesterday he would not ask his wife to wind up her business just because he was facing a federal election.
"I love my wife dearly. It is a very hard decision to say to someone prior to an election - and we don't know who is going to win the election - offload the business," he said.
The final word
In a week where Family First Senator Steve Fielding offered to meet with Communications Minister Helen Coonan to show her the wide range, questionable nature and easy accessibility of pornographic material on Parliament House computers (the Minister suggested he complain to the parliamentary presiding officers) the final word, and gold star for opportunism, goes to IKEA Australia.
Member for Canning and frequent Prime Ministerial defender Don Randall spoke up for the Prime Minister when he faced queries about the proposed $200,000 spend on seats for the Cabinet Room - a suggestion the Prime Minister did not authorise.
"The Prime Minister doesn't actually get to keep this stuff, you know," he said.
"Do you really want him to go off to IKEA and get his allen key out and put together a heap of dodgy chairs for people to sit on?"
The tone didn't sit too well with IKEA Australia chief executive Kent Nordin, who told AAP the King and Queen of Sweden, who visited Australia in late 2005, were fans of the range.
"We would be very happy to meet with the Prime Minster," Mr Nordin said.
The company then went one step further, sending out quarter-page broadsheet advertisements headed: "We respectfully ask Prime Minister John Howard to sit on it," along with a picture of a chair from the company's range.
Arch reckons the PM might prefer a footstool.
