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December 1, 2025
CLINTON MAYNARD: The Greens party room. So the room that the MPs of the Greens party sit down together in and meet in is being renovated, probably in need of a bit of paint. Well, the full details of how much this renovation is going to cost have been revealed in Estimates. And Senator James Paterson is on the case. Thanks for joining me, Senator.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Great to be with you.
CLINTON MAYNARD: The party room for the Greens. How much is it going to cost the taxpayer?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, a few months ago we thought it was bad enough already at $886,000. Seemed like a fair bit of money for renovating just one room in Parliament House. You can build a family home for half of that. But we learned today that in fact, it's not $886,000, that when you add up all the costs over three financial years, it's in fact $1.6 million to renovate a single room in Parliament House. It doesn't have a toilet, it doesn't have a shower, it doesn't have a kitchen, it doesn't have a pool. It is just one room that the Greens meet in it and it cost $1.6 million.
CLINTON MAYNARD: What on earth are they spending the money on?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Honestly, the mind boggles. I could not get straight answers out of officials, except that Parliament House is a difficult place to do renovations, apparently, and those unique circumstances have added up to $1.6 million. I mean, you could have built 3 or 4 suburban family homes - decent sized, high quality family homes for that kind of money. And instead, it's been blown, taxpayers’ money has been blown, by the Labor government on a party room for the Greens. And what we don't know is what for? What was the quid pro quo? What have the Greens offered in return for this lavishly appointed party room?
CLINTON MAYNARD: And we know they signed the deal on Friday with the federal government to get the environmental law legislation through Parliament. There are only ten Greens senators. There's one lower house member, so it's a total of 11 people for this one room. Physically, how big are these rooms? I mean, you've got one for the Coalition, for the Liberal Party as well.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Yeah, ours is a bit bigger. But it's been there since the Parliament was built, so it hasn't had to be renovated, and it can fit 100 people in it. So it's a different kind of proposition, what the Greens’ have got is essentially just a meeting room, a regular old plain meeting room. And how on earth that added up to so much money really is just inexplicable. And no good answers were given today.
CLINTON MAYNARD: So they got a new table, some new chairs. Maybe they need to go down to Harvey Norman and get a big flat screen TV for the wall. But beyond that, what? Is there some security features in there to protect them from people who might attack them or something?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Not any that I'm aware of. And honestly, if you told someone that they had to spend $1.6 million on a room, I think you would struggle to hit that much. You would need to be putting gold plating on the walls or the handles of the doors or something, to get the money up that high.
CLINTON MAYNARD: It's absolutely outrageous. Thanks for letting us know about it.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Thanks for having me.
ENDS