I’ve always been fascinated by the honesty of numbers, it’s probably what largely drew me towards accounting as a career (uber geek yellow alert).

Numbers don’t lie, sure, people can use numbers to spin any argument they want (lies, damn lies and statistics) but if you strip the spin away numbers are nothing but pure, brutal honesty.

One of my many passions in life is politics (uber geek amber alert), I won’t go too far into why I think it’s important, or what it is that draws me to into it in this post (have to save some material for later) but needless to say discussion and debate around politics dominates a lot of my social media activity.

To this end I’m a big fan of Q&A on ABC1 (uber geek red alert), so when my wife suggested we join the studio audience, I jumped at the opportunity (we’re off the colour-code scale now people!)

As anyone who has watched the show will know the format sees an “expert” panel fielding questions from audience members about various topical subjects. The panel is usually made up of a “colour” guest, ie artists and authors, political commentators from the media and two or more politicians, so naturally much of the discussion tends to focus on those issues which are current in the Australian Political arena.

Never one to miss an opportunity I thought I might try and ask a question. On reviewing the make-up of the panel I noticed that the LNP “representative” was none other than The Hon Christopher Pyne MP.

Pyne is one of those classic Liberal characters in the Parliament. He is somewhat derogatorily referred to as “The Poodle” due to his prissy nature and his curly hair. One of those guys who no doubt comes from a cloistered private school environment who moved quickly into the similarly secluded environment of APH.

As well as being the Opposition Spokesperson for “something he knows nothing about and never actual speaks about”, Christopher has the lofty title of being the “Manager of Opposition Business”. For those who don’t know this means it is his job to ensure that the Opposition is using the Parliament effectively, that Members from his side of Parliament turn up to vote, to ensure he understands the standing orders (rules) of the Parliament and can use them in the most effective manner for the Opposition.

This year the opposition has wasted a lot of Parliament’s time by moving frivolous motions to suspend standing orders. A suspension of standing orders basically means that the usual rules of the Parliament would not apply, allowing the Parliament to deal with a matter of business which is more important that anything else before the Parliament. Sixty times this year they’ve attempted to move such a motion.

As the Manager of Opposition Business it generally falls on Christopher to move these motions, as they relate to the machinery of the Parliament. Every time one of these motions is put it wastes approximately an hour of the Parliament’s time as the motion is moved, seconded, speakers for, speakers against, a vote (on the voices) is taken, the Speaker declares it lost, Pyne calls for a division, Tellers are appointed, votes are tallied and the motion is declared lost. This is an hour of the Parliament’s time which can now not be spent debating actual policy which, you know, might actually benefit the Nation.

Pyne moves these motions knowing they will lose. It could be argued he’s been an effective Manager of Opposition Business in that he’s using the standing orders of the Parliament to great effect in order to embarrass the Government, but I argue that there are plenty of other opportunity for the LNP to do this via the media etc and that Parliament’s time should not be wasted on such frivolity.

So I thought I’d try and ask Christopher a question about this.

My first port of call was to, of course, look at the numbers. To try and somehow work out exactly how much taxpayers money has been wasted by Mr Pyne and his attempts to suspend standing orders.

A bit of research and I discovered that the cost of running the Parliament is approximately $154m a year, This includes the Department of Parliamentary Services as well as the Departments of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

We pay our MPs another $44m in wages (this includes the 30% bump in pay they all so “deservedly” received this year)

Parliament sits for around 70 days a year, there are 260 working days in the year so this means that around (70/260) or 26.9% of their working time is spent in Parliament. This puts their Parliamentary time cost for salaries & wages at ($44m @ 29.6%) or $11,846,153.85

So the total base cost of running the Parliament is ($154,000,000+$11,846,153.85) or $165,846,153.85 a year.

As stated, the Parliament sits for around 70 days so this makes the daily cost ($165,846,153.85/70) or $2,369,230.77 a day.

There’s no doubt that Parliamentarians work long days when Parliament is sitting, given that I’ve allowed for 12 hours in a working day, this puts the hourly cost of the Parliament at ($2,369,230.77/12) or $197,435.90 an hour.

So each time Pyne has moved one of these motions (to suspend standing orders) there is, at the very least, an opportunity cost to the Australian people of nearly $200,000!

The Opposition have moved for the suspension of standing orders 60 times, almost one for each and every day that the Parliament has sat, this puts the total cost of these frivolous motions at ($197,435.90 x 60) or $11,846,153.85

Wait a minute… back up a sec, I’ve seen that number before! Go back up six paragraphs and you’ll see this is the exact same number as the value that I apportioned to the cost of MPs time spent while sitting in Parliament! Numbers are freakin’ awesome!

So, as it turns out, Pyne’s continual movement of these nonsensical motions to suspend standing orders, which do nothing to serve the interests of the Australian people, have basically wiped out the value of the entire contribution our Parliamentarians have made to Parliament.

Nice work.

You can probably get some appreciation from this as to why I find numbers fascinating and also the value I place in programs such as Q&A because The Hon Christopher Pyne MP definitely has some questions which need answering!

Tune into Q&A on Monday night @ 9:30pm on ABC1 and ABC24 and you might just get to see him try.