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by leave— In presenting the second Trade Outcomes and Objectives Statement, I remind the House that the first was tabled at the beginning of last year's parliamentary sittings and that it was a landmark document in the history of Australian trade policy. It was a clear demonstration of this government's commitment to enhancing Australia's trade and investment performance through well focused trade policy objectives, strategies and actions. The 1998 Trade Outcomes and Objectives Statement has the same practical and forward looking focus on advancing Australia's economic interests. It delivers to the Australian people and Australian business a results orientated and frank assessment of Australia's trading performance and sets out how we will achieve practical trade wins in the future. It details an unfolding strategy. It honours the strong commitment the coalition made in 1996, and again in 1997, to maintain a process of open and constructive dialogue with the Australian people on how best to advance our prosperity and security. And it gives detailed expression to the broad, long-term trade policy framework identified in Australia's first ever white paper on foreign affairs and trade, released in August last year. Australia's jobs and living standards depend on a competitive domestic economy and open international markets. Since coming to office two years ago, the coalition government has given its highest priority to securing jobs for Australians through practical and effective domestic and international policies. The government's trade policies seek to complement our domestic, economic and industry policies. With better market access and more opportunities for export, the benefits will be directly felt here at home through growth and more jobs in export industries and there will be positive flow-on benefits to those domestic businesses that support export activity. The 1998 Trade Outcomes and Objectives Statement reviews the trade and investment achievements of the past 12 months. Importantly, it considers the implications of recent events in the Asia-Pacific, including the overriding imperative to maintain momentum for economic reform and trade liberalisation at home and abroad. The government is committed to Asia for the long haul. The government is pursuing active strategies in response to the Asian economic instability through its involvement in IMF reform packages and our expanded trade credit insurance for exporters. We are talking to Australian businesses and putting in place practical measures to assist Australian companies over coming months. As we promised to do on being elected to government in 1996, we are continuing to expand our market development and market access efforts across the globe. It is interesting to note that Australian exporters are picking up on these opportunities. Exporters are seeing the benefits in diversifying their efforts and are not relying on traditional markets as much as in the past. This is reflected in the decrease in the proportion of Australia's exports going to Japan. In 1995, 23.1 per cent of our exports went to Japan. In 1997, this declined to 19.8 per cent as business capitalised on the range of opportunities in Asia and throughout the world. For example, in 1996-97, our fastest growing markets included: Iran, with a 71 per cent increase in exports; Egypt, with a 51 per cent increase; South Africa, with a 31 per cent increase; and Mexico, with a 24 per cent increase. The 1998 Trade Outcomes and Objectives Statement highlights some notable trade successes. Last financial year Australian businesses chalked up record overseas sales of goods and services, with exports exceeding $100 billion for the first time. The merchandise trade balance showed a $1.4 billion surplus, while the services trade deficit all but disappeared. These impressive results point to the success of the government's integrated bilateral, regional and multilateral trade policy efforts aimed at securing the best possible market access environment for Australian business. The Market Development Task Force reinvigorated Australia's bilateral trade diplomacy in 1997 and will continue to be a key element of our bilateral strategy in 1998. It fills a vacuum which existed for too long previously. Wins include better access for Australian sugar, rice and citrus in Japan, and financial services licences in China and Thailand. Regionally, Australia will continue to advocate economic reform and trade liberalisation which is even more important against the background of the Asian turmoil. It is encouraging to note that at the APEC meetings last November APEC members re-affirmed their commitment to achieving the Bogor goals of free and open trade and investment by 2010/2020. The government will continue to play its leading role in APEC in pushing hard to accelerate the early liberalisation of 15 priority sectors in which we have vital trade interests. We also have important multilateral trade objectives for 1998 which reflect the extent to which Australia's economic interests are directly engaged in a strong, comprehensive, rules based international trading system. These include a successful Cairns Group meeting in Sydney next month to advance multilateral agricultural reforms and to build momentum for a new comprehensive round of trade negotiations by 2000.This year's Trade Outcomes and Objectives Statement also features a new sectoral focus which covers food products, information technology and telecommunications, automotive products, professional services, and the textile, clothing and footwear sectors. This reflects the priority we are giving to sectoral market access efforts through the appointment of special negotiators in my department. A series of special reports examines the key trade issues likely to shape Australia's trading environment over the next decade, including environment and competition policy, electronic commerce, intellectual property, and standards and conformance matters. The statement concludes a two-year cycle by examining economies not covered in last year's first statement. These include important markets such as the European Union and a number of Asia-Pacific economies, as well as a number of emerging markets. I believe that Australian companies that are looking to diversify their export base will find these assessments particularly useful. In this rapidly globalising world, Australia cannot afford to be complacent. Globalisation offers real advantages to those economies and societies that are genuinely open to innovation and quick to adapt more practical ways of doing things. It can be a punishing process for those that do not get their houses in order, as we have witnessed recently in the region. As we head into the 21st century, Australia's trade policy will need to incorporate a broader and more complex agenda, hand in hand with overall economic policy. The increasing intensity of worldwide competition means that Australia must push ahead on micro-economic reform, including measures to make our taxation system more competitive and to improve labour productivity. This in turn will require a robust and effective flow of information among federal, state and territory governments and the private sector. In that respect, I cannot emphasise too much the importance of government and business joining forces and talents to take advantage of new opportunities and meet the challenges that lie ahead. The government's trade policy is flexible and pragmatic. It seeks to build Australia into a truly competitive nation, engaged with the world arena from a position of strength. It is results oriented and centres on providing tangible outcomes for Australian business and jobs for Australians. The 1998 Trade Outcomes and Objectives Statement is a sharply focused, clear and comprehensive document that informs the Australian people about what we have achieved over the past year, defines the challenges and obstacles that still need to be overcome and charts the way ahead for Australia in the regional and international economy. I commend the statement to the House.	Australia	1,998
by leave— Mr Speaker, this is my first opportunity to address you as the Speaker in this context. Congratulations again on your elevation. It is with great disappointment that I find myself in a situation where I have to be critical of the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Tim Fischer) and the statement that he has produced, because I will acknowledge this one thing about him: over the last two years, he has been the one person in this government struggling manfully to keep the reputation of this nation up above sea level in the neighbourhood with which we trade and the people with whom we wish to trade more. In that regard, we would offer him, I think as is appropriate, praise. There is very little praise, however, for this particular statement. I guess it exemplifies a couple of things in politics: firstly, if you do not blow your own trumpet, nobody else will; and, secondly, the best thing you can do in politics is to erect a straw man and knock it down, and hope that somebody out there at least is impressed. On the side of blowing your own trumpet and nobody else doing it for you, let me just describe the very good wicket on which this trade minister came to bat; a wicket which domestically was described by the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) when he assumed office as his having inherited an economy `better than good in parts'—rather different from the comments that we hear from him from time to time in question time these days. The trade picture that was confronted by the Deputy Prime Minister when he became trade minister was likewise—better than good in parts. Under Labor our exports of manufactures, the most employment intensive exports, went from under 20 per cent of total merchandise to over 33 per cent; from one-fifth to one-third. So, whatever the taxation arrangements, whatever it was that Labor were doing, what we were not inhibiting was the export of manufactured goods. Services went from 18 per cent of total exports to 23 per cent. So, whatever we were doing on the taxation system, services were not experiencing any sort of difficulty in improving their share of Australian trade. More important than this, over Labor's period in office Australian exports grew by an average of just over 10 per cent every year for 13 years. An important figure: just over 10 per cent every year for 13 years. Remember that. We now contrast that with the position of the trade minister. He makes much in this statement of 1996-97 being a record for exports. Of course, this is a bit of a furphy. This is another one of the `blow your own trumpet' exercises. In a growing world economy, just about every year is a record year. But let us look at the reality of the 1996-97 export performance. It represents a 2.5 per cent increase over the previous year. That is against a background of 10 per cent per annum growth in exports under Labor. It is not as though the government were not dealing with an active export sector. The Deputy Prime Minister was talking about 71 per cent increases in Iran, and a few other things like this. You can always get a good percentage when there is a low number to start off with. But the real test is the base of the totality of our export performance—and a 10 per cent annual growth rate in exports under Labor has become a 2.5 per cent growth rate under this government. There are many reasons for that. Among those reasons are decisions taken by this government in the budgetary context which have flattened this economy and flattened the performance of all those who would be exporters—and, basically, for a political and not an economic objective. When the Prime Minister inherited an economy better than good in parts, it was an economy that was well managed fiscally as well as in other ways. They attempt to make something of something that nobody else out there is interested in but them: a so-called $10 billion black hole. The fiscal position which they confronted when they came into office was the second best in the OECD. Let people get this in perspective: the second best in the OECD. Because they wanted to make a point to us, they went about slashing wholesale a massive number of government programs which were absolutely essential to the export sector, particularly in the manufacturing area. So what we had, for example, with the export market development grants was a $425 million cut over four years. Calculations show that for every dollar spent on the EMDG, there was a return of between $9 and $21 to the economy. So we can quantify how much that cut was: it was likely to cost us in exports between $135 million $215 million forgone per year as a result of that alone. I would draw attention to something else as well, and that is the situation that occurred with a cut to the R&D tax concession. People might say, `Well, what does the R&D tax concession have to do with exports?' The interesting thing is this: one of the few things that you can actually do for your industries, without running yourself up against a WTO barrier these days, is resources for innovation. Let us be very frank about this: most of those who moralise around the globe on the subject of the need for there to be no support for industry and who rail against tariffs, and reasonably so, nevertheless—and the Europeans are absolutely front and centre in this regard—are enormous assisters of their industries under other categories. They say that it is not export enhancement and, therefore, they do not run foul of the WTO. But they ladle the loot in nevertheless. And where they ladle the loot in is with innovation. So those R&D tax concessions are absolutely critical to the service industries and the manufacturing industries in particular that we have sought to encourage. What have we seen? We have seen, as a result of this, a slashing of R&D budgets in the private sector across the board, but R&D budgets particularly in those areas which are export oriented. I think of my own state which is almost totally export oriented with the most active traders in the region. The new manufacturing industries, the new service industries that have been building up in Western Australia in recent times, are those hardest hit by what has happened. They do not assume that they can operate effectively in a domestic economy on their own because they are massively export oriented. Our new industries are massively export oriented. They were savaged in a foolish, politics driven set of budgetary arrangements put in place by this government. The second front of straw men is this one about bilateralism versus multilateralism. What a giant furphy. This notion that, somehow or other, the only trade policy that existed prior to this show was an APEC oriented trade policy, or wherever we could see a collective of nations we would turn up otherwise we were not interested. There is not a place, on a bilateral basis, that this government have put emphasis on where they were not preceded by a ministerial visit and a ministerial emphasis by Labor when in office, such as the visit to South Africa by John Button in 1993. That is why we have seen these massive increases in trade with South Africa. It has nothing to do with the show that were not sure whether or not they were against apartheid during the 1980s; it has everything to do with the show that had been batting for Nelson Mandela and his team and then benefited from it. In 1993, John Button led the first bilateral trade visit to South Africa after apartheid. Then we had the visit to Latin America in 1994 under Bob McMullan. They were based on an assumption that we are not engaged purely in multilateralism; we are engaged in bilateralism. What about India with Bob McMullan and John Button in 1994? India ought to be engraved on the heart of the trade minister because it was one of his first visits. What was the Minister for Trade doing in India? What he was doing in India was lending his graceful presence and his enthusiasm to a Labor initiative—the new horizons program in relation to India. But, unfortunately for him, he arrived with a giant handicap. He was not supposed to be there. The person who was supposed to be there was the Prime Minister, and he was not. It represented an enormous opportunity for this government to put its stamp on an area of an increasingly critical nature for this nation in trade. It was an opportunity to put that stamp on and the opportunity was forgone by the Prime Minister. When I was there, I found the Indians wanted to make a point to me about that in the way in which I was treated as a leader of the opposition. I was treated a darn sight better as a leader of the opposition on international visits then they usually are and at least as well as ministers get treated, because the Indians were not pleased with the emphasis that had been placed on their situation. Then on another straw man, the European straw man, this was always their plea, `You talk about Asia. We talk about Europe. Let us get ourselves into Europe.' What has been the European record of this government since they have been in office? The European record of this government since they have been in office has been one of explanation—not one of proselytisation but one of explanation. We have had to explain ourselves to the Europeans by saying, `Yes, if you want to do business in this region around us, which will ultimately resume as a part of growth, you come and invest in Australia.'We used to do that with ease when we were in office, but now we have to plead. Why do we have to plead? Because our image in Europe is changing from a vibrant, progressive, outward looking nation into a cause, and God help those countries that become an international cause. Why have we become an international cause? We have become an international cause because of the orientation, neglect and attempt to flirt with issues in this country which resonate elsewhere. We started with such issues in the human rights domain. We had a struggle to stand up to sign a human rights agreement on our treaty with Europe that Colonel Gaddafi was able to sign. We struggled, whereas Colonel Gaddafi could sign off. We actually had a gigantic struggle with the Europeans to avoid a human rights statement which might imply that how Australia dealt with labour relations, for example, might be a matter of interest or concern. The trouble we had in signing up with the Europeans was not on racial matters, which is another issue that has been raised in recent times, it was on whether or not Australian workers should be persecuted. `Let us persecute Australian workers,' said the Australian government, `or we will not sign a trade arrangement with you.'Then we move on from that point. The stance that the government has taken on the Wik legislation to tweak an opportunity up for a racial election in this country has not gone unnoticed elsewhere. Where it has been front and centre noticed is in the European parliament where we had for the first time a resolution passed condemning Australia and putting the focus on us. This is the bilateral diplomacy of this government in its effort to create and open up a new market in Europe. So those straw men we whack over, but the multilateral element is important as well. I praise Laurie Oakes for an excellent statement of criticism in relation to the use of a multilateral organisation to assist in the crisis that we have in the region around us. He put a point which I absolutely take on board. I cannot fault the rhetoric of this government on the present Asian crisis. What I can fault is two things: firstly, when they came to those conclusions, and what they were saying as far as that Asian crisis was concerned when it was important to say something different; and, secondly, in regard to their language now on the region around us, their capacity to deliver outcomes. This was so beautifully encapsulated in that article by Laurie Oakes in the Bulletin of 3 March. He stated: When United States President Bill Clinton arrived in Vancouver for the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation summit last November, he dismissed the Asian financial crisis as "just a few little glitches in the road". By the time the meeting ended, he was much better informed. But Clinton's initial lack of understanding represented, as much as anything else, a failure of Australian diplomacy. If Paul Keating rather than John Howard had been prime minister, phone calls from The Lodge would not only have ensured Clinton was properly briefed. There would have been a sense of urgency. Ideas would have been generated. Plans to deal with the situation would have been floated and discussed well ahead of the meeting. Asian leaders would have been phoned, lobbied, persuaded. Things would have happened. It is not simply a matter of saying the right things—then, of course, they were not saying the right thing. Remember what was going on at that time when that meeting was being held: Bob McMullan and others on our front bench were getting up and asking questions in this place and we were accused in this place of exaggerating and, via exaggeration, exacerbating the crisis in the region around us and its impact on us. That was going on then. At that time, not only was this government's incapacity in diplomacy being tested; so was their intellectual endeavour. They came to the conclusion of the Asian crisis when every single blinking newspaper clipping that they finally had shoved under their nose said they should. There was no forethought and no understanding of what the problem was that they were dealing with or the nature of that problem. Then, when it came on board, it was not the rhetoric in the end—they said the right things about Indonesia, they said the rights things about Thailand and so on—it was simply a capacity to deliver on the ground. When I look at the performance of the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Mr Downer) in Indonesia recently, again, you cannot fault the words. But I am pretty well aware of what is happening in relation to that situation in Indonesia and many members of this parliament are. Mr Downer is up there and makes a statement about not being a fair weather friend and exits. The Japanese were there at the same time with 11 ministers and vice-ministers, with a total package about what ought to be being done and with ideas about how things might be proceeding. The Americans have been ringing us up for some months asking for a bit of advice on what is happening in Indonesia—finally, turning up mob-handed themselves to do the trick. We are out there saying that we are here on offer, but we have no diplomacy to back it up. What we ought to be doing in Indonesia now is taking the captains of Australian industry, taking the people who know a bit about food distribution, taking the people who know a bit about currency movements and taking the fellows who are a bit active in our financial markets—going across there mob-handed with a solution. That is what we should be doing at this moment. That is what the Japanese are doing. We should be doing exactly the same. Words are good for Australian editorials; deeds are what count for the future of our security in this region and for the future of our economic prosperity. What can we contribute to Indonesia? I would suggest those intellectual attributes that would be forthcoming from those groups that I have named. Also, I think that we would have to be looking seriously at how we could physically assist with distribution. Distribution of food is going to be the central issue in the stability of Indonesia over 12 months. Get that right and they will come through this. Get that wrong and the penalties that they will pay as a people and that we will pay as a nation are untold. That is what ought to be at the forefront of government thinking, but there is no intellectual heft backed up by program. It is the duty of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade (Mr Tim Fischer) to get those sorts of things in place. The Minister for Trade had regard to the situation in the region around us in his speech, but when you actually go to the detail of what he proposes, it does not actually match the circumstances that we now confront. It is a 15-line speech that comes two days after Australia records a balance of trade in goods and services deficit of $600 million for January, after a deficit of $836 million in December; on the day that we heard that the current account deficit blew out by $5.7 billion or 22 per cent in the December quarter; and one day after we heard that net foreign debt grew by over two per cent in the December quarter last year—as it has done on average since the coalition came to power—which compares to an average of less than one per cent in the last three years under the Labor government. The Prime Minister talked about economic comparisons between them and us. I have two great economic comparisons between them and us—firstly, a 10 per cent per annum increase in growth in trade sustained over 13 years under Labor and 2½ per cent sustained over a couple of years by the Liberal Party in office; and, secondly, foreign debt. There was growth of one per cent in the last 3½ years of Labor's show and 2½ per cent since the coalition have come into office. That is a pretty interesting comparison.	Australia	1,998
They used to run around with that flummoxy debt truck of theirs that managed to break down on a regular basis—that fully imported foreign debt truck that they had—neglecting the fact that the Prime Minister had returned true to form. Foreign debt grew by 400 per cent when he was in office, half of that in his last couple of years as Treasurer of this nation. So let's have a them and us comparison on that and, while we are about it, let's have it on deficits as well. They talk about a $10 billion deficit that was allegedly concealed. Actively concealed and knowingly concealed was $25 billion when he left office. So with this Prime Minister we have deficits, trade and foreign debt—a lovely little trifecta. I conclude by saying that this is a statement from an inadequate government, a statement that contains a little bit that is worthy in it. It is a statement that contains at last an official confession that something might actually happen on the employment front as a result of what is going on around us when it says: Lower export earnings will affect domestic activity through their impact on sectoral incomes. This will flow on to domestic spending. The consequent slowing in output growth will affect employment though—and here are the words—not until later in 1998-99.So what is all this pressure for a Wik election? Senator Minchin announced—and it is worth while people thinking on this—that they are going to back away from some of the amendments that they accepted in the Senate on the Wik legislation because they do not want to sully their opportunity for a double dissolution. Wik is not about solutions as formerly confessed; Wik is about a double dissolution. Unfortunately, that Wik double dissolution plays not into an atmosphere around us that is simply a clean slate on which nobody else is passing a view on us but into an atmosphere of clutter. If that legislation were passed and we were to win an election, the explanations the present Deputy Prime Minister would have to offer overseas, including in the region around us, in Europe and in Latin America, would be totally different from any other set of explanations that have been offered by Australians hitherto—even by those in this government. He would find himself in the position that others, to the detriment of their nations, have found themselves in over time—but those were rogue nations, not nations like Australia. His task would be to explain why people should trade with Australia, when previously his task would have been to explain how good it was to have the opportunity to trade with a country such as this, with its vibrant manufacturing sector, service sector and export orientation. Instead, he would have to say: `No, do not discriminate against us because of our attitudes; we are really not all that bad.' He would have to spend his time debating everything but the quality of the Australian product. This statement, full of motherhood, straw men and unjustified trumpet blowing, would be a bagatelle in the sort of literature he would be obliged to produce to deal with that set of problems.	Australia	1,998
As the new Speaker leaves the chamber, I—along with everyone else in this House, I suggest—offer him my warm greetings in his new position. I am most surprised at the slim nature of the speaking list on this Managed Investments Bill 1997 . In my mind, this is a truly significant piece of legislation which particularly affects those in our community who want a more careful scrutiny of their investments. There was only one speaker on the govern ment side. Two of the other four happened to be Independents. While I do not claim to be by any means an expert in the area of managed investments, I do recognise the fundamental importance of this piece of legislation in protecting the life savings of an increasingly large number of Australians, many of whom are in my electorate of Calare. With interest rates so low and with superannuation being increasingly subjected to extra taxation, with a constantly increasing ageing and retiring population, the demand for the collective types of investments that this bill aims to regulate is only going to increase as investors try to maximise the returns on their savings. It has been somewhat difficult to obtain objective information about the pros and cons of this bill. Lobby groups representing the trustees have arguments to support their vested interests, as have lobby groups representing the vested interests of fund managers. Fund managers and their representative bodies welcome the bill because they argue it will, among other things, replace an outdated two-party system of regulation which has led to an unnecessary confusion of the roles of manager and trustee. They also argue that it brings the regulatory arrangements for managed investment schemes in line with those for superannuation schemes, that it imposes a comprehensive and strict set of duties and responsibilities on the responsible entities and that it increases the powers of the ASC to set and enforce rigorous compliance and licensing standards. On the other hand, groups representing the trustees argue that the bill should be opposed because, according to them, it dismantles a system of safeguards for investors that has served Australia well for the past 45 years and gives investors no say in whether their existing rights and protections, affecting billions of dollars worth of their property, are to be changed. It replaces a cost-efficient system with one that is more costly for investors. For example, a study by KPMG has found that the changes will add about $38 million to the cost of running funds, and that there will be one-off costs of between $28 million and $33 million in each of the two years in which the changes are to be introduced. On top of this, they argue that the changes will increase costs to the ASC by $4.3 million per year and could involve additional capital gains tax and stamp duty liabilities for investors. Further they claim that one of Australia's leading law firms believes: The Bill is poorly designed and establishes an inefficient, complex and bureaucratic regulatory structure under which investor protection is substantially reduced. The international rating agency, Standard and Poor's, has said: The existing structure provides greater investment protection as the trustee and the custodian are clearly independent. The failure to mandate that fund assets must be held in safekeeping by an independent custodian is of concern and is in contrast to all other major financial centres of the world where an independent custodian is a minimum standard. The argument goes on to say that the bill's `single responsibility entity' structure is inconsistent with international best practice. They argue that it is illogical for Australia to be introducing such measures when the major financial centres, such as the United States, United Kingdom and Japan, in order to strengthen investor protection, have moved in the opposite direction and strengthened the role of the independent trustee or custodian. They claim that the only other place where a single entity structure is the norm is in the Dutch Antilles. But, when both groups have their fingers in the honey pot and stand to lose or gain from this bill, who are we meant to believe? As the member for Bradfield, (Dr Nelson) pointed out last night, the best way to approach such a debate is with an open mind. That is what I have tried to do. This bill arises from the Law Reform Commission's report, Collective investments: other people's money, tabled in this House in September 1993. The key outcome of that report was that there should be a single operator responsible for the conduct of the scheme. That view was reflected by recommendation 89 of the Wallis inquiry, which said that we should have a single responsibility entity structure for superannuation funds, as well as the collective investment schemes covered by the bill before us in the House today. The report recommended the change to a single responsible entity structure in the collective investment industry to improve accountability, provide cost savings and bring the regulation of the collective investments system into line with arrangements in superannuation funds. There have been notable cases, which I will refer to in a moment, where legal confusion had arisen about who was responsible for the collapse of a fund—the trustee, the fund manager or third parties such as the accountants or the lawyers acting for either. Under the previous government, the Attorney-General drafted similar legislation in the form of the Collective Investment Bill. This bill—with the notable abolition of the mandatory separate independent custodians—now comes before this place as the Managed Investments Bill 1997 . So the bill is substantially that originally proposed by the former Labor government, and the opposition are giving it their in-principle support. They are recommending that it be sent to the Joint Committee on Corporations and Securities to inquire into whether, with the removal of that independent custodian, the legislation provides enough protection for the investor. Why all the fuss? Collective investment schemes are a major source of investment funds in Australia. There is an enormous variety of such schemes, from the largest commercial property and cash management trusts through to small one-off schemes focusing on single projects such as pine plantations or yabby farms. During the 1980s these schemes grew enormously, partly as a result of the deregulation of the financial sector. Investments in unit trusts grew from less than $2 billion in 1980 to over $38 billion in 1992—and no doubt they are worth a lot more than that now. This increase has been accelerated as more and more people retire, taking all or part of their superannuation in lump sums and investing in such schemes, seeking a better rate of return than that offered by banks through fixed interest. The amount of money invested in collective investment schemes will undoubtedly continue to grow with compulsory superannuation. With so much money going into the industry, it is crucial that investors maintain confidence in the industry and in the fate of their own investment. One need only look at the impact that the collapse of the Estate Mortgage trust in 1990 had on the wider economy for evidence of the need for governing regulations to do everything possible to ensure investor confidence is maintained. Members no doubt recall the commercial property boom of the 1980s—how could we forget?—accompanied by an unprecedented increase in the size of the unlisted property trust market. Between 1988 and 1990, for example, unlisted property trust assets swelled by 62 per cent, from $5.5 billion to $8.9 billion. In 1990, asset values held by property trusts fell by $2 billion, resulting in massive losses to investors and triggering the virtual closure of most unlisted property trusts. The resulting loss of confidence by investors meant that requests for redemptions of capital continued to outstrip new investment. The impact of all this was so severe that the government had to intervene and put a one-year freeze on investors removing their funds from the trusts. We know that investment is an inherently risky operation. When an individual takes the option of directly investing in shares, they take the risks that go with it. If things go their way they might reap rewards. On the other hand, there is a chance they might blow their money. For those people, the general rule is that the higher the advertised or possible rate of return, the higher the risk. But what are the protections? While many investors are keenly aware of what they are doing, others do not have the experience or expertise to appreciate fully the risks. I dare say many people investing in managed trusts are of this type. They choose to do so because they do not have the time to manage their investment, they do not know enough or they do not have enough money to get the exposure they could have by having it pooled and invested with other people's money. Through a collective investment they are able to pass on responsibility for the day to day management of their savings to someone else, and they hope that someone else is an expert. These investors rely on the law, not their own expertise and skill. If, as the Estate Mortgage case suggests, investor confidence is the key to the industry, then surely investor confidence in the regulatory scheme governing the industry is absolutely critical. In this context, what this legislation has to do is strike a balance between investment protection and providing the framework for a vibrant investment market. Under the current system, collective investments are run by a manager, who could invest the money in any way permitted by the trust deed. The manager's day to day overseer is the trustee, who actually holds the assets on behalf of the investors. More importantly, the trustee controls the money, so if a manager wants to pursue a particular line of investment they have to get the permission of the trustee first. Under the current system, the trustee signs the cheques. So they are meant to act as a third-party check between the investor and the actions of the fund manager. It does not always work perfectly, as the Estate Mortgage case demonstrates, but at least in that case the investors were able to sue the trustee as well as the manager. The member for Bradfield pointed out last night that investors in Estate Mortgage have just received some good news with Burns Philp, the parent company of the trustee, agreeing to pay a substantial settlement. However, in the Estate Mortgage case it would appear the investors were lucky they were able to sue the trustee, because they would have got very little out of the fund manager, Reuben Lew, who ended up bankrupt and in gaol. My understanding is that this bill scraps the trustees altogether, replaces the trust deed with a constitution and renames managers `responsible entities', giving them the power to hold assets, sign cheques and make all decisions about the direction of the fund's investment. Under this system, only the fund manager, to be known as the responsible entity, will be accountable to the investors. By placing responsibility clearly on the shoulders of one body, the legislation will remove the likelihood of confusion arising over who is responsible. However, with this simplification there are possible drawbacks. According to Pierpont, writing in the Financial Review, there is potential for these responsible entities to abuse their position. The safeguard under the proposed bill is that the manager must have the support of either a majority of independent directors or a compliance committee, but the legislation specifically bars trustees from fulfilling one of these positions. Pierpont refers to the case of Trustee Executor and Agency, which collapsed in 1983, as a case in point. In that case, all the directors were independent and none of them had a clue—until the eve of the receivership—that their managing director was engaging in wild, unauthorised property speculation with the company's own money. Fortunately, here the investments held under trust remained intact, but this is unlikely under the bill before us. Under the current system, a trustee can only be altered with the support of a majority of investors in the trust. But, under the Managed Investments Bill, in particular section 601CC(1)(b), the constitution of a scheme may be modified or repealed and replaced with a new constitution by the responsible entity if the responsible entity reasonably considers the change will not adversely affect members' rights. As the member for Wentworth (Mr Andrew Thomson) and the member for Bradfield pointed out last night, the bill does impose onerous obligations on prospective fund managers and upon their day-to-day operations. However, in light of recent experiences in the superannuation industry, an industry governed by onerous legislation, I question whether the MIB can deliver enough protection. The superannuation industry is governed by the Superannuation Industry Supervision Act, commonly known as the SIS. This legislation is highly stringent. It sets strict accounting standards and applies a vast number of rules for both trustee and investment managers. Even with this stringent degree of regulation, it appears that inadequate protection has been provided to many investors. Members will recall the cases of the Sentinel, Austral ian Superannuation Nominees and EC Consolidated Capital super funds, where unscrupulous fund managers managed to destroy the life savings of their investors, with little if any real protection provided by the SIS legislation. In these cases, investors were lured into the funds by the promise of higher than average returns. The investors believed their investments were as safe as bricks and mortar and protected by government legislation but, unbeknown to them, they had invested in schemes of a highly dubious character. For example, in the Sentinel case, the group is now estimated to have debts of $10 million and, of course, the investors have to wait in line to pick up the pieces of what is left over after all other creditors with priority are paid out. Sentinel actually failed to lodge its returns in 1996 and, rather than sensing a problem and stepping in, the prudential regulator, the Insurance and Superannuation Commission, allowed the group to keep trading. One of the directors had previously been a bankrupt, but the group openly paraded itself as a financial cleanskin. It gets better. One of the directors of the Sentinel group actually borrowed money from the group, and therefore the investors, to build a house in Melbourne for his own personal use. Investors in the notorious Australian Superannuation Nominees and EC Consolidated Capital suffered similar treatment and lost their life savings. In the superannuation industry, nearly all super funds have trustees to oversee investors' money—how it is managed, how it performs. But, for those in wholesale funds like Sentinel or ECCCL, the investors are actually their own trustees and the SIS rules provide them with little protection. The only option is to sue your managers, but what good is that if your manager is bankrupt and has lost all your money? And, according to the Insurance and Superannuation Commission, last year 21,000 super funds either failed to lodge their returns or lodged incomplete claims. Further, the ISC listed 55 per cent of funds audited as having serious breaches of the SIS legislation which put investors funds and risk. Some commentators call for funds to be insured against fraud or negligence. What I ask is how, if the ISC cannot even cope with its workload given present funding pressures, can the government expect the ASC to operate effectively with increases in its responsibilities. So I join the member for Wentworth in his call for increasing the ASC's budget so it can adequately enforce the compliance responsibilities placed upon it. What the Sentinel and other cases show is that, even where regulation and controls are much more stringent, where there is that two-tiered trustee system in place, there are still unscrupulous operators who are taking advantage of investors, and the legislation provides inadequate protection for investors. How can it be that under the MIB, with the removal of the internal regulators, the trustees, and the granting to managers of so much more power, that the protection will be adequate? That is especially the case if the ASC does not have the resources. As Pierpont says, there are loopholes in this bill that you could drive cars through, and the only safeguard put in place will be the Australian Securities Commission. If the protection is inadequate, investor confidence will inevitably be lost and so too could their fortunes be. We have to guarantee that this bill protects ordinary investors against this eventuality. This government and its predecessor have been all about encouraging individual responsibility in relation to retirement. Perhaps the government should be incorporating in this bill some form of compulsory insurance, some type of firewall to be compelled upon the industry to provide a safety net for investors adversely affected by the incompetent, the negligent or the fraudulent. The emphasis on superannuation and winding back of entitlements to social security are part of this government's feeling about individual responsibility for retirement and such things. The government speaks of mutual obligation in many of these areas. Sure, there is a mutual obligation, but there has to be protection with that. We cannot leave people out there floating alone in this financial ocean trying to find out whether they are on a raft that will float or not. If the government is to compel Australians to save for their old age, and thus encourage them to invest in collective funds, the people can expect the government to put in place the appropriate safeguards to protect their savings. I am not yet convinced this bill provides adequate protection, so I support the opposition's recommendation that the bill be sent to the Joint Committee on Corporations and Securities for further examination.	Australia	1,998
That often happens in this game, doesn't it? The second issue relates to the bill's treatment of the custody of scheme assets and the non-custodian issue that has been raised. I will just make several comments about that. First, there is no requirement in the bill for a scheme to have a custodian to hold scheme property. This position is consistent with the recommendation of the 1993 review of the Australian Law Reform Commission and Companies and Securities Advisory Committee. Indeed, the review stated that imposing a requirement for all schemes to have a separate custodian was neither necessary nor appropriate but would be unnecessarily rigid. The government believes the requirement for a separate custodian is not justified for regulatory purposes. This is because the bill contains a number of other mechanisms designed to protect scheme assets. For example, the responsible entity will be under a duty to keep scheme property separately from its own assets and will have the duties of a trustee in relation to any scheme property that it holds. The scheme compliance plan must set out the custodial arrangements that the responsible entity will put in place for scheme assets. That plan is to be vetted by the Australian Securities Commission. Some may argue that a mandated custodian is required to ensure that scheme assets are segregated from those of the responsible entity to afford protection of investors' interests in the event of a collapse or fraud. I just make the following comments: the requirement to hold scheme property separately and on trust will adequately protect investors' interests in the event of a collapse. Moreover, the responsible entity concept means that any custodian of scheme assets would be a bare custodian obliged to deal with scheme property in accordance with the responsible entity's instructions. Such a custodian would offer little protection against misuse of scheme property and exercise little oversight of the responsible entity's activities. Rather, a custodian requirement would impose costs that may well outweigh the benefits in terms of improved compliance. If the custodian were given power to decide where the responsible entity's directions were within the terms of its authority or to second-guess the responsible entity's instructions, the responsible entity concept would be undermined. Such a custodian would probably owe fiduciary duties to investors. The current trustee manager structure would reassert itself. There are already arrangements for the Australian Securities Commission, which has arrangements with the securities commissioner, to be authorised to operate without a separate trustee to hold fund assets. For example, the solicitor mortgage investment companies and the trustee common funds both operate without the supervision of a second party, holding scheme assets separately from the scheme promoter. One of the goals of changing the regulatory framework for managed investments is to ensure that the legal framework for the industry harmonises with the regulation of similar investment vehicles. There is no similar requirement to protect investors' interests in company structures, nor is there a universal requirement to retain a custodian in superannuation. This bill will not prevent a responsible entity from appointing a custodian to hold the scheme property separately from other property. Indeed, the government believes that many responsible entities will find that the easiest way to discharge the duty to keep scheme assets separate from its own assets will be to engage another party to take custody of the assets, but there should be no requirement to do so. In concluding, I would say that the government is fully aware of its obligations to investors in this area. We have had experiences in this country where investors' funds have not been adequately cared for and there is a genuine concern by the government to try to ensure to the best of our ability that that does not happen in the future but, of course, in all of these matters governments can do so much with regulation and underpinning but at the same time there is a responsibility for people who are involved in these investment operations to ensure that they operate with wisdom and care and with due propriety for investors' funds. I thank all those who participated in the debate.	Australia	1,998
The Company Law Review Bill 1997 , in its original form, was an initiative of Labor. It was originally released in 1995 and it seeks to improve and simplify most of the core provisions of the Corporations Law. It covers seven major areas as follows: registering companies, meetings, share capital, financial reporting, annual returns, deregistration of defunct companies and company names. These are all vital areas of company regulation which do need significant simplification and reform. However, I need to point out at the beginning of my remarks that the opposition does not wholly support the bill as currently drafted. We have a number of serious questions on various aspects to which we will be seeking answers. To enable proper scrutiny of these proposals, the opposition is supporting reference of the bills to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Corporations and Securities. You announced before this notice came forward that the Senate processes have already commenced for that referral to occur. We are therefore happy to pass this bill in the House in the expectation that it will receive proper scrutiny before the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Corporations and Securities. An earlier draft of the bill—the draft Second Corporate Law Simplification Bill—was considered earlier by the parliamentary joint committee. Of the 11 unanimous recommendations of that committee, while a number have been adopted by the government in the new bill, others have not. In addition to these matters the bill also contains some unilateral alterations made by the government which were not included in the original referred legislation. Clearly, we will be concerned to closely examine those issues to weigh the decisions taken by the government against the previous unanimous recommendations by the committee where they are inconsistent and to examine the other issues. I want to give a brief description of the legislation. The broad areas covered by the bill cover a wide range of company law. The ramifications of the legislation are very significant indeed. For example, the proposals concerning share capital transactions represent a revolution in a fundamental matter of corporate law. The bill proposes to abolish the concept of par value for shares. This proposal follows in the footsteps of other comparable nations such as the United States, Canada and New Zealand. The abolition of the concept of par value will considerably simplify and streamline the processes which must currently be undertaken. At the moment, if a company's share price is lower than the par value special meeting processes and court involvement are necessary to approve proposals to issue fresh capital. These processes have lost their relevance in the modern commercial world and their reform is supported by Labor. Buttressing the abolition of par value for shares is the related proposal to simplify the processes concerning capital variations. So, if a company wishes to reduce its issued capital it must seek court confirmation for the proposal. This bill will abolish the involvement of the court in this process. This will save time; it will save expense; it will remove an unnecessary complication to the financial affairs of major companies. However, like many worthwhile reforms, there are significant complications that arising from the proposals. As the government has acknowledged, these capital reforms will open up an enormous tax avoidance opportunity. That opportunity is that companies will be able to stream amounts that would technically be capital, and hence non-taxable, to shareholders in lieu of taxable dividends. Clearly this would be an untenable situation. The Treasurer (Mr Costello) has announced that the tax law will need to be amended to ensure that rorts cannot be undertaken. That announcement was made last year, yet we still do not have the amending tax legislation coming before the parliament. Again, the government is falling down on its management of the legislative program; they are proposing to open up tax avoidance opportunity which they know about and yet they have not contemporaneously introduced the anti-avoidance legislation. So just how is the parliament to confidently pass this legislation with the prospect that it may be opening a significant tax avoidance loophole? From my point of view this is, on the government's part, very negligent. I give notice now that in the opposition's view this legislation should not be passed at least until the tax legislation is also before the parliament, and preferably that tax legislation should already be law when this bill is finally debated in the Senate to ensure that indeed no rorting can take place. Another important area covered by the bill is the simplified procedures for setting up and running a company. The main thrust of these proposals is to reduce the cost and the regulatory requirements of establishing companies and the completion of the legal recognition of the one-person company through reforms such as the abolition of the rule requiring a company to keep their registered office open to the public. Again, these proposals seek to simplify the processes for establishing business entities, which should assist the general business environment especially for small business. However, while not opposing the thrust of the proposals, I do wish to raise an issue which has been brought to my attention concerning the proposed simplification of this process of registering companies. That issue is the ability to actually trace the person behind the company. The opposition has been informed of a concern that the new proposals involving electronic establishment of companies will allow companies to be formed without the principal ever being identified. If that were the case, then the possibility for fraud is clearly greatly enhanced. There are many circumstances in which you need to be able to go back behind what you have in front of you now to find out who initially established the company. It is the case that the reputation of Australia could be damaged if it were possible to rort the company laws surrounding the establishment and registration of companies. I am not sure whether this could be an outcome of this bill, but given that that claim has been made it needs to be examined closely by the Joint Committee on Corporations and Securities. There are many non-contentious areas of reform, which involve streamlining a number of processes, including the capacity for electronic meetings and the capacity for simplified annual reports as an alternative to general annual reports. I do want to turn to what seems to the opposition to be some significant problems with the bill. There are at least three aspects of the bill which are causing concern to the stakeholders—that is, national and international investors and institutions and shareholder groups. These are disclosure of financial information, including details on executive remuneration and a directors report to shareholders—I will talk about this in some detail shortly—the minimum notice required to hold a meeting considering a special resolution, and voting procedures at meetings. All of these issues involve complex considerations which need to be thoroughly examined by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Securities. The issue concerning the minimum notice required for meetings is a relatively simple one. The joint committee has previously recommended to the parliament that the minimum notice period ought to be 28 days. This was, let me point out, a unanimous, cross-party recommendation. The government chose to ignore that proposal and go for 21 days. This has now been severely criticised, especially by international investors. The simple point that they make is that the best practice standard is 28 to 30 days. This is what applies in the world's major capital markets such as the United States, which has 30 days, Germany, which has 32 days, France, which has 30 days, and so on. This is a matter which has been the subject of considerable concern. For example, there was correspondence from Dr Stephen Davis, the President of Davis Global Advisers of Newton, Massachusetts, to Senator Ian Campbell, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, which suggests that, if passed in its present form, the measure would set Australia on a course that would place it behind the emerging international best practice of 28 to 30 days. This is a matter which the opposition has raised informally with Senator Campbell. He has indicated that there may be some reassessment of this issue, and the opposition would welcome that and would examine the matter further in the joint committee. Secondly, there are some issues regarding the conduct of meetings and particularly the rules governing show of hands voting which have raised some concerns and which we will also be pursuing in the committee's inquiry. Put simply, we would not be supportive of a proposition which prevents show of hands voting if what this is about is saving directors at meetings the embarrassment of being outvoted on the floor of a meeting of shareholders. If this were to be used as a vehicle to prevent small investors from bringing their legitimate concerns regarding the management of a company onto the floor of the meetings, this, in our view, would not be appropriate. I guess many people would be aware of the situation which does occur at meetings of shareholders where those who are present vote in a particular direction, and they may well be outvoted by the proxy votes or the block votes of other larger shareholders. Where that happens, that may cause some embarrassment to directors, but it would not be our view that it is a legitimate purpose of this legislation to simply save them that embarrassment by saying, `We are going to do away with the show of hands voting.' I think that would be a retrograde step, and we want to pursue some of those issues in the committee. I guess the major issue of concern to the opposition in the legislation before us is that these proposals do not adopt full disclosure on executive remuneration. I believe that this is both offensive to shareholders and is also likely to diminish Australia's reputation with international investors. Frankly, we regard the government's position as untenable. The government is arguing in effect here that shareholders should not be able to find out, as of right, the full details about the packages that very highly paid executives are being paid by the company that they own. The shareholders own the company, they pay these salaries, and yet under these proposals they will not be entitled, as of right, to full disclosure of the salaries that they are paying. You can imagine the kind of uproar that would ensure if the same sort of proposition were put forward, for example, for members of parliament salaries or judicial salaries or other things of that nature which are paid for by the taxpayer. This is indeed a matter which has been the subject of some international concern. I want to take the House back to a report in the Financial Review on 8 January which sets out that many United States fund managers are alarmed by what they regard as significant omissions from proposed changes to Australian company laws. The Financial Review reports that this major rewrite of Corporations Law has been watered down before even being put before the parliament and that the managers, one of whom controls $US9 billion in securities outside the United States, has written to Treasury officials in Canberra warning that the weakened Company Law Review Bill 1997 will leave Australia lagging behind international standards in corporate governance. The report says: They are backing the concerns of governance watchdogs such as the Australian Investment Managers Association that proposals to tighten governance in three major areas . . . have been left out of the . . . bill. That committee, chaired by Senator Grant Chapman, a Liberal senator from South Australia, took submissions on the bill and, certainly according to Senator Chapman, the committee gave `careful consideration to these issues and recommended changes to the exposure draft to deal with them'. But now we have these matters being deleted, and high up on the United States investors list of apparently abandoned issues is fuller disclosure of executive salaries and remuneration. Currently, a listed company in Australia simply has to show the numbers of its executives who are paid salaries between certain bands, but it does not have to show who gets what or how that package is made up. There are some companies, such as Westpac, which have moved into line with the international standard, the international best practice, and do show the names and salaries of, in Westpac's case, the top five executives and also break down the mix into base pay, bonuses, options and the like that make up that salary. The United States companies are compelled to do the same as Westpac is doing. But the bill that we have got before us simply requires companies to disclose in their directors' report details of options that are issued over unissued shares, and they will not have to give details of any other part of the remuneration package such as salaries and bonuses. As the Australian Financial Review points out, this makes an absolute nonsense of the ASX listing rule which requires directors' options to be approved by shareholders, since you can hardly vote to approve an option without knowing what the rest of a director's salary package is. That is a most unsatisfactory set of circumstances, and the article draws attention very pointedly to it. Indeed, the Financial Review's editorial of the same day makes reference also to this concern of United States investors and refers to the fact that they are concerned about the issue of the extent of disclosure of executive remuneration, the limit on how long notice papers must be published ahead of annual meetings and a plan to do away with show of hands votes at these meetings. It is not as if there is not some community concern about the issue of executive salaries, to say nothing of legitimate shareholder concern. We have got a government that is terribly anxious and terribly fired up about the pay that is received by workers down on the waterfront, but when you come to the issue of executive salaries you hear a lot less from the opposite side of the House. Going back to last year the member for Scullin (Mr Jenkins) gave the House some first-class information about executive salaries in this country and the history of those executive salaries. One of the things he pointed out was that from 1983 to 1993 award wages increased by 53 per cent, average weekly earnings went up by 74 per cent, as did inflation, yet over the same period executive pay increased by 133 per cent and, if you look at the salaries paid to the executives of the top 150 companies, they were increasing annually by six to eight per cent and 10 to 15 per cent, if you include the cheap share deals and bonuses that have become common practice. Indeed, the survey of executive salaries by Cullen Egan Dell showed that senior management remuneration increased by 6.3 per cent last year, much more than the going rate throughout the rest of the community. The Independent Monthly back in June of 1996 estimated that there were 45 senior executives in Australia who earned more than a million dollars and many more who earned well in excess of half a million dollars. It is very sobering to consider that, for example, the Chief Executive Officer of Westfield Holdings back in 1997 was earning some $72,000 a week whereas the average taxable income in, for example, my own electorate of Wills at a similar time was $24,000 or $25,000. In effect, this means that an average person in my electorate takes three years to earn the same amount that the chief executive of Westfield earns in a week. We have had other celebrated cases of executive pay not being linked in any shape or form to the performance of the company. In 1989-90, Elders IXL managed to increase its executive remuneration package by 23 per cent at the same time as there was an 80 per cent drop in operating profit. In the same year, Adsteam had its chief executive given a 53 per cent pay increase at the same time as the value of the company was shrinking to eight per cent of its former value on the Australian Stock Exchange. We have seen spectacular salary packages for Peter Bartels, the Chief Executive Officer of Coles-Myer: $2.8 million. At that time Woolworths was doing a lot better, but their chief executive was getting a mere $665,000. So he was entitled to feel a bit disappointed. The Age at one stage described the salary package of the Chief Executive of Tabcorp as roughly twice the GDP of Tasmania. That was somewhat flippant, but in 1997 his salary was over a million dollars and his shares had increased in value to such an extent that that was adding an additional $10 million to his salary. The Prime Minister (Mr Howard) and the Treasurer occasionally have sounded off about executive salary increases, but they have done absolutely nothing about them and when they have got the chance to do something about them—at least in terms of disclosure, at least in terms of giving shareholders the opportunity to know just what salaries are being paid so that when they vote either to endorse or not endorse these salaries they will know what they are voting on—the Prime Minister and the Treasurer apparently walk away from that opportunity. I did a little bit of further research to try to update some of the work of the member for Scullin so as to talk about executive salaries in some major companies in more recent times, and I selected $250,000 as a benchmark. I think it is more than the Prime Minister's salary but, just as importantly, it is about 10 times the average income of my own constituents. Frankly, I do not believe that anyone does work of such quality that they can defend getting in salary more than 10 times the going rate for my constituents. As I have pointed out, it takes them 10 years to earn that sort of money and, indeed, when we are talking about million dollar salaries, as we are in a number of cases, it takes them 40 years to earn that kind of salary. If you look at BHP's report to shareholders for 1997, you will see that 62 employees were earning over $250,000 compared with 55 the year before. In Coles-Myer, 55 people were earning over a quarter of a million dollars. It would be interesting to know what the people at the bottom of the line there were providing for their salaries of in excess of a quarter of a million dollars. I note the payments include retirement payments and payments associated with terminations, as well as the exercise of share options and the like, but it is 55 compared with, according to the report, 18 from last year. In Western Mining, 16 directors and other executive officers received over $250,000 in salary, up from 11, and at Westpac 39 employees received over $250,000. At the top of the range, at Westpac the amount was in excess of $1.9 million and at Western Mining it was up around the million dollar mark. It is pretty shabby when the government is saying, `We are worried about the salaries being paid on the waterfront, they are outrageous, excessive and not in the national interest', but when it comes to executive salaries they are prepared to do absolutely nothing. They are being given at least an option in this bill of public disclosure so that people know what kinds of executive salaries are being provided but apparently they will not support it. This is an issue which we intend to pursue through the joint parliamentary committee on corporations and securities and subsequently in the Senate.	Australia	1,998
This is not one of the more media inspiring or controversial bills to be debated in the House this week, although from some of the latter comments from the member for Wills (Mr Kelvin Thomson) one would think that there was a major problem. In my opinion it is one of great importance for small business persons and in particular for the novice investor. The sale of Telstra introduced thousands of Australians to the stock market. I can bet that until the Telstra float the majority of these new investors had always considered the stock market the exclusive domain of the economically astute—that is, the corporate business person, the financier or the economist. The sensible marketing and presentation of the Telstra issue made it easy for novice investors to understand the workings of the stock market. As a result, thousands of Mr and Mrs Australias and their families became first-time shareholders. They are now reaping genuine financial benefits from their first foray into the somewhat mysterious and confusing world of shares and the all ordinaries index. I am sure those first-time investors who dived into the market with Telstra will be keenly interested in the ramifications of this Company Law Review Bill 1997 so that they may understand what company law is about. One of its major elements is to simplify and improve the method of reporting by companies to shareholders. Presented with a clear and concise financial report, investors will be able to make assessments and, most importantly, be better equipped to ask questions at shareholder meetings. Anyone who has attended an annual general meeting of shareholders will well understand the reluctance of a person to pose a question to the board of directors. The directors have a habit of positioning themselves on a podium. We often see photos in the paper looking down on the sea of investors. I think sometimes it takes a brave man or woman to stand up and challenge this row. But the reforms in this bill do make it easier. They expressly recognise by law that shareholders have a reasonable opportunity to ask questions at an annual general meeting. The bill will require the chairman of that meeting for a public company to allow members as a whole a reasonable opportunity to ask questions and comment on the company's management. It also allows shareholders to ask auditors questions about the audit report. This is a new obligation in the law. While in practice most companies already provide members with an opportunity to ask questions, this bill demands and thereby ensures that shareholders have more time to put ordinary resolutions to those general meetings. The bill also introduces a uniform period for all meetings which at present require 14 days notice for ordinary resolutions and 21 days for meetings to consider special resolutions. The bill insists, as the member for Wills commented, that all general meetings require 21 days notice to be given to shareholders. I note his comments in regard to the request to the minister to review that to 28 days, and I am sure he has taken that request on board. For those shareholders who cannot get to an annual general meeting, the proxy voting rules will be updated to give them greater certainty and flexibility in exercising their votes. The formalities for appointing a proxy will also be streamlined. Members will be able to appoint a person who holds a particular office from time to time and to make standing appointments. Members will be able to specify the proportion or number of votes each proxy may exercise. A proxy will be able to vote on a show of hands unless the company's constitution provides otherwise. Shareholders must not only be aware of their importance and value to a company but now with this bill have wider rights under the law. I am sure both novice and experienced share market investors will be delighted with this action. At the same time, investors will benefit from the cuts introduced by this bill in preparing, printing and mailing out annual reports. Anyone who is or has been a shareholder will be aware of the expensive, sometimes colourful and glossy publications which are distributed by companies prior to an annual general meeting. These annual reports are more often a promotion for the company, and long on gloss and a bit short on easily identifiable facts and figures. They are usually expensive to produce and to distribute. Most end up in the rubbish bin without even being read, I would hazard a guess. This bill allows for companies and managed investment schemes to take the option of sending concise annual reports to their members—reports which give the necessary facts. But those members who want more information can ask for and must receive a full detailed annual report. Taking the legalese out of the company documents and presenting them to the investing public in plain English is a long overdue step. It is one covered by this bill. When you consider that this bill will reduce around 95,000 words of text by 41,000 words, you will see what I mean about clarity and simplicity. Translated, that is a reduction of 43 per cent of the complex legalese which, to many people, is repetitive and confuses rather than clarifies the situation. This extends to that most important aspect: financial reporting by companies and managed investment schemes to the public and the shareholders and members. This bill will establish in the Corporations Law the principles governing financial reporting, leaving matters of technical detail to be addressed in the accounting standards. In simplifying the method in which corporate law and regulations are recorded, this bill makes life easier for that most beleaguered section of the community, small business. Each time this government removes yet another form from the desk of a small business operator, it is giving them more time to devote to the business of earning a living. Take the first aspect: that of setting up and running a company. This bill streamlines it to the point that the only formality will be the lodgement of an application form—that is, a single form. Just one single form lodged with the Australian Securities Commission and you have registered a small business. This is an improvement on the current system of multiple forms which are not only lengthy but also in many cases obtuse. This government has recognised that anyone wishing to start up a business should not have to employ the services of an accountant and a lawyer just to interpret the documents.	Australia	1,998
It is a shame you did not bring it in while you were in government. Nor should they need a degree in corporate law or creative writing to get themselves registered. One form will now do the trick, and it is a form that can be completed without professional advice. To enable companies to choose the structure which best suits their commercial or other objectives, the bill will make it easier to change from one type of company to another—for example, from a proprietary company to a public company. For years the business and professional communities have been calling for the simplification of the Corporations Law. This bill is the result of wide consultation with the industry. When you dissect this bill, the changes are significant in that many small and apparently innocuous regulations are simply being removed. Put together, they result in streamlining that cuts not only time but also costs for both business operators and investors. The new bill will make the way easier for those who not only wish to register a new business but also make it easier and cheaper to deregister a company that has no liabilities. In particular, it will no longer be necessary to advertise the proposed deregistration in the newspaper. A person will be able to sue a deregistered company's insurer directly, without having to first apply to the court for reinstatement of the company's registration. The rules for obtaining and using company names and Australian company numbers will be rewritten. The companies permitted to omit `limited' from their names will be restricted to charitable companies, and the conditions applicable to this right will be set out in the law rather than in the Australian Securities Commission licences. Existing licences will be preserved. Small business will also benefit from the fact that documentation has been dramatically slashed, a promise made by this government on election two years ago. For example, the memorandum of association will be abolished. Companies will not have to hire a professional to draw up articles of association. I am sure many small businesses will remember when they had to have those memoranda of association on the day only to put them in the bottom draw and leave them there forever and a day. To enable companies to function without these articles of association they will be able to adopt a constitution which displaces some or all of them. Another simplification is that proprietary companies will no longer be required to keep their registered offices open to the public. In addition, companies will no longer need to have a common seal. Public companies will also only need one member instead of the three currently required. Doing business with a company will also become easier, especially for those who provide finance. This will be because of the reduced need for third parties to make inquiries about the company's internal affairs. Companies limited by guarantee will be able to convert into companies limited by shares. This will be of particular importance to mutual companies seeking to demutualise through a structure involving share capital. This measure will make it possible for the bill to repeal the provisions allowing the registration of companies limited by both share and guarantee. In looking at the manner in which many small businesses now operate, this government has accepted that the use of modern technology be incorporated into Corporations Law. The use of electronic technology to hold meetings will become a legal reality. For directors meetings it will be possible to use any form of technology agreed to by the directors. For members meetings it will be possible to use any form of technology that gives members a reasonable opportunity to participate in meetings. To many shareholders, I think that is a great benefit where distance at times has limited their ability to get to meetings. With over half of the items currently required to be included in annual returns being removed, we will see a reduction of over 50 per cent of paperwork for Australia's one million companies. This bill not only simplifies corporate law but acknowledges the need to include advances in technology in the future. This bill rewrites and makes significant improvements to the core areas of registering companies, meetings, financial reports and audit, annual returns, the deregistration of defunct companies and dealing with company names. I believe that the result will make life easier for our business community, who in turn will be able to get on and do what they need to do most and that is run their business for the benefit of their shareholders and the benefit of their employees. For that reason, I am happy to support the bill.	Australia	1,998
I think my colleague the member for Wills (Mr Kelvin Thomson) has already indicated on behalf of the opposition that we do not oppose the Company Law Review Bill 1997 . I think we have indicated that there are elements of it that we would like to see examined by a parliamentary joint committee because there is some divergence from the bill's actual implementation from an earlier committee's report which made recommendations on how best to deal with this issue of company law. That said, it is also important to place on the public record yet again the fact that the bill in its original form was an initiative of Labor. My colleague at the table, the member for Denison (Mr Kerr), has reminded me that he and the then Attorney-General, Michael Lavarch, had laboured long and hard to try to put in place a form of company law which would be a much simplified version of what existed. The honourable member for Griffith (Mr McDougall) went to great lengths to point out the way in which this actual legislation will be amending existing law and, certainly in its actual volume, will be almost cutting it in half, if not a touch more. I am sure anybody would welcome that, as they would any simplification process that actually has the law written in plain English that everyone can understand. That in itself is a step in the right direction. There are clearly one or two other elements of this legislation which we on this side of the House take some exception to but, by the same token, would not be opposing other than subsequently if there was a committee examination of this that found there were some other problems. I will come to a couple of those in a minute. The other issue is something which again the member for Griffith touched on and the reason why I also have an interest in speaking on this bill and that is the effect it will have on small business. As the shadow minister for small business, I have been talking to people right around this country about the problems that they are experiencing and the nature of those problems. Almost to a person, the greatest aggro that has been demonstrated to me has been under the broad heading of compliance costs. It is all well and good for people like Minister Reith, the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business, to run around and try to whip up hysteria about industrial relations in small business, but at the end of the day it really comes down to compliance costs and the time which small business have to put in above and beyond being out there in retailing and selling at a shopfront, being out there in a small manufacturing business just keeping the lathes turning over or being out there in a tourist related industry ensuring that tourists are getting access to the Great Barrier Reef through diving experiences or whatever it might be. It is the extra time which small businesses, registered as companies, have to put in to keep up the ever-increasing burden of compliance, particularly with respect to the paper warfare. I know that it was through the Reid committee report and through examinations undertaken by the government by Charlie Bell that this issue was tackled and some recommendations made. We on this side of the House have some disagreement as to how quickly or otherwise the government has moved in this regard and whether there has been a lasting effect of some of the changes and recommendations in reducing that burden of paperwork. I could mount a fairly substantial argument that that is anything but the case. As we get to a time in this parliament and in the broader community when we come to debate the government's secret tax agenda—whenever that is going to be released; the secret tax package that is somewhere out there in the ether that everybody keeps talking about but nobody knows what is actually in it—we will also have some comments to make about compliance costs and what effect that will have on companies that are established under these amendments to the company law. It is important as an element of that to drop the three magic letters in this place—GST—because there is no doubt that compliance costs associated with GST for small businesses are just going to blow them out of the water. Any survey that you care to look at indicates that that is the case. I thought it was therefore appropriate that today in the Australian I think Ian Henderson did a comparative piece about GST by comparing what the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) has been saying about lowering compliance costs on the wholesale sales tax regime compared with what he believes will happen under a GST. It stands in stark contrast to a report released by the Australian Taxation Office only a week ago which paints a completely different picture. When we are talking about compliance costs and the burden of paperwork, obviously any new small business registered as a company under the changes of the law which this bill that we are debating proposes will have to take into consideration those very issues. They will have to take into consideration just how much extra time they are going to have to put aside to deal with this burden of paperwork, with the compliance that will be on them to keep every record they have to put forward to the GST police who will be created by this system. They will be required to put forward every skerrick of information they have, every invoice that comes in and every payment that is made, adjusting their cash registers to keep a record of what is going on. At every turn small business will be placed in an unenviable position of having to master yet again this burden of paperwork that is wrapped up in this broad definition of compliance costs. So it was with some interest that the member for Griffith talked about a single page now being required under these simplification processes involved in the Company Law Review Bill that we are debating now in terms of registering a company. There is no doubt that, if we can get the information down on a single page instead of the 11, 12 or 36 pages that, for example, social security beneficiaries have to fill in if they want to get into a nursing home these days, it would be quite useful for small business to take advantage of that. We welcome that as an initiative as part of this package. By the same token, I think it is important to ask, while small business might get some benefit from such a proposed change, about the recommendation that was made by the joint parliamentary committee in terms of the remuneration of executives. This has been completely left out of this bill. In his contribution a moment ago, my friend and col league the member for Wills drew the attention of the House to that very fact. If anybody follows the way major companies operate, they put out their glossy document with all the accounts in the back and their profit and loss statements and everything else and when you come to the section on executive remuneration you see a little bit which says, `Number of executives who receive $2 million plus,' and they will have one; `Number of executives who receive between $1 million and $2 million,' and you might see two; `Number of executives who receive between $500,000 and $1 million,' and you might see five. But you never know who these people are and how much they are actually getting. In our business absolutely everything we do is open to public scrutiny. With the changes that the government has implemented as a result of some indiscretions by members in this place, that scrutiny has opened it up even further. Everything we as the representatives of the Australian people in this place do is open to scrutiny. We table claims in this place that have been made for travel entitlements. We table in this place our registration of member's interests and we list in that bank accounts that we have—not only our own but those of our spouses and our children. We indicate any real estate that we have or any freebies that somebody might give us—for example, if you happen to be going to the Grand Prix next week. I just let the registrar of member's interests know that I am, and I will be letting him know that I am going to the Grand Prix as a guest of a company. That is the level which we have to adhere to in this place. That is what we have to put on the public record for public scrutiny. We have to tell people what we are doing. Is that happening under this Company Law Review Bill? Are we seeing how some of these high-fliers in corporate Australia are actually being asked to manage their own companies? We see from time to time stories floated in the media about this particular individual who is getting $2 million and then the poor son of a gun, if he happened to be in a company like a bank or something like that, had to accept as part of his remuneration package X hundred thousand or million shares that just happened to be going up all the time and therefore the value of his remuneration also happens to be increasing every time the share price goes up. But we never actually get to see what goes on and it is not going to be a component of this legislation to make it mandatory for that sort of information to be disclosed. I think therefore that it is a sad reflection on this bill that the government have introduced that they have not decided to take that a step further in line with what Labor had been proposing in the bill in its original form. Another element which was touched on by the member for Griffith, and I think is worthy of some comment, is the way in which we are now seeing the modern age of technology being applied to the way in which business is being done. The concept contained in this bill dealing with the facilitation of electronic meetings and shareholder communications is a most appropriate step forward. These days we live in a world of technology where in a split second information is moving right around this globe. Therefore, to suggest that in some way that technology should not be applied to the way in which companies do business is probably a bit of a head in the sand approach. It is most appropriate that the government has included in this bill rules on meetings which recognise the use of communications technology in calling and holding meetings. For example, companies will be able to serve a notice of a meeting to an electronic address by fax number nominated by shareholders and shareholders will be able to send their proxy to the company by facsimile or by e-mail with the agreement of the company. Clearly, this will reduce the administrative costs associated with the company meetings. I think that is great. I think that is an appropriate step forward, just as is the facilitation of the electronic lodgement of annual returns and other documents with the ASC. I think that is appropriate. For quite some time now in the broad community individuals and companies have had the facility through the Australian Taxation Office, through accountants, to lodge their taxation returns electronically. If we are talking about that segment of the community which is generating wealth and, one hopes, creating employment opportunities—that is, the business community and small business—we should be trying at every opportunity to reduce those compliance costs that I have mentioned already. One way of doing that is by having the facilitation through electronic means of every aspect of their business dealings. When we talk about this compliance cost issue, particularly now with respect to small business, we have to think about some of the commitments that have been given by this government. Before the last election the Prime Minister went to the small business community and said, `We promise that within the first three years we will reduce the burden of paperwork on you by 50 per cent.' If you go and talk to anyone in small business, as I am sure you will appreciate, Mr Deputy Speaker Hollis, as you get around your electorate of Throsby and those small businesses at Shellharbour Square Shopping Centre, Dapto or Warrawong, they will say, `We heard about this promise but we seem to be increasing, not reducing, the burden of paperwork that is on us. We seem to be getting all sorts of requests for further statistical information. It is almost to a point where I have to employ somebody else to do this.'If you are a micro business or a small business of a husband and wife combination, for example, you simply do not have the resources, nor the time, to be spending so much time doing this. In most cases you certainly do not have the resources to employ an accountant to do a lot of this work on your behalf. As a consequence, to say therefore that this burden of paperwork has been reduced by any amount is an absolute nonsense.	Australia	1,998
As I was saying, the burden of compliance for small businesses is the most pressing issue for them and the reduction in that burden of paperwork and any review that can continue to relieve them of those problems is welcome. As I said earlier, the fact that this bill will at least in one or two areas provide hopefully some relief from that is most welcome. Finally, in the time that is left to me I turn to the proposal of smaller annual returns as contained in the bill. Over half of the items currently required to be included in annual returns are going to be removed as a result of the passage of this legislation. This will result in annual returns being shorter and less expensive to prepare. The government has estimated that this measure will reduce the burden of paperwork by 50 per cent. That is a great figure. We keep hearing about reducing the burden of paperwork on small business by 50 per cent, but on any objective measure no-one ever gets there. By cutting in half what you are required to put in an annual report, I suppose that is a reduction of 50 per cent, so we will let you wear that one. That is good. But what we would hope is that, by reducing that, the information that shareholders would like to know about these companies is similarly not reduced. I think all the gloss should be taken out of these reports. There is no doubt about that. Anyone who has read through a lot of these company reports know that there is a lot of gloss in them, a lot of hyperbole and a lot of superfluous information. Nobody really cares if the directors went on an overseas holiday with their family. If they are an investor in that particular company, they want to know by taking the annual return of that company what profits they have made or what losses they have sustained, what is the long-term plan of that company to redress that circumstance and how they are going to tackle the issue of providing a genuine return to investors and shareholders. In each and every one of those cases it is the shareholder and many of those small people in Australia whom I know the government trumpets and who have now taken a greater interest in the Stock Exchange who will continue to take an active interest in this. I happened to be outside the Australian Stock Exchange in Sydney the other day. I was staggered to see the number of people sitting outside the ASX watching the board go by—watching all the lights flash and the returns and the share prices being ticked over. There is an interest in that now. Legislation like this, which will change some of those compliance costs and the burdens and the simplifications that I mentioned, is most welcome. We have already indicated that the opposition would not oppose this bill, but we would like to think that some of the more contentious issues, notably about reporting remuneration of senior executives, might be reconsidered by the government and perhaps even by a parliamentary committee, as was recommended previously. The bill itself is a useful attempt to tackle an issue which Labor, as I have indicated, did have in place. We wish it a speedy passage through both houses of parliament.	Australia	1,998
As a dispassionate observer of the place, can I assure those who are very vocal in their opposition to that change that, having sat here and observed the procedure, I have not felt in any way that they have enhanced the nature and character of question time. With respect to standing order 145, I would ask all ministers to take note of the requirement that their answers be relevant. I say to them that there is a procedure, identified in standing order 101, which sets down a process for ministerial statements. If ministers seek to make a long detailed answer, particularly read from a brief provided by a departmental officer, it would be far better if they were given by way of ministerial statement. I would suggest also that long answers are inappropriate and do not enhance the procedures of this place. The other aspect of the standing orders to which I wish to draw attention is that under standing order 321 there is a procedure whereby a minister, having quoted from a document, may be asked to table that particular paper or document and in response the minister may claim confidentiality. I say to ministers that I believe, in many instances, that confidentiality claim has been abused. If ministers wish to quote from papers or documents, they are at liberty to take an extract from whatever that document might be so that it may be tabled. I would also say to you that, in the normal course, unless that statement, letter or document is stamped `confidential', I believe it should be tabled; and I will requesting them so to do.	Australia	1,998
I thank the honourable member for Kooyong for his question. I am sure members of the House will welcome the fact that today's national account figures show Australia growing at one of the fastest rates in the developed world at 3.6 per cent. Good, strong growth up around 3¾per cent, which is the government's forecast for 1997-98, is consistent with good employment growth. I am sure all members of the House will also welcome the fact that, over the last five months, 140,000 new jobs have been created in Australia. That is one of the benefits of the growth which we are now experiencing. The small business survey released today in conjunction with the Yellow Pages index showed an increasing confidence amongst the small business sector. It was noted that developments in Asia, of course, will have an effect on confidence. Dr Marsden of the small business survey said, `The impact of the Asian crisis is widely expected to take the gloss off what would otherwise have been near boom conditions.' I am sure all people in small business will welcome that. The positive news in relation to the small business sector also showed a remarkable step-up in small businesses reporting increases in economic growth and economic outlook. Today's national accounts not only confirmed strong growth in the Australian economy consistent with good jobs growth but confirmed another record for Australia: an inflation rate down at 1.2 per cent in economy-wide terms. That is a position the Australian economy has not been in for many an occasion. It is because of that low inflation outcome that the Australian public will experience another benefit in relation to interest rates: interest rates down to around 6½ per cent on the standard variable home mortgage. That is now the lowest home mortgage rate since the 1960s, which I am sure members of the House will also welcome. That gives young people the opportunity to buy homes which they would never have had under the high interest rate policy of our predecessors. Young people are getting the opportunity to get security and a life and to get into a home with a 6½ per cent interest rate, which they have never been able to do in the last 30 years in Australia. This side of the House believes that strong economic growth, and the employment growth that goes with it, low inflation and the low interest rates that go with it, can bring great benefits for Australians and their families and, as far as this side of the House is concerned, these are good news results for the Australian public.	Australia	1,998
No; it has nothing to do with that either. Just quietly listen: you had 13 years to get a decent industry policy and you failed. The reality is that the change is to incorporate another aspect of the plan. It has absolutely nothing to do with any lack of resolve so far as the government is concerned. The other part of the honourable gentleman's question goes very much to the heart of confidence in the Australian manufacturing industry, and it gives me the opportunity to say a couple of things about that. I might remind the House that the industry statement I delivered on behalf of the government on 8 December last year was widely applauded, and rightly so, throughout the Australian manufacturing industry. It was seen as striking the right balance between the government taking a limited but strategic role so far as industry is concerned but avoiding the mistakes of a number of our Asian neighbours who have embraced industry policies that were far too interventionist. It would be very interesting to comb through the statements made by the member for Hotham seven or eight months ago about the level of intervention that was needed in the economy and have a look at that in comparison with some of the levels of intervention in the economies of the Asia-Pacific region, which are now seen as being directly responsible for a lot of the economic troubles those countries are now experiencing. Many of the statements the member of Hotham was making a few months ago were perilously close to the very models of intervention that are now roundly condemned by the International Monetary Fund and others. He has been caught red-handed in cranking up the desirability of government intervention in the economy. What Australian manufacturers want is low inflation. They want low interest rates. They want stability of economic policy. They want the predictability that a government surplus, as distinct from the instability of a government deficit, has delivered. The message I get from the Australian manufacturing industry is that at long last we have a government that attends to the economic fundamentals and the important foundations. We have created a climate of growth and confidence that has produced 140,000 new jobs over the last four or five months. That is the greatest vote of confidence you can have in our economic management.	Australia	1,998
I thank the member for Makin for her question. As I said yesterday, Senator Bolkus has been captured red-handed on video revealing to the media the contents of confidential Federal Court documents relating to Christopher Skase. Those documents, as I said, appear to have been given to Senator Bolkus unlawfully or improperly or obtained by him unlawfully or improperly. The exposure of the information has the potential to frustrate completely the considerable efforts being made to recover Skase's assets overseas. In view of the significance of the leak, the Minister for Justice has requested the Australian Federal Police to investigate it. When he was leaking the contents of the document to the media, Senator Bolkus is apparently recorded as saying, `I can't give this document out, but maybe if I just read it off the record.' This is the proceedings in court. In the circumstances there seems to be no doubt that Senator Bolkus would be able to assist the Federal Police with their inquiries. The Australian public has a great interest in the Skase affair and there are many creditors owed millions of dollars who have a great stake in the attempt to recover the overseas assets. What should happen is this: the Leader of the Opposition should instruct Senator Bolkus to stand down and cooperate with the Federal Police. Will the Leader of the Opposition do that? No, he will not. The Leader of the Opposition does not control people like Senator Bolkus. The Leader of the Opposition does not require his shadow ministers to adhere to any proper standards of conduct. Will the Leader of the Opposition stand Senator Bolkus down? No, he will not. The opposition will continue to do whatever it takes to score a political point, no matter what the consequence, no matter how reprehensible the conduct.	Australia	1,998
Oh, it's a cop out! I can understand why the Leader of the Opposition says that. I am reminded by my colleague the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs that the level was 32 per cent when the Leader of the Opposition was minister for employment. Not only was the youth unemployment 32 per cent, but the general rate was 11.2 per cent, he gave us over a million unemployed and he left us with a deficit of $10.5 billion. That is a trifecta of failure and deceit that has not been matched in the Australian parliament ever. I am asked about the policies of the government in relation to youth unemployment. I want to thank the member for Batman for giving me the opportunity to say a few things about them because it is, as I know the member will agree, an extremely important and critical issue. It enables me to remind the House that my colleague announced last year a new approach to apprenticeships and traineeships that will create 100,000—not 10,000; not 20,000—new apprenticeships. It gives me the opportunity to remind the House that the new industrial relations legislation that was introduced by my colleague the Minister for Workplace Relations and Small Business has given far greater flexibility in, and therefore far more opportunities for, the creation of traineeships which are suitable to the needs of individual employers and employees. I also remind the House that one of the changes that was negotiated in relation to the passage of that legislation was the postponement of a very foolish proposal from the former government which would have phased out the youth rates allowed under the then and now the continuing law. If that had not been done, if we had not enlisted the aid of the minor parties in the Senate to do that, we may have put at risk the jobs of over 200,000 young Australians. You were hell bent on a course of action—because you had been told to take it by the ACTU—which would have abolished the youth award rate, which would have pushed up the price of their labour and which would have thrown perhaps 200,000 young Australians out of a job. And you have the nerve to get up here and pose as a friend of the young unemployed! Of course, the evidence of the indifference of the Labor Party does not stop there. One of the things that we have introduced to help instil the work ethic and a better sense amongst young people who are finding it hard to get work is the work for the dole scheme—a scheme which has widespread community support and a scheme which is acclaimed by young people as well as the community generally. At every stage the Labor Party is opposed to work for the dole. It was their instantaneous reaction. You are a prime example of it—you nod your head again. You hate the work for the dole scheme, don't you? And if you got back into government one of the first things you would do is abolish the work for the dole scheme. I tell the member for Batman that not only has the work for the dole scheme been introduced, but in my federation speech in January of this year I announced a major expansion of the mutual obligation principle—a principle that says that, if people cannot get work, they are entitled to look to the government for support but the government is entitled, on behalf of the community, to ask them, if they are able to do so, to put something back. You do not believe in mutual obligation. You want to destroy the work for the dole scheme and, by your slavish adherence to the union line on award wages, if you had continued in office you would have threatened another 200,000 jobs for young Australians. You have no credibility at all asking me questions about youth unemployment.	Australia	1,998
I thank the member for his question. It is the Labor Party that is holding up the passage of this legislation. The bill has now been re-presented for a second time to the Senate and we can only hope that commonsense will prevail and that these important reforms for the benefit of small business can go through. This has been one of the greatest fiascos of industrial relations policy in the history of the Federation. Really, no single measure could have done more damage to the small business community than that measure which was introduced by the Labor Party, introduced by the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Kingsford-Smith, who still sit on the Labor Party frontbench and whose actions today are preventing the passage of legislation which will finally start to fix up the problem which they were responsible for. But it is worse than that. This is a record on behalf of the Labor Party not only of massive failure in respect of the small business community but also of deceit, because if you go around the electorate I can tell you what small business is saying in the member for Paterson's electorate. They are saying they want this exemption. Do you know why I know what they are saying? Because the Labor candidate, Bob Horne, the former federal member, and the shadow minister for unions over there had a $100 a head so-called function for the small business community. They only got 30 to turn up, but the next day Bob Horne on ABC Newcastle said that this issue of unfair dismissal had actually been raised during the meeting. He said, `We have got to try and build up our permanent jobs. Employers are resisting putting people on the permanent staff simply because of things like unfair dismissal.'So he denies the problem. His candidate knows what the problem is because small business have said so. But the deceit of these people is absolutely mind-boggling. The reporter asked him, `So is there a chance then that changes to those particular areas would be in any ALP employment policy that might be put forward before the next election?' Well, he's just had a function with the shadow minister for employment, he's asked the question, `Might you fix up the problem?' and this is his answer: `Well, I'm sure we would be looking at streamlining those factors, yes.' So he is out in the electorate saying, `Yes, it is a problem, we hear small business,' and his mates are back here stopping the measure going through the Senate, and even worse—the hypocrisy of these people knows no bounds—their policy, the draft policy last year, the one that was going to have another review in it, was:. . . Labor will seek means of giving small business a greater incentive to provide jobs, particularly for the long-term unemployed. . . But they took that out because the unions wanted that out and instead they put in that they will support small business `provided that firms meet their social and industrial relations obligations by implementing fair and cooperative relationships with workers and their representatives'.This is unbelievable. The small business community, when Labor was in, had a government that delivered one of the great fiascos of industrial relations which damaged small business—in fact, right across the board their policies damage small business—and when we move to fix up the problems, whether it is unfair dismissal or chasing Skase, we have got your little mate up there in the Senate supporting Skase against the interests of small business. Who do you reckon is in the long list of people who are owed money by the fraudulent practices of Christopher Skase? None other than literally thousands of small business people in this country—another example of the damage you did to small business. And what is your answer to your little mate in the Senate? He sits there, mute and embarrassed when he has got one of his own frontbenchers admitting publicly that he should not be publicly releasing this information. He says, `I can't give this document out'—a public admission that he should not then do what he proceeded to do—`but maybe if I just read it out off the record.'This is a disgrace. When it comes to the small business community, not only are you preventing the remedies being put in place to overcome the damage done by the Labor Party when they were in government but, here you are, you have frontbenchers who are actually supporting somebody like Christopher Skase and the shadow Attorney-General publicly admitting that he was wrong to release confidential material on a court file and then proceeding to do so. We had it on tape, we effectively got photos of the bloke, scripts of the bloke, video of the bloke and this weak leader, who so damaged the interests of the small business community, sits here unable to discipline one of his own frontbenchers.	Australia	1,998
Mr Speaker, bear in mind that you had heard all of those points until the last paragraph, when I think you made some comment that the question might have been a bit too long. It then goes on to say, `Is the minister concerned that even though Employment Interactive has hung out its shingle Mr Roude has come to an arrangement for the work to be done by another group?'Mr Speaker, this is the point of the question, and I would have thought it entirely relevant to a parliament that is supposed to hold this mob accountable for the way in which they spend public money to be able to ask a question in this forum. First, the person got a contract. Second, the person who got the contract did not have any visible means of support. Third, that person was bidding for an organisation at the same time as he was bidding for himself. Fourth, were there probity checks to establish whether this contract should have been written? The fifth and, I would have thought, most telling point, the point at which you interrupted, again went to show that this great contract that was being let was incapable of being delivered by the person who received it, because the person then contracted it out to somebody else. Mr Speaker, if you do not think that is a relevant question, then I am at a loss to know what you think is. The ruling was, `Go and get it in some sort of an order.' What is wrong with the order in which it came? What would you do? You want to understand the order again, Mr Speaker, because clearly the Leader of the House does not know any better. The sequence of events is this: this is the order of the question. Tell me for the life of me how you would reorder it. The sequence of events is that the thing was reported in the newspaper. Fact one.	Australia	1,998
Today. The second is that the body that received the contract was an unincorporated body without means, without infrastructure, without an office, without any employees. Third, did the minister seek to ascertain that fact? Did he carry out the probity checks? Fourth, what probity checks were made of the individual, given that he was not only bidding in his own right but also on behalf of an organisation, an organisation that lost the contract to him? Fifth, having got the contract, he then could not fulfil it. Mr Speaker, I am at a loss to understand why that is not in the relevant order. That is the ruling that you have made. You have said, `I am not allowing the question because it is not constructed in the right order.' That is why I am dissenting from the ruling. Mr Speaker, we made a commitment in this place with your predecessor and indeed with you today by a speech by the Leader of the Opposition that was measured in contrast to those on the other side who sought to welcome you but forgot to do it. We had the Prime Minister today reminding you of Jim Cope's dismissal and your court case. I am sure you were very appreciative of the fact that the Prime Minister drew your attention to that when he thought he was welcoming you to the chair. You had the Leader of the House also seeking to go on to the Jim Cope affair. I think he even forgot to congratulate you. But don't worry: he is even-handed, this guy; he did not even thank Bob Halverson properly yesterday when he fell from the chair. The point we are making is that we are prepared to cooperate with the Chair and try to ensure the orderly running of this House. But we are not going to be mugged. We are not going to allow ourselves to be mugged in terms of putting questions of legitimate importance, particularly backbench questions, particularly questions that relate to the member's electorate—in this case, the member for Prospect—particularly questions that relate to billions of dollars of taxpayers' money and particularly questions that are so important in the context of the economic debate at the moment. We believe that the government's employment policies have failed; and we believe the structures they have put in place to try to get people into work have also failed. There is no point government members trying to run around the country saying that they have created 300 new outlets when they have gutted 1,300 of them. If this is an example of one of the replacement outlets, God help us. What hope is there going to be for the unemployed in this country if they are told, `Oh, yes, we've got this great employment agency out in Fairfield. The trouble is we can't give you an office address, can't give you a telephone number and can't give you a fax number. They have not even got any employees, by the way, but they are prepared to help. This is a government initiative: we are there to help. This is the David Kemp solution to problems: we are there to help'? But how can they help with no people? How do they help the unemployed by giving a contract to a body that has no people to help them get employed? Then there is Mr Roude, who wins the contract. No doubt he sees some advantage to him in the way in which the contract is let and his ability to get something for it. What does he do? He goes and hangs his shingle out and subcontracts his business to someone else. I would have thought that that is a legitimate cause for question in this parliament. It is current to the issue of the day. It is the most vital policy issue facing this country: how we deal with the unemployed, how we ensure that assistance is delivered effectively and how we ensure that the taxpayers get value for their money—not some shonky arrangement whereby the contract is let to someone who does not even have an office, a fax, an infrastructure or employees. This is the question that we wanted answered. Mr Speaker, what you have done has certainly given us time to reorganise the question. We have had 20 minutes to reorganise the question; the trouble is we would like an answer. But I must say that, having argued this point, I find no difficulty with the way the member for Prospect had constructed the question in the first place, and I do not think anyone on our side finds difficulty with it. I would urge you to reconsider your ruling and allow this question to be answered. The truth of the matter is that we are prepared to cooperate so long as we are being afforded the opportunity that we are entitled to in this House, that is, the opportunity of making the government accountable—a government that proclaimed in its policy that it wanted to be more accountable. Remember the time those opposite used to float through and say, `We're going to be available here more often than the previous government. We're going to make sure that our ministers answer the questions.'I was interested in your comments earlier when you came into the chair about the relevance of questions. We will be interested to see how that ruling is enforced, Mr Speaker, because yesterday we had the Prime Minister asked twice as to whether he was going to stick to his 40 per cent target on private health insurance and he ignored the question both times.	Australia	1,998
The reason this dissent has been moved—and, of course, we are reluctant to do it on your first day—is that I believe that the ruling you have made is incorrect. If the ruling is to be an indication of what you are up to in the future, then I believe it will cause a shambles in this House. If you are not going to allow members on our side of the parliament to legitimately ask questions about their constituencies in the context of policy frameworks that we are arguing against and that we have a legitimate difference of opinion about, if we are not being allowed to ask the questions on the detail, the specificity related to the electorate, then you may as well shut question time down. You may as well, because, if that is not accountability in its truest form, what is? This is a question asked of a minister about an area that he has been proclaiming policy changes to the benefit of the nation in. This is all his own work. But what we seem to have here is a shonky arrangement. The minister might be able to explain it—only you have stopped him giving the explanation. You have stopped it because you think the question was out of order. In the time that I have had available, I have gone through point by point indicating why the question was entirely in order. Mr Speaker, I would ask you to reconsider your ruling and allow the member for Prospect's question to be asked. Most of all, we would like to hear what the doctor is up to in terms of his defence because, if this is the first one that we have found, how many others of the 300 are in this category? The public deserves to know; the parliament certainly should know. Your ruling is preventing that happening.	Australia	1,998
I second the motion. I am the first to concede that from time to time the opposition asks questions which test the standing orders to the limit; I am the first to concede that from time to time we get our readings of standing orders wrong; and I am the first to concede that from time to time we and government members will get up and ask questions in this place, the purpose of those questions being to make a point and the answer to them being largely irrelevant. These things happen in question time. It is part of the robust exchange, and Speakers enforcing the rules might from time to time interrupt that process. But there are occasions in the House when questions are actually asked that refer to the classic purpose of question time, that is, to hold a government accountable. That is why question time exists. It does not actually exist for other purposes. The other purposes have been grafted onto it. Holding governments accountable goes to the impact of their administration and the consequences and effects of their administration, and may from time to time—provided it is within the other framework of the standing orders—go to their legislation. It does seem to me that you had an opportunity to rule out of order one question so far asked during the course of question time. That was the one asked by the honourable member for Paterson (Mr Bob Baldwin), prior to one asked by the honourable member for Prospect (Mrs Crosio). If you go to what the standing orders say a question must contain, it says: Questions should not contain— (a) statements of facts or names of persons unless they are strictly necessary to render the question intelligible and can be authenticated;(b) arguments;(c) inferences;(d) imputations;(e) epithets;(e) ironical expressions; or(g) hypothetical matter. There are other elements of it which state that you cannot ask for expressions of opinion and you cannot ask for announcements of government policy and the rest of it. Nor can a question be debated. If you go through all those particular elements and then go to the honourable member for Paterson's question, you will find throughout it argument, inference, epithet and ironical expression. That member's question was challenged in this place and a ruling sought from you, and your ruling was to uphold it. As the media and others pass judgment today on a debate which we will lose because of the numbers in this place, I would urge them to look at the question asked by the honourable member for Paterson and then look at the question asked by the honourable member for Prospect and ask whether, on this first day of a new speakership, the opposition has been dealt with consistently and with comparative fairness. Now I go to the question that was asked. The first phrase is this: I draw the minister's attention to an article in today's Fairfield-Liverpool Champion reporting that a firm, Employment Interactive, has won a tender for 12 employment service sites around Sydney. Is that a statement of fact or names of persons unless they are strictly necessary to render the question intelligible and can be authenticated? They can be authenticated, we can produce the article in which that appears, and I would not have thought that there was an item in that which was in any way unnecessary. Is there an argument in that sense? No fair person would say there was. Is there an inference, an imputation, an epithet, an ironical expression or hypothetical matter? The answer is no. There is nothing of that in any of those parts. So I go to the second phrase: Isn't it the case that this is an unincorporated body—it has no infrastructure, no offices and no employees? Are there statements of fact? No. Is it unnecessary? No. Are there arguments in that? No. Are there inferences? No. Are there imputations? No. Are there epithets? No. Are there ironical expressions or hypothetical matters? Of course not. There is absolutely nothing of that in that particular point because the simple fact of the matter is that, if you are going to establish a case that there has been in some way or another an inappropriate activity, an abuse of process asking a question about whether or not there is an unincorporated body that has no infrastructure, offices or employees, as the article indicates, that is an important thing to consider. Then the next point is: Can the minister also inform the House what financial viability checks were made on the organisation's principal, Mr Khadar Roude? Is the name mentioned here unnecessary to the context of the question? No. Is there argument there? Is there an inference? Is there an imputation? Is there an epithet? Is there an ironical expression or is there hypothetical matter? The answer is no, there is none of that in any of those cases, and that is the third point of asking as far as that question is concerned. It goes on: Can the minister also inform the House what probity checks were made on Mr Roude, who as an employee of the Islamic Council of New South Wales helped write the council's unsuccessful tender whilst separately tendering? Is there an unnecessary statement of fact, an argument, an inference, an imputation, an epithet, an ironical expression or hypothetical matter in any of those items in that particular question? How else can you ask them? If you believe, on the basis of information that is presented to you, that actions have been taken which are potentially improper or may be improper in relation to the administration of a person's portfolio, I ask you in all fairness how you could ask the question in any other way. Then it goes on: Is the minister concerned that, even though Employment Interactive has hung out its shingle, Mr Roude has come to an arrangement for the work to be done by another group because he cannot deliver on the tender? So I ask you again: is there any statement of fact in that which renders the question in some way unintelligible? Is there argument, is there inference, is there imputation, is there epithet, is there ironical expression or is there hypothetical matter in that which is, in some way or another, rendering that final phrase of the question an inappropriate question? I think in all honesty, Mr Speaker, you have probably picked on the one question we have taken so far where even the most stringent scrooge-like interpretation of the standing orders could not have permitted you to rule it out of order—the one question thus far asked in debate today, the one question asked on either side of the House, that probably actually conforms to the most scrooge-like interpretation of standing orders. It did not require a smidgin of generosity on your part. The question asked by the member for Paterson will be inspected, I am sure now, by the media and others who are interested in this judgment on your first ruling and your first dissent motion on your first day. They will have a compare and contrast exercise on that question which you ruled in order, and when they do that compare and contrast exercise they will find a very large element of inadequacy lying at the very heart of it. When they do that, you will find yourself in a situation, unfortunately, of some degree of embarrassment. This is an absolutely essential role for an opposition and for private members: the ability to ask questions on matters like this. It is even more the case because the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (Dr Kemp), to whom it was directed, has made an art form of abusing those other elements of the standing orders that you have drawn attention to from time to time and in your opening remarks, and that is a wide, irrelevant canvassing of his portfolio and a blow-harderie of unsurpassed dimensions. Indeed, yesterday this minister was up with the tenders we are referring to—and I have here a selection of the tenders he is referring to—beating his chest and telling people what a marvellous opportunity has been presented to them. So accountability, that other element of question time, is not something invented by the opposition, plucked out of the air. It is a matter that goes to the central heart of the matter of public importance now before this nation. This minister has been openly canvassing questions for himself on this matter and has now been let off it. It is also a fact that the Islamic Council has had cause to complain about the affairs of Mr Roude. They have written to DEETYA and said: Actions by one of our employees during the recent DEETYA tendering process may have breached the guidelines . . . It may also have compromised our tender for provision of employment services. Mr Khadar Roude . . . [has said] he had submitted an independent tender while helping to prepare our own tender . . .Mr Roude had worked intimately with our own submissions for FLEX1, FLEX2 and FLEX3 . . . This matter has been raised at our last Management Committee meeting and Mr Roude was asked to resign. He has since done so and a copy of his resignation is attached. What we have here is an absolutely classic case of accountability. This is an organisation in the community with a legitimate concern. This is an organisation which has made its concern public. This is an organisation dealing with government at a crucial, critical point of the delivery of an important part of government services. This is an organisation which has been gazumped by one of its employees who does not have an operation but has been successful with 12 tenders. If question time means anything at all, these matters ought to be capable of being subject to question in the way in which they have been subject to question by the member for Prospect (Mrs Crosio) in this case. If hers is a question which is out of order, then there is no capacity for question time to function effectively. You may have been somewhat worried by the length of the question. I suspect that perhaps you had that in mind in the error you made. Therefore, I would ask you to have reference to the question asked by the member for Paterson. I am sure you will find that, as far as length of question is concerned, there is no difference between the two. The fact that you were slightly embarrassed about the ruling you made on the member for Paterson for a question that was clearly out of order may have occurred to you and caused you to make this ruling in the way in which you did. You may have determined that the next time you got hit you would do something about it. Unfortunately, you have manifestly come across the wrong target. This is the worst conceivable target you could have picked up. We have here an absolutely clear-cut case of accountability. I have been through all those points, and a reasonable person could not make a judgment that there were unnecessary statements of facts or references to persons in it. There is no argument, inference, imputation, epithet, ironical expression or hypothetical matter in any part of that question: not one word. Mr Speaker, I think the Leader of the House (Mr Reith) is about to get up and defend you, as is his melancholy duty. During the course of that, he will no doubt say that somehow or other this whole question amounts to an argument. I am afraid not. Argument means canvassing the issue. There is no argument in any single one of these sentences. Every single one of these sentences is about the eliciting of information and is to the point. To discount that, only the most appallingly tendentious interpretation could be placed on any element of it. I do understand that on this, your first day in office, you wanted to come into this place and assert your authority. It is an understandable thing for you to want to do. I do note that, apart from asking us to stick to the standing orders as far as questions were concerned, you asked the other side to stop their enormous digressions, irrelevant abuse and all the rest of it. You did not put it that way, but that was the implication of what you said. We have to suspend judgment on the extent to which that part of question time has been enforced, because, as far as I can see, although the answers we have had so far were delivered at a lower decibel level, their length, argumentative nature, levels of irrelevancy and all the rest of it have been pretty much up to standard practice. What have not been up to standard practice, however, have been our questions, because we have sought at this question time to phrase our questions in such a way that they come within what we anticipated your sorts of rulings would be. Out of all the questions we have asked, there is not one single jot or tittle of any part or element which is offensive to standing orders whatsoever. I am afraid to say, Mr Speaker, that although you will win this particular vote, as you must, because it will be a vote along party lines, this is a very bad start indeed.	Australia	1,998
The government will oppose the dissent from your ruling, on the grounds that a case has not been made out. After hearing the Manager of Opposition Business (Mr Crean), I was not surprised that the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Beazley) felt it necessary to speak in this debate himself to try to salvage the claims being made by the Manager of Opposition Business. I will start by saying that this motion graphically demonstrates to the House the wisdom of its choice earlier today and, in particular, the two characteristics you bring to the House, Mr Speaker. The first is patience mixed with tolerance and a touch of humour thrown in for good measure. That is an essential ingredient in dealing with those opposite. Secondly, you bring an extensive knowledge of the standing orders. I want to demonstrate that that is certainly the case on this occasion. I was interested in the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition, who said that this question did not contain any argument. But I distinctly heard him say words to the effect—I wrote it down at the time; we can check the Hansard later—that the words in question were necessary to establish a case. Those are your own words. During your own presentation, you actually substantiated the argument against your own motion of dissent. It was one of the most pathetic presentations I have seen. To have the Manager of Opposition Business stand and move a dissent ruling against the first ruling from the new Speaker is like the novice standing and telling the expert that the expert does not know what they are talking about. It is like the former Minister for Finance with a $23 billion deficit in his last two years telling the Treasurer (Mr Costello) how to balance the books!	Australia	1,998
Sadly, Mr Speaker, those sorts of smart remarks from the Manager of Opposition Business only betray his real attitude. In support of your ruling, I want to refer to the standing orders, which we did not hear much of when the Leader of the Opposition spoke. I do not do so for your benefit, Mr Speaker, because you clearly appreciate the import of them, but for the instruction of members of the opposition, it is appropriate to refer to them. The first one I want to refer to is standing order 147, `Alteration of question'. I presume, Mr Speaker, you had this in mind. You certainly reflected 147 in your first remarks to the member for Prospect. Standing order 147 says: The Speaker may direct that the language of a question be changed if it seems to the Speaker unbecoming or not in conformity with the standing orders of the House. My memory of it is that, in a fairly generous spirit after your patience had been tested by the member for Prospect reading out a question which had been drafted for her by the hopeless tactics committee in the opposition, you did then invite her to come back later, after she had had a chance to redraft her question. I thought that was a very generous gesture on your part. That was the first thing that you did. Under standing order 147, the relevant words I want to point out are that you can require the language to be changed if the words of the person asking the question are not in conformity with the standing orders. The question then is: in what respect was that question in breach of standing orders, and which standing orders therefore should we turn to? There are actually a number of standing orders which support the decision that you have made. Standing order 144 is the obvious one, but it necessary also to refer to standing order 153, which states: Questions shall not be asked which reflect on or are critical of the character or conduct of those persons whose conduct may only be challenged on a substantive motion, and notice must be given of questions critical of the character or conduct of other persons.	Australia	1,998
I don't know anything, he says. The words speak for themselves. I will now read from House of Representatives Practice , which I would direct the Leader of the Opposition to read for the first time. On page 515 it says: Questions critical of the character or conduct of other persons cannot be asked without notice. Then it goes on to say: The purpose of the rule is to protect a person against criticism which could be unwarranted. A question on notice does not receive the same publicity and prominence as a question without notice—The words of House of Representatives Practice could not be more crystal clear. They say: A question on notice does not receive the same publicity and prominence as a question without notice and the reply can be more considered. The first thing you would say about this question—or series of questions—is that they could not have been more clearly in breach of standing order 153. In fact, the Leader of the Opposition went through the various parts of the question which he claimed were in conformity with the standing orders. I am grateful that he read them out. Part of the question that he read out was `what financial checks were made?' and he says that is a totally neutral question. I put it to you that the whole purpose of this question was to raise a question mark about and to make criticism of a tender, and the tenderer, which has been the responsibility of the minister. A further question which supports this was that part of the question which asked what probity checks were made on a named individual. What was the whole purpose of the question put to the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (Dr Kemp)? The whole purpose of the question was to make some allegations about the propriety and the financial sense of offering or providing a contract to a named individual. The whole purpose of the question was a character assassination of a named individual, as you wanted to secure what you believed to be a few cheap political points for the Labor Party. One of the questions which was read out in part by the Leader of the Opposition contained the words, as I wrote them down: `Mr R cannot deliver on the tender.' What is that if it is not a claim that a named person is unable to fulfil their obligations under a contract presumably to be let to the Commonwealth? That was in the question. It is in breach of standing order 153. That is what he said. The whole basis of the question—as he went on to expound in his defence of this dissent ruling—was an attack on the financial probity and the character of this particular named individual. On the question of being in breach of standing order 153, it is an absolutely open and shut case. But it is even more definitive than that.	Australia	1,998
There is a lot of psychobabble coming from the other side, but this would be the clearest case of a ruling being in conformity with the standing orders that I have seen for a very long time. In respect of the balance of the standing orders, in respect of standing order 144, questions cannot be debated. The Leader of the Opposition made it quite clear that the purpose of the question being put was in fact, in the form of a question, to make an argument against the conduct of the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (Dr Kemp).On those grounds alone, there is absolutely no doubt that under standing order 153 you were entitled to suggest in a generous spirit to the member that she go away and redraft her question. That needed to be founded on some aspects of the standing orders and, based on the question and the import and intent of the question, it was clearly in breach of those parts of the standing order which prevent character assassination during questions without notice. They prevent a question being debated, because standing orders say that questions cannot be debated. Questions should not contain arguments, inferences or imputations, and it is quite clear from the statement made by the Leader of the Opposition that that was the whole purpose of the question in the first place. So, Mr Speaker, on any fair and reasonable analysis of that question, your ruling was entirely in conformity with the standing orders and entirely in conformity with the House of Representatives Practice. It could not be clearer, and you can only conclude therefore that in the tactics committee the leader probably said to Simon Crean, `Oh well, we have got a new Speaker, so, as soon as you get a chance, Simon, whip in a motion of dissent.' The only thing you did not tell Simon is, `Make sure, if you have got a motion of dissent, that you have actually got some basis to it. Make sure that you have actually got a case that you can mount.' The Leader of the Opposition, after hearing the most pathetic performance—in fact, I would say a juvenile performance—from the Manager of Opposition Business, clearly felt sufficiently embarrassed that he himself had to rise and try to defend and salvage the dissent motion they had put. I do not think we should waste the time of the House any more. This is an absolutely open and shut case. I move: That the question be now put.	Australia	1,998
The House divided. 0AYESAbbott, A. J. Andrew, J. N.Andrews, K. J. Anthony, L. J.Bailey, F. E. Baldwin, R. C.Barresi, P. A. Bartlett, K. J.Billson, B. F. Bradford, J. W.Broadbent, R. E. Brough, M. T.Cadman, A. G. Cameron, E. H.Causley, I. R. Charles, R. E.Cobb, M. R. Costello, P. H.Dondas, N. M. Downer, A. J. G.Draper, P. Elson, K. S.Entsch, W. G. Evans, R. D. C.Fahey, J. J. Filing, P. A.Fischer, T. A. Forrest, J. A.Georgiou, P. Grace, E. J.Halverson, R. G. Hardgrave, G. D.Hawker, D. P. M. Hicks, N. J.Hockey, J. B. Howard, J. W.Jeanes, S. B. Johnston, R.Jull, D. F. Katter, R. C.Kelly, D. M. Kelly, J. M.Kemp, D. A. Lieberman, L. S.Lloyd, J. E.Marek, P.McArthur, F. S. McDougall, G. R.McGauran, P. J. McLachlan, I. M.Miles, C. G. Moore, J. C.Moylan, J. E. Mutch, S. B.Nairn, G. R. Nehl, G. B.Nelson, B. J. Neville, P. C.Nugent, P. E. Prosser, G. D.Pyne, C. M. Randall, D. J.Reid, N. B. Reith, P. K.Rocher, A. C. Ronaldson, M. J. C.Ruddock, P. M. Scott, B. C.Sharp, J. R. Slipper, P. N.Smith, A. C. Smith, W. L.Somlyay, A. M. Southcott, A. J.Stone, S. N. Taylor, W. L.Thomson, A. P. Truss, W. E.Tuckey, C. W. Vaile, M. A. J.Vale, D. S. Wakelin, B. H.West, A. G. Williams, D. R.Wooldridge, M. R. L. Worth, P. M.Zammit, P. J.0NOESAdams, D. G. H. Albanese, A.Baldwin, P. J. Beazley, K. C.Beddall, D. P. Bevis, A. R.Brereton, L. J. Brown, R. J.Crean, S. F. Crosio, J. A.Dargavel, S. J. Ellis, A. L.Evans, G. J. Evans, M. J.Ferguson, L. D. T. Ferguson, M. J.Fitzgibbon, J. A. Grace, E. L.Griffin, A. P. Hatton, M.Holding, A. C. Hollis, C.Jones, B. O. Kerr, D. J. C.Latham, M. W. Lee, M. J.Macklin, J. L. Martin, S. P.McClelland, R. B. McLeay, L. B.McMullan, R. F. Melham, D.Morris, A. A. Morris, P. F.Mossfield, F. W. O'Connor, G. M.O'Keefe, N. P. Price, L. R.Quick, H. V. Sawford, R. W.Sercombe, R. C. G. Smith, S. F.Tanner, L. J. Theophanous, A. C.Thomson, K. J. Willis, R.PAIRSAnderson, J. D. Lawrence, C. M.Bishop, B. K. Wilton, G. S.Gash, J. Jenkins, H. A.* denotes teller	Australia	1,998
The House divided. (Mr Speaker—Rt Hon. Ian Sinclair)46AYESAdams, D. G. H. Albanese, A.Baldwin, P. J. Beazley, K. C.Beddall, D. P. Bevis, A. R.Brereton, L. J. Brown, R. J.Crean, S. F. Crosio, J. A.Dargavel, S. J. Ellis, A. L.Evans, G. J. Evans, M. J.Ferguson, L. D. T. Ferguson, M. J.Fitzgibbon, J. A. Grace, E. L.Griffin, A. P. Hatton, M.Holding, A. C. Hollis, C.Jones, B. O. Kerr, D. J. C.Latham, M. W. Lee, M. J.Macklin, J. L. Martin, S. P.McClelland, R. B. McLeay, L. B.McMullan, R. F. Melham, D.Morris, A. A. Morris, P. F.Mossfield, F. W. O'Connor, G. M.O'Keefe, N. P. Price, L. R.Quick, H. V. Sawford, R. W.Sercombe, R. C. G.* Smith, S. F.Tanner, L. J. Theophanous, A. C.Thomson, K. J. Willis, R.87NOESAbbott, A. J. Andrew, J. N.Andrews, K. J. Anthony, L. J.Bailey, F. E. Baldwin, R. C.Barresi, P. A. Bartlett, K. J.Billson, B. F. Bradford, J. W.Broadbent, R. E. Brough, M. T.Cadman, A. G. Cameron, E. H.Causley, I. R. Charles, R. E.Cobb, M. R. Costello, P. H.Dondas, N. M. Downer, A. J. G.Elson, K. S. Entsch, W. G.Evans, R. D. C. Fahey, J. J.Filing, P. A. Fischer, T. A.Forrest, J. A. Gallus, C. A.Georgiou, P. Grace, E. J.Halverson, R. G. Hardgrave, G. D.Hawker, D. P. M. Hicks, N. J.Hockey, J. B. Howard, J. W.Jeanes, S. B. Johnston, R.Jull, D. F. Katter, R. C.Kelly, D. M. Kelly, J. M.Kemp, D. A. Lieberman, L. S.Lloyd, J. E.Marek, P.McArthur, F. S. McDougall, G. R.McGauran, P. J. McLachlan, I. M.Miles, C. G. Moore, J. C.Moylan, J. E. Mutch, S. B.Nairn, G. R. Nehl, G. B.Nelson, B. J. Neville, P. C.Nugent, P. E. Prosser, G. D.Pyne, C. M. Randall, D. J.Reid, N. B. Reith, P. K.Rocher, A. C. Ronaldson, M. J. C.Ruddock, P. M. Scott, B. C.Sharp, J. R. Slipper, P. N.Smith, A. C. Smith, W. L.Somlyay, A. M. Southcott, A. J.Stone, S. N. Taylor, W. L.Thomson, A. P. Truss, W. E.Tuckey, C. W. Vaile, M. A. J.Vale, D. S. Wakelin, B. H.West, A. G. Williams, D. R.Wooldridge, M. R. L. Worth, P. M.Zammit, P. J.PAIRSJenkins, H. A. Gash, J.Lawrence, C. M. Anderson, J. D.Wilton, G. S. Bishop, B. K. denotes tellerQuestion so resolved in the negative.	Australia	1,998
Of course, value for money for the taxpayer was of no concern to the member for Hotham because he spent $500 million on a program that cost $143,000 a job. In the context of the tender round for establishment of the Job Network, there were over 1,000 organisations which tendered. Every organisation went through, first of all, a very rigorous financial viability check and, secondly, a very rigorous scrutiny of the quality of the tender which was made. The system is a results based system because, for the first time, the successful tenderers will be paid according to their capacity not to place people in programs, not to churn them around to change the statistics on employment, but on the basis of their capacity to get people into jobs and take them off benefits. It is somewhat invidious to name the successful tenderers in West Melbourne, but I will identify one or two to give members of the House a sense of the quality of the successful tenderers in West Melbourne. Mission Australia has been contracted to provide new enterprise incentive scheme payments—that is, NEIS services. There has been a contract provided with the Russian Ethnic Representative Council of Victoria—obviously to provide services to a particular section of the community. There has been a contract provided to the Salvation Army—an organisation which has enormous respect—to provide intensive assistance to the most disadvantaged jobseekers. One of the ways in which the Job Network is focusing on results—and one can be confident it will achieve results—is to ensure that by far the largest financial incentives being paid to providers will be paid when the most disadvantaged jobseekers are assisted. Another successful tenderer in the West Melbourne area was Job Futures Ltd, which got many contracts for sites around Australia and is a consortium of the Brotherhood of St Laurence and a number of other major community providers. There can be no question of the quality of the organisations—their links with community and their experience—which will be carrying through the government's commitment to unemployed people and, particularly, the most disadvantaged people. Every one of the organisations that the member for Gellibrand mentioned had a chance to tender. They may well believe they have provided—and maybe they well have—good services in the past, but in the end they were not as competitive as the organisations which got contracts. They were subject to the most close scrutiny as to their outcomes, and members of the public can be very confident in the quality of the organisations which have received contracts under this tender process. Finally, let me say that the entire tender process was subject to the independent probity auditing of Blake Dawson Waldron. Blake Dawson Waldron have signed off that they are entirely satisfied with the probity with which the tender has been conducted and with the fairness of the whole tender process to every single tenderer.	Australia	1,998
In answer to the honourable member for Hughes, I have over the past few weeks become aware of some spending and revenue proposals emanating from the member for Dobell, who is the shadow minister for health, that would directly attack the living standards and the disposable incomes of ordinary Australian families. To start with, the member for Dobell, if he were to become health minister in a Labor government, would immediately take away the $450 a year tax rebate for private health insurance. For the last six months he has been running around Australia. Every time he opens his mouth he tells us how unnecessary and what a failure the health rebate has been. One can only conclude that if the member for Dobell were to become health minister in a Labor government—presumably that would be so if a Labor government were to be elected because he is the shadow minister for health—then his policy, his first act, would be to increase the private health insurance premiums of average Australian families by taking away the $450 a year. It does not end there. On top of that the very same shadow minister for health over the last six months has racked up spending commitments of between $5 billion and $6 billion over a four-year period. You can go through the list. He has committed himself to completely reverse the savings that were made in relation to therapeutic premiums and to support in full the additional demands made by the states in relation to the Medicare agreement. Those two commitments alone add up to about $2 billion over a period of four years. You can go through them item by item, list by list, and you get to a situation where the shadow minister for health has committed himself to spending proposals under a Labor government of between $5 billion and $6 billion over a period of four years. I put the members of the opposition on notice. It is about time they realised that this business of being in opposition is not a sleigh ride. You cannot run around the country slagging everything the government has done, saying that a particular health subsidy is of no account, or promising to reverse spending cuts and then imagine that nobody on the other side is going to do their sums and ask the very fundamental question of where the money is coming from. So, on two counts, he is going to take away the private health insurance premium, and that will increase the premiums of an average Australian family by $450 a year. So I say to all of those average families that have health insurance: if you vote Labor your premium will automatically go up by $450 a year. Not only will that happen, if you vote Labor you are going to lose the interest rate cut that is equivalent to a pay rise of $100 a week. Why is that going to happen? It is going to happen because if a Labor government were elected they would put at risk the budget surplus that we have built up over the last two years. If you elect a Labor government they will embark upon a spending spree and our little mate from Dobell has already given us $5 billion or $6 billion.	Australia	1,998
I thought that in the Australian lexicon `little mate' was pretty endearing. But if anybody on the other side is offended by it, I unqualifiedly withdraw. I would have thought that over the last 20 years that is a pretty endearing expression. Michael, I would not get offended at that; people have called you much worse things than that. But if you are offended, far be it from me to give any offence to anybody on the front bench of the opposition. This is not a costless game. You cannot have the luxury of being an opposition that nobody takes any notice of. You can run around the country saying, `Look, vote us in and we will spend another $3 billion or $4 billion. Vote us in and we will fix all this up.' At the end of the day your political opponents and the commentators start doing their sums and start saying, `Hey, if he is against the health insurance premium that means he is going to take it away. If he is going to spend all of this money then that is going to have a consequence.' And do you know what the consequence will be? It will be higher interest rates because if you blow out government spending you will have a large government deficit, those interest rates will go up and that $100 a week will disappear. This is instalment one in getting back to reality, living in the real world and making the opposition understand that you cannot go around the length and breadth of Australia making all sorts of reckless spending and taxation promises without being drawn to account. You were irresponsible when you were in government and you are being irresponsible in opposition. I ought to give you notice that over the next few months the Australian people are going to find out just how irresponsible and how out of touch and irrelevant you really are. Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.	Australia	1,998
The House divided. (Mr Speaker—Rt Hon. Ian Sinclair)78AYESAndrew, J. N. Andrews, K. J.Anthony, L. J. Bailey, F. E.Baldwin, R. C. Barresi, P. A.Bartlett, K. J. Billson, B. F.Broadbent, R. E. Brough, M. T.Cadman, A. G. Cameron, E. H.Causley, I. R. Charles, R. E.Cobb, M. R. Costello, P. H.Dondas, N. M. Draper, P.Elson, K. S. Entsch, W. G.Evans, R. D. C. Fahey, J. J.Fischer, T. A. Forrest, J. A.Georgiou, P. Grace, E. J.Halverson, R. G. Hardgrave, G. D.Hawker, D. P. M. Hicks, N. J.Hockey, J. B. Jeanes, S. B.Johnston, R. Jull, D. F.Katter, R. C. Kelly, D. M.Kelly, J. M. Kemp, D. A.Lieberman, L. S. Lloyd, J. E.Marek, P. McArthur, F. S.McDougall, G. R. McGauran, P. J.McLachlan, I. M. Miles, C. G.Moore, J. C. Moylan, J. E.Mutch, S. B. Nairn, G. R.Nehl, G. B. Nelson, B. J.Neville, P. C. Nugent, P. E.Prosser, G. D. Pyne, C. M.Randall, D. J. Reid, N. B.Reith, P. K. Ronaldson, M. J. C.Scott, B. C. Sharp, J. R.Slipper, P. N.* Smith, A. C.Smith, W. L. Somlyay, A. M.Southcott, A. J. Stone, S. N.Taylor, W. L. Thomson, A. P.Truss, W. E. Tuckey, C. W.Vaile, M. A. J. Vale, D. S.Wakelin, B. H. West, A. G.Williams, D. R. Worth, P. M.46NOESAdams, D. G. H. Albanese, A.Baldwin, P. J. Beddall, D. P.Bevis, A. R. Brereton, L. J.Brown, R. J. Crean, S. F.Crosio, J. A. Dargavel, S. J.Ellis, A. L. Evans, G. J.Evans, M. J. Ferguson, L. D. T.Ferguson, M. J. Fitzgibbon, J. A.Grace, E. L.* Hatton, M.Holding, A. C. Hollis, C.Jenkins, H. A. Jones, B. O.Kerr, D. J. C. Latham, M. W.Lee, M. J.Macklin, J. L.Martin, S. P. McClelland, R. B.McLeay, L. B. McMullan, R. F.Melham, D. Morris, P. F.O'Connor, G. M. O'Keefe, N. P.Price, L. R. Quick, H. V.Rocher, A. C. Sawford, R. W.Sercombe, R. C. G. Smith, S. F.Tanner, L. J. Theophanous, A. C.Thomson, K. J. Willis, R.Wilton, G. S. Zammit, P. J.PAIRSAnderson, J. D. Lawrence, C. M.Bishop, B. K. Morris, A. A.Gash, J. Mossfield, F. W.Howard, J. W. Beazley, K. C.Ruddock, P. M. Griffin, A. P.* denotes teller	Australia	1,998
I move: That the bill be now read a second time. Following the passage of the Child Care Payments Act 1997 last year, the government received numerous representations about the likely administrative impact on parents and on services which would flow from its full implementation in April 1998. As a result, I announced on 23 January that the government has decided to defer the implementation of the changed payments arrangements aspects of the bill until a child-care card or similar technology is available—known as the smartcard. This technology will allow us to introduce a system which is more efficient for all parties. To implement this decision, this bill seeks to defer implementation of the Child Care Payments Act 1997, and to amend the Child Care Act 1972 and the Childcare Rebate Act 1993 to allow the implementation of the other decisions taken in the 1997 budget and reflected in the Child Care Payments Act 1997.The bill introduces a head of power to allow the work related circumstances of a family to be taken into account when determining the amount of child-care assistance payable. Using this power, a limit of 20 hours of child-care assistance per week will be introduced for children of non-working families. This measure ensures Commonwealth funds are more efficiently targeted to the primary objective of the program, that is, work related care. The limit will be applied following the same policy parameters that would have been used under the Child Care Payments Act 1997. Work related care is defined by reference to the Childcare Rebate Act 1993 and includes care required by families where both parents are or the single parent is working, looking for work, studying or training. It includes families where one parent is working and the other, because of a disability, is unable to have work related commitments or care for their child or children. The bill also provides for exemptions from the 20-hour limit. Families in receipt of child disability allowance for any child will be able to access more that 20 hours of child-care assistance in respect of all their children in care. Children at risk of neglect or abuse will also be able to access as much child-care assistance as they need, as will children of families in crisis and children who have two disabled parents.	Australia	1,998
(Quorum formed)Finally, exemptions will exist for operators where they are the sole provider of care in an area. Guidelines setting out these exemptions will be in the form of a disallowable instrument presented to the parliament. A disallowable instrument will be made available to the parliament which sets out the full detail of how the 20-hour limit will be applied. In many areas of Australia there are too many child-care centres while families in other areas have little or no access. The Child Care Payments Act 1997 sought to rectify this situation by imposing an effective limit of 7,000 new places per year over the next two years. With the deferral of the Child Care Payments Act 1997, it is necessary to amend the Child Care Act 1972 to provide for this limit. Guidelines setting out the requirements for approval of places will be presented to the parliament in the form of a disallowable instrument. The government has also indicated its strong commitment to measures which encourage parents to properly immunise their children. The Child Care Payments Act 1997 contained provisions which required that children be immunised to qualify for child-care subsidies. This bill replicates the immunisation requirements contained in that act and ensures that there is no further delay in implementing this important health initiative. Appropriate exemptions will be made to ensure that children at risk of abuse of neglect are not subject to these requirements. Guidelines for this purpose will be in the form of a disallowable instrument and will be presented to the parliament. Finally, the bill introduces for the first time confidentiality provisions into the Child Care Act 1972. These provisions follow very closely the provisions of the Child Care Payments Act 1997 and are necessary to ensure that families' information is secure. I present a copy of the explanatory memorandum.	Australia	1,998
(Quorum formed) It is therefore very important that the national residue survey programs operate smoothly and that their funding base is secure. The government has been advised that the legislation supporting the national residue survey programs has technical faults that have the effect that liability to pay a national residue survey levy is dependent upon liability to pay another primary industry levy. This was not the original intention of this legislation. It was intended that, in order to reduce collection costs, national residue survey levies would be collected at the same point in the process as other primary industry levies, but not that one would be dependent upon the other. The current situation means that some industries wishing to participate in national residue survey monitoring programs will not be able to do so; that is, those industries not already paying another primary industry levy. The legislation is also being amended to ensure that the national residue survey levy on onions is valid. Because national residue survey levies are now seen to be dependent on the payment of other primary industry levies, there is a problem where that other levy rate is set at zero. This is the case for onions. There is some question as to whether a zero rate can trigger the liability for payment of a national residue survey levy. To clarify this, the act is being amended to ensure that levy payments made on onions in the past have been validly collected. The amendments are designed to ensure that the national residue survey levies can now operate on a stand-alone basis. There will be no change at all to the amounts being paid or to the basis for calculating levies for any commodity. However, in the case of horticultural commodities, a maximum levy rate of two per cent of the gross value of production is being inserted in the primary legislation to accommodate the possible inclusion of new horticultural commodities at a later date. This provision will have no effect on the operative rate of levy for any commodity. Levies will still be set at the current rate for each commodity group. There are negotiations under way at the moment with a number of horticultural commodity groups that could lead to their inclusion in the national residue survey monitoring programs. This approach will speed the process of bringing these new commodities onto the program when the need arises. The bill also repeals the 22 national residue survey levy imposition acts, the contents of which are consolidated into the two other bills in this package: the National Residue Survey (Customs) Levy Bill 1998 and the National Residue Survey (Excise) Levy Bill 1998 . This move is being undertaken as part of a streamlining of portfolio legislation and should provide improved access to portfolio legislation by members of the public and make its administration simpler. I commend the bill to honourable members and present the explanatory memorandum.	Australia	1,998
in reply—I want to make some concluding remarks on behalf of the government with regard to the Insurance Laws Amendment Bill 1997. I think everybody is in agreement with this bill. I know that a lot of people outside do not realise that we often agree on many pieces of legislation in the parliament, and this is one of those pieces of legislation for which there is support across the parties. In summary, this bill amends the Insurance Act 1973, the Insurance (Agents and Brokers) Act 1984 and the Insurance Contracts Act 1984. The main purpose of the bill is to amend prudential supervisory arrangements under the Insurance Act for Lloyds of London to improve the security arrangements for Lloyds underwriter's Australian policyholders. It also brings the supervision of Lloyds more into line with that of corporate insurers in Australia. The bill reduces burdens on people taking out insurance policies in relation to their duty to disclose information to the insurer. I think everybody in Australia who has taken out insurance policies has been asked, `Is there anything to declare?' Most people flick through their mind but are sometimes unaware of the extent of what that question implies. This legislation means that the people giving the policy have to go through a series of questions so that people have a better idea of what is implied in it. Therefore, there is greater security coming from this legislation for consumers in Australia. Additionally, the bill brings marine pleasure craft owned by individuals into the Insurance Contracts Act thereby providing a better level of consumer protection to private boat owners. I am sure there are many people who will welcome these measures in this area. I note that the opposition has supported this bill, particularly the provisions relating to the improved consumer protection measures. I also note the concerns expressed by the opposition in relation to insurance cover for people affected by the recent disastrous events in Katherine and Townsville. The government is also concerned to ensure that people who have suffered losses as a result of these unfortunate events, and any people who suffer losses in the future, are able to have certainty in relation to their insurance arrangements. In view of the government's concern in this area, the Insurance and Superannuation Commission is consulting with representatives of the industry to that end. I thank those people who participated in the Main Committee and I commend this bill to the House.	Australia	1,998
The Company Law Review Bill 1997 is one of a trilogy of bills which were initiated by the former Labor government in October 1993 when it established a Corporations Law simplification program. The aim of that was to rewrite the Corporations Law to make it easier to understand, and to remove unnecessary business regulation. That gave rise to three bills, one of which had at least part of its second reading debate this morning. That was the Managed Investments Bill 1997 , which dealt essentially with what used to be referred to as unit trusts. The sister bill which we are currently considering was really the first of that trilogy. It began life under the Keating government as the second Corporate Law Simplification Bill. Its intention was to turn the Companies Act into plain English. It was referred in 1996 to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Securities, which reported in November 1997. As I said, the purpose of this exercise was to ensure that the Corporations Law would be simplified. Although the Company Law Review Bill 1997 that we are now considering has a total of 384 pages and looks fairly substantial, and is one of a trilogy of bills, that represents a very significant reduction in terms of volume to the law before; and, of course, it is couched in much better language. The company law over a period of time not only has become inappropriate in terms of its language of expression but also over the years has accumulated what have now to a very large extent become redundant provisions. So the opportunity has not been simply one of simplifying the wording of the legislation but also one of ensuring that to a significant extent it was brought up to date. I have some reservations which I want to take the opportunity later to indicate. In case I leave myself short of time, in the first instance I want to refer to a practical question which has been brought to my attention by one of my constituents, Mr Bruce McWhirter. He has a business operating in Wyee, a relatively small town within my electorate of Charlton. It is quite a small town. Bruce registered the name of his business as Wyee Computer Services. Clearly, it has not been incorporated; it is not a private company. As a result, it was registered under the state provisions with the Department of Fair Trading. That is not the preferred name that Bruce McWhirter would have chosen for his business. When he suggested to the Department of Fair Trading his preferred names, and they carried out a very comprehensive check against names of other businesses in New South Wales, they indicated to him that he would have to change it to ensure that there was sufficient differentiation between them. He did this, but with some reluctance. The point that I am making is that that precaution was taken under the provisions of state legislation exercised through the Department of Fair Trading. You can imagine then Bruce McWhirter's surprise when he found that another firm commenced operating known as Wyee Computers Pty Ltd. It is a private company and comes under the Australian Securities Commission registration provisions and under Commonwealth law. The provision under Commonwealth law is that any firm can adopt a name as long as it is not 100 per cent the same as that of an existing firm. I accept that there are good reasons for that. I understand that, for example, there are about 80,000 companies which are newly registered each year. I understand that there are about two million firms currently registered in Australia. But I do not believe that it is beyond our capacity, beyond the capacity of computers and beyond an exercise of a reasonable degree of subjective judgment that, where two firm names are seen to be so similar, some type of constraint could be exercised to ensure that there is a minimum of confusion about it. I think the requirement under Commonwealth law to clearly differentiate was abolished by the previous government in legislation which we introduced in 1991. I am not seeking to absolve myself or the previous Labor government from blame, but I simply point out the degree of confusion which can be caused as a result of our failure to take adequate steps in that area. I refer to the provisions of the legislation in relation to this particular question. Section 3.3, in relation to the naming of companies, says: When a company is registered, the ASC allocates to it a unique 9 digit number called the Australian company number (the ACN).. . . . . . . . .A proprietary company may adopt its ACN as its name. That so very few of them operating out in the public market arena do that is for obvious reasons. If it does so, its name must contain the words "Australian Company Number" (which can be abbreviated to "ACN"). For example, the company's name might be "ACN 123 456 789 Pty Ltd".There could be some which operate just with their Australian company number but, as I say, if they are working out in the arena of the public market, I doubt that they would utilise that type of nomenclature to identify themselves or to use it for business promotion, business publicity, goodwill or profit-making purposes. So they tend to use a registered name in addition to being required to have the Australian company number. If they are required to do that, I think it is appropriate that consideration be given to some type of arrangement which can ensure that sufficient differentiation take place between them. I think it is an oversimplification. Generally, in this legislation we are dealing with legislative constraints on the operations of companies in various areas. The attempt has been made to simplify it—quite correctly. The attempt has been made to take out superfluous regulations—quite correctly. But the only reasons governments involve themselves in regulations for businesses are to ensure firstly, the protection of consumers; secondly, the protection of the shareholders or the owners of the particular corporation; thirdly, to protect one business against the behaviour, deliberate or otherwise, of another; and, fourthly, to achieve certain types of social and national objectives. While our objective certainly should be to minimise the volume of regulations, to simplify them and to put them in simple language, we should always be careful to ensure—I am sure that the departmental officers who have been involved in this exercise attempted to be as careful as they could—that we do not take that too far and lose sight of the reason why legislative enactments need to be made. As I said, the October 1993 exercise by the former Labor government in establishing that simplification program had as its objective to remove unnecessary business regulation. I emphasise particularly that word `unnecessary'. The objectives generally of the Company Law Review Bill are: to improve the efficiency of corporate regulation, and to reduce those regulatory burdens on business and other users of the Corporations Law. The burden is not just one of resources and time but one of financial responsibility and financial liability which is placed on companies to not only comply with the law but also guarantee that they have sufficient expertise available to them to understand what the law says, how the law should be interpreted and how they should react to it. That is expensive. For that reason, the efficiency of corporate regulation is of particular importance. I appreciate as well the support which the business community has given to this exercise. Why would it not? Cumbersome and difficult language and confused, redundant and inappropriate legislative constraints and requirements on the way in which businesses operate are expensive to them. They have supported the exercise. But there are certainly aspects of this legislation, the preceding legislation—the Managed Investments Bill—and the third one, which I believe will be completed and available for public review in April of this year, known as the corporate law economic reform program—the one which continues this whole process into other areas of company and corporate law—about which some sections of the business community have been concerned. The one I referred to may be, in the total context of this, relatively minor. But for that small businessman in Wyee in my electorate it is a matter of substance. He has developed his own business goodwill that is an asset to him. That includes the quality of the service he provides, the extent to which his clients and customers can feel confident in him and depend upon him. But the concerns he expressed to me about another firm being able to establish under such a similar name are quite apparent. More recent advice that has been given to me is that the firm which established itself and registered the name under the Australian Securities Commission provisions, Commonwealth law, as Wyee Computers Pty Ltd has subsequently changed its name. If in fact that is true—and I believe it is—that leads me to the belief that that firm did not set up with that name in order to capture the goodwill of Bruce McWhirter's business. But had it chosen to continue with that name and had it chosen to adopt that name in order to capture the goodwill and business of that other firm it apparently would have been able to do so. I refer that particular matter to the government. The bill that we are considering rewrites and makes significant improvements to the core areas of registering companies, meetings, share capital, financial reports and audit, annual returns, deregistration of defunct companies and company names—to which I have made reference—with a view to facilitating business and investment. While there will be transitional costs, because the core company law provisions are being replaced, the provisions that are replacing them are more streamlined and easier to comply with. In addition, the draft legislation was exposed for public comment in June 1995 which gave people within the business community and people who acted for them legally an opportunity to examine it. The result was that most users of the Corporations Law are now already familiar with the overall direction and content of the bill. The provisions covered by the bill in the existing law are complex and they use complicated legal concepts which are unfamiliar to most business people and impose excessive regulation. The need for them then to get specialist expensive legal advice for the interpretation of that law is another source of burden to them. I said that this bill was one of a trilogy of bills. The third one, which I understand and hope will be available at least in draft form by next month, if it is not yet available—that is, the corporate law economic reform program—will complete a very comprehensive and very important approach by this government and the preceding Labor government in this area. It has been popular with the business community. The results of it should be apparent. I would congratulate in particular the people from the bureaucracy who have had responsibility for drafting this. I know the extent to which they have conferred with the business community, and they have done that deliberately. The business community has been more than welcome. The business legal profession has always, to my understanding, found ready acceptance by members of that group. It is to their credit that they have had two bills considered on this one day. The other one will apparently become available later on. The third one that I referred to—the corporate law economic reform program, if it is still being called that—will deal with six areas where reform is being contemplated. That will cover accounting standards, directors' duties, prospectus reform, takeovers, electronic commerce and a combined area in securities and derivatives. Finally, I want to make reference to a whole range of elements of this legislation which have been simplified. Many pieces have been chopped out which have become redundant. One example that I would like to give just before I conclude is the fact that the old concept of par value for shares will go by the way. It has outlived its usefulness. It is no longer a useful concept, and the reasons for that are apparent in the material which has accompanied this legislation. The government has considered generally that companies should be free to decide for themselves whether in their annual reports they should be, for example, preparing management discussion and analysis for shareholders instead of being compelled to do so by law. I have some reservations about that. I think, if the compulsion was there, the corporation itself and the board of directors could determine the content of that presentation to shareholders. (Time expired)	Australia	1,998
The Company Law Review Bill 1997 makes substantial amendments to the Corporations Law in the procedures that are required to establish and run a company, as well as recognising the increasing importance of electronic communications in doing business in the 1990s and beyond. It also seeks to improve those provisions which deal with company annual returns, share capital, financial statements and the deregistration of defunct companies and company names. There is a consensus that these amendments being sought to Australian corporate law in this bill are principally based on an economic analysis of the law, that is, they are designed to simplify regulation, thereby reducing the cost of doing business for Australian corporations while improving compliance levels by making the law easier to understand. Both of these aims are desirable and entirely supportable. However, as Mr Tony Greenwood, journalist with the Australian, has observed, the government's corporate law economic reform program, CLERP, of which this bill is one part, is motivated by other important factors. On 27 November 1997, Mr Greenwood wrote: CLERP has by no means been captured by that branch of economics that puts market freedom above all else. (It is also about) investor protection, business ethics and compliance. In 1996 the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, CEDA, produced a report into the impact of government regulations on national competitiveness. The report found: The basic aim of regulation is to improve overall social and economic conditions. Regulations should only be applied if it yields a substantial net benefit . . . for this goal to be met, new regulations must be at a minimum, be well designed and well managed . . . (otherwise) regulation is likely to be counter-productive. The CEDA report went on to note that governments could not afford to view a particular reform measure in isolation but, rather, in the wider context of existing and future regulatory regimes. It is in this wider context that the merits and shortcomings of the Company Law Review Bill 1997 needs comment. On the whole, I believe the government has got it right. The coalition has committed itself to a continuation of the tax law improvement project and, while this bill is independent of that project, it is entirely consistent with the intent of TLIP. What sets this bill apart from TLIP and gives it greater credibility is the immediacy of the effect of these measures. A few moments ago I observed the changes this bill seeks to bring about, but what it does not deal with in any way, shape or form is the tax effect of these amendments. I anticipate that we can all look forward to yet another omnibus tax bill surfacing later this year to deal with that, but it is timely to remind honourable members that at least one of the peak tax organisations in this country has expressed concerns with the likely effect of some of these proposals. The government's commitment to a lengthy and frank dialogue with industry about the contents of this bill is to be applauded. It is unusual for legislation that initiates such substantial change to earn such widespread support. In a media release dated 6 December 1997, the Australian Institute of Company Directors, AICD, stated: The AICD strongly supports the consultative review process involving business, market participants and interest groups, which has been adopted by the government for the corporate law economic reform program. Similarly, in a statement reproduced on 19 December last, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, ACCI, congratulated the coalition on the bill, describing it as an `admirable example of micro-economic reform' which owed its success to a combination of `far-sighted government with quality participation by industry'. Praise for legislative reform does not come much better than that. I am not suggesting that every proposal in this bill has the unqualified support of industry, because that is not the case. As I have already indicated, there are a number of taxation changes which will result from this bill that are of real concern to members of the tax and legal professions, and I will elaborate on them shortly. But the fact remains that the vast bulk of the changes in this bill are welcome, principally because the consultative process entered into has been sound. Chapter 2G of the explanatory memorandum sets out the changes the coalition proposes to introduce to company meetings' rules. The Joint Committee on Corporations and Securities recommended in its 1996 report that any update of the Corporations Law needed to more extensively recognise electronic forms of communication. Similarly, the recent financial system inquiry, FSI, demonstrated that Australian company law should be amended to accommodate electronic commerce. The provisions of this bill will pave the way for utilising electronic communication in providing notice of meetings, conducting meetings and appointing proxies for meetings. That might also be of interest to the Liberal Party. It will also allow companies to electronically register their annual returns with the ASC, thereby saving Australian businesses time and money. All this is consistent with the recommendations of both the parliamentary committee and FSI and will quicken the flow of information, allowing Australian companies to expedite their decision making processes. It is also consonant with the findings of the information industries task force, which advised that the government should encourage electronic commerce as desirable in itself and as an industry development tool. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry endorses these changes to electronic communications, noting that the effect of these measures will be twofold: individual businesses will benefit, as will the wider economy. In a media release dated 10 December 1997 the ACCI stated: The option to use electronic means . . . will appeal to many companies wishing to streamline their operations and reduce administrative costs. It should also facilitate Australia's development as a major financial centre. The coalition's decision to reduce the information required to be incorporated in annual returns by two-thirds is also welcome. In the same way that the coalition is making it simpler to establish a company, the streamlining of the annual return processes and the simplification of company lodgment of returns with the Australian Securities Commission will see a reduction in compliance costs for small businesses. Mr Bob Bryant, executive director of the Corporate Tax Association, was recently quoted as saying that these measures will:. . . simplify the . . . framework, take away some of the old formalities, and will particularly help small companies, who will get very streamlined procedures. It is a well-known fact that small business bears a disproportionate burden when it comes to complying with business regulations. So it is pleasing to note that the government has been able to achieve here what it has failed to do with regulatory reform generally—that is, considerably reduce the burden on the small business sector. Importantly, this reduction has not occurred at the expense of shareholders or other interested parties. Specific measures have been introduced to ensure that company directors remain focused on their obligations to others. For example, companies will be obliged to notify the ASC of any changes in address of a principal place of business, thereby ensuring that creditors can stay in contact with a company. The current directors solvency resolution remains intact under this bill, meaning that if a company fails to lodge its annual financial report with the ASC this must be made known to shareholders by the directors. In other words, the simplification of this part of the Corporations Law is not being made at the expense of responsible and transparent business practice. On the contrary, the recently released 1998 OECD Economic Survey notes that the changes being sought by the government in its CLERP program:. . . should be conducive to entrepreneurial behaviour on the part of company managers and directors. Arguably, the most controversial change to be brought about by this bill is the abolition of the concept of par values for company shares. In his second reading speech the Treasurer indicated that the intent behind schedule 5 was to streamline the procedures for share capital reductions while at the same time safeguarding the interests of creditors and shareholders. The Australian Taxpayers' Association, ATA, has acknowledged that the proposed changes to share capital will make it easier for companies to make returns of capital to shareholders by eliminating the concept of par value and removing the role of courts in capital reductions. But it has also branded this measure as a trap. In a media release dated 14 November 1997, Mr Peter McDonald, national director of the ATA, described the change as:. . . a major step forward in simplifying the rules for companies . . . But he also noted that the tax changes will negate the positive changes from corporate law simplification because: Shareholders face the very real prospect that a return of their capital on which tax has already been paid will be double taxed. Mr McDonald went on to assert that this will:. . . encourage shareholders to use debt instead of equity when setting up a company, effectively resulting in companies of straw. The ATA argues that the proposed taxing of returns of capital as an unfranked dividend will effectively put an end to the principle that:. . . what you put into a company by way of a non-deductible contribution in share capital you got back in a tax free form. That principle appears likely to go by the board. During the course of the two public hearings held by the Joint Committee on Corporations and Securities into the draft Second Corporate Law Simplification Bill 1996, which this bill then was, several industry submissions revealed concerns about the inadequate transitional provisions in the previous bill and the possible taxation consequences of those proposals. The government acknowledged that to be so in its response to the report in November 1997. It observed that there was a need to ensure an:. . . adequate transitional period to give the business and professional communities sufficient time to adjust to the introduction of no par value. It went on to note that a separate announcement about the taxation measures it will be introducing as a consequence of the abolition of par values for shares would be made at a later date. As yet the government has failed to give industry the slightest hint of the date of effect for this proposed tax measure, nor has it allayed fears that there will be a retrospective element to the new tax treatment of share values. My opposition to retrospective taxation, other than where the new tax treatment incurs a benefit on the taxpayer, is, of course, well known in this place. The Australian Institute of Company Directors, the AICD, in its submission to the Joint Statutory Committee on Corporations and Securities in August 1996, voices a similar position. The AICD states very clearly that it `opposes the use of retrospective legislation which operates to eliminate rights that might otherwise exist'.As far as the Australian Institute of Company Directors is concerned, any decision to retrospectively remove advantages that presently flow quite legitimately from the distributions of accumulated capital to some shareholders `would be to place those shareholders and companies at a distinct disadvantage through no fault of their own'. The AICD supports the introduction of no par value shares but has recommended that companies should have the option of converting their shares to no par value shares rather than being obliged to do so. The AICD contends: Governments . . . should be slow to eliminate choice [because] this is a fundamental factor in a competitive and democratic society. In a letter addressed to a senior Treasury official on 9 July 1997, Mr Ian Dunlop, the Chief Executive Officer at the AICD, renewed his concern at the government's `tendency to equate simplification with reduced freedom of choice in the nature and structure of corporate vehicles'. Mr Dunlop noted that, despite the recommendation in the 1989 report by the companies and securities law reform committee that companies should have the option of issuing shares of no par value, the government has chosen to persist with the compulsory introduction of no par value shares. The coalition has argued that the introduction of optional no par value shares will necessarily mean a complication of the law. However, the AICD notes that this is not the American experience and asserts that `simplification of corporate law is not an end in itself: it should be regarded as a means of enlarging legitimate business choice and of reducing unnecessary business costs'. In its 8 December 1997 edition of The Taxpayer the ATA outlines the impact that this proposed tax treatment of share capital will have on the small business sector. It is argued that this amendment will cause these companies to become less attractive as a business vehicle and that it will disadvantage existing capitalised companies because they will have to compete with new companies that can establish themselves as thinly capitalised entities. The ATA also states that post capital gains tax companies will be encouraged to liquidate to get their capital back without being taxed, only to re-establish themselves as new entities which can utilise relatively higher debt and limited equity. Further, it is claimed that this double tax treatment will dissuade foreign investment in Australian business because of the government's planned reduction of the thin capitalisation debt ratio. The Treasurer has defended the government's planned tax treatment of share capital, claiming that the abolition of par value for shares will provide an avenue for the streaming of capital to shareholders in circumstances where this would minimise tax. For this reason the government intends to strengthen the existing part IV(A) anti-avoidance rules. What the Treasurer has failed to explain in his statements to the media is that, while the current anti-avoidance legislation requires businesses to observe the `dominant purpose' test, the new rules are based on an `other than incidental purpose' test and are therefore considerably more far-reaching. As the ATA has outlined: The effect of this new rule will be to severely restrict opportunities for small companies to return capital to their shareholders without those distributions being taxed as unfrankable and non-rebateable dividends. . . It will make it as difficult as possible for small businesses to effect a return of capital without being taxed. I repeat: It will make it as difficult as possible for small businesses to effect a return of capital without being taxed. The government is right to move to protect the revenue from unlawful tax minimisation schemes but we are not talking about tax avoidance here, and the Treasurer knows it. We are talking about small business being hit by a double tax whammy if there is a delay in the distribution of retained earnings. The Australian Institute of Company Directors has noted:. . . in other countries where no par value shares have been allowed the relevant government has chosen to allow companies already established to maintain their par value structure. There is no evidence . . . that the retention of this form of choice has led to manipulation or the misuse of the alternative. Is the government suggesting that Australian businesses are exceptionally devious in comparison with foreign enterprises? Why is the Treasury so convinced that Australian companies will abuse having this choice when there is no anecdotal or intrinsic evidence to suggest that it has occurred elsewhere? When the Senate Economics Legislation Committee took submissions from industry late last year about the trust losses legislation, the overriding concern was that the impact of that legislation would be far more extensive than the government or the Australian Taxation Office had already indicated. The tax fraternity were united in their criticism that small business owners who were legitimately using the tax advantages offered by tax structures would be hit by measures supposedly designed to catch tax avoiders. (Time expired)	Australia	1,998
in reply—I thank those members who have contributed to this debate on the Company Law Review Bill 1997 . At the outset, I will go into three or four areas which I would like to make some brief comments about. This bill will be considered by the parliamentary Joint Statutory Committee on Corporations and Securities, so there will be an opportunity for more clarification at that stage. We hope that does not take too long because I think all of us would agree that we would like to see this legislation through the parliament. Nevertheless, it will be considered by the committee. There are four or five areas to which I would like to make some response, the first being disclosure of directors' remunerations. I think in this regard, the first point to make is that there is disclosure of those remunerations of over $100,000 in bands of $10,000, so investors and shareholders are able to get a fairly clear idea of the amount of remuneration which directors are obtaining. Of course, at the end of the day, at any AGM, any shareholder can get up and ask the question as to who is receiving this remuneration, and so forth. So sometimes you can bring in regulations to try to get details which really are not needed that can be catered for if shareholders of companies wish to avail themselves at the right time of the opportunities available to them. There is a time and a place for all things. Also in regard to the disclosure of directors' remunerations, in the legislation flexible disclosure obligations—through the accounting standards and industry best practice in corporate governance—are to be preferred, we believe, to the black-letter regulation through the Corporations Law. Also the accounting standards currently provide that the remuneration paid to directors of listed companies must be disclosed in the companies' annual financial statements. Lastly in this area, the Company Law Review Bill will amend the Corporations Law to specifically require the disclosure of the options granted to the directors and the company's five most highly remunerated officers. We believe that, in this regard, the legislation covers it adequately. The 28 days notice of meetings is an issue which we could debate till the cows come home. But in the end, it is really a matter of making a judgment. The Corporations Law currently obliges companies to give 14 days notice for an ordinary resolution and 21 days notice for a special resolution. The bill, of course, establishes a uniform period of 21 days for all resolutions. That sort of unifies it, and there is no confusion then between which one is applying, and so forth. Companies will be able to provide longer notice periods and announce their intention to do so. The greater use of communications technology, which the bill will facilitate, will also speed up the communications process. This will make it unnecessary to extend the statutory notice period. Whether companies give a longer notice period should be a matter for the market to determine. It is not something that should be addressed through prescriptive regulation. There is also a risk that longer notice periods will cause companies to not take up opportunities for which there is only a short window of opportunity. So, as I have said, we believe that 21 days is quite adequate for the notice of meetings. In regard to taxation consequences of shares and capital changes, the government has acknowledged that there will be taxation consequences flowing from the abolition by the bill of par value. The commencement of the Corporations Law changes is linked to the commencement of the taxation amendments, as the Treasurer (Mr Costello) has stated in his press release of 13 November 1997.Lastly, in regard to the disclosure of principals behind a company, it was suggested that it will be possible to register a new company without disclosing the principals behind it. However, section 117 of the bill will make it necessary to include in the application to register a new company both the name and the address of the members of the company when it is registered and the names of its first directors. So, many of those areas are covered. I would once again thank those members who have contributed to the legislation. I commend the bill to the House.	Australia	1,998
While the Treasurer (Mr Costello) continues to say that more extensive anti-avoidance measures are required to prevent tax minimisation, I just want to note that the reality is that the small business sector is going to be hit with double taxation by this bill. Perhaps one of the champions of the small business world from the government benches would care to go through that exercise and explain it to small businesses. The editor of the Taxpayer correctly points out that, under the existing law, companies are taxed on their profits. He also demonstrates that there is no legal requirement for companies to distribute retained profits—other than market forces or large companies, of course. The ATA has asserted that the changes proposed in this bill by the coalition will send a very clear message to all Australians setting up a corporate law structure. That message is: `There is no guarantee that you will be able to obtain a return of capital in a tax-free form, even where that capital is no longer necessary for the continued viability of the business.' The question I want to pose in this consideration in detail stage is: why would a government which continues to market itself as the saviour of small business persist with this measure, knowing that the small business sector will be severely affected by it? The ATA spells out its reading of things very clearly indeed. It suggests that it is simply a matter of the government yet again trying to bring forward the collection of revenue. If the ATA is correct in this claim, the coalition is showing itself to be no better than its predecessor when it comes to the perennial tax grab. If that is the case, no wonder the Australian Taxpayers' Association has gone on record as saying that, if this is any indication of the coalition's hyped tax reform package, then small business appears to be in for trying times. I would like some reassurance on this. I think the fact that the coalition has not announced its tax proposals will leave it open to be questioned along the lines that I have raised. In closing, I simply want to affirm my support for the general thrust of these reforms. The government has produced a series of measures which, as a part of the bigger CLERP program, will facilitate the decision making process and boost investor confidence. With the exception of the transactions affecting share capital, which deserve more thorough consideration on the part of the government, this bill is to be commended.	Australia	1,998
It is appropriate that we go back to the history of the charter of budget honesty. In reviewing the history of the charter of budget honesty, it was spelt out for the first time in his first headland speech by the then Leader of the Opposition. I note that, apart from the commitment to a charter of budget honesty in that headland speech, the other thing that was referred to was that the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) was going to lift the role of parliament. We can see what sad and sorry times the Prime Minister's undertaking that he would lift the role of parliament has come to. What a joke that turned out to be. The Speaker resigned just yesterday, and today the government was unable to even manage a quorum and the parliament closed down. What a shambles this parliament has been reduced to. The charter of budget honesty has fared little better. It too has turned out to be a joke. This is the second time this bill has come before the parliament. Indeed, it came before the parliament last year, and at that stage it was supported by the opposition, as it still is. We set out to improve it with a number of constructive amendments which were supported in the Senate. What did the government come back and do? It set the bill aside. It was not interested in a charter of budget honesty at all. Indeed, when the bill was first reintroduced into the parliament late last year, it refused to debate it. We wanted to bring it on for debate and it was not even prepared to debate it. The government was not interested in dealing with this bill at all, and the government is not interested again today in a charter of budget honesty. What it is interested in is the politics of this, rather than something which will genuinely make governments accountable. If the government had wanted to agree to it last year, the Treasurer (Mr Costello) could have had his own mid-year review bound by this bill. But he did not want that. The government did not want to have the parliament pass this bill and have it enacted into law. It ought to be remembered that, far from being some important groundbreaking reform, this legislation is optional. There is no penalty for non-compliance. It is not possible for any citizen to ensure that the government complies with this legislation because the bill itself contains a specific provision ensuring that the legislation is unenforceable. It is quite literally an optional charter of budget honesty. When the Senate voted to make the charter enforceable, the government members voted against that proposal. Like so many other matters, genuine fiscal transparency and accountability is clearly a non-core promise which is never going to be delivered by a coalition government. It is never going to be delivered by a Treasurer who is also refusing to be held accountable for his performance in combating tax avoidance by opposing an amendment which mandates disclosure of threats to the tax base. Once again, that was something put forward and agreed to by the Senate. The Treasurer knows he is going to fail that particular accountability test, so he is not prepared to agree to that amendment. He has also refused to accept the Senate's amendment which would prevent him, the Treasurer, personally participating in the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook report rather than that being a matter dealt with by the relevant bureaucrats. He is interested in politicising that process rather than having it as a matter of genuine budget honesty. Therefore, he wants to be involved in that process and will not support it being genuinely independent. Labor proposed amendments previously in the Senate. We will be proposing amendments again and they ought to be properly understood by this House. Labor voted last time to make the charter legally enforceable; the Howard government wants to make it optional. We sought to have governments publish estimates of the effect of budget measures on national savings, but that was rejected by the Howard government. We put forward a proposal to include a discussion of threats to the integrity of the tax base, but that was rejected. We sought to have the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook reports published within five days of the issue of writs for an election rather than the proposed 10 days. As it stands now, as it is put forward by the government, it is simply an election tactic available only to the government. In addition, we strenuously opposed the participation of ministers in the preparation of the fiscal outlook paper to be published during the election. We want those papers to be prepared by the Public Service for the public, for the media, for the opposition and for the caretaker government. It would be totally inappropriate for ministers to be involved in this process. I want to reaffirm Labor's support for a proper charter of budget honesty and hope that the government will see fit to join us in passing a decent version of it. The opposition finds it very disappointing indeed that the government has taken the course of action that it has on this legislation. As a brief recap, let us have a look at it. This is the second version of the bill introduced back in 1996. The first bill was passed unanimously in this House on 10 February of last year. It was supported by the opposition at all stages and duly passed on 28 October 1997. Not only did the opposition constructively support the passage of the Charter of Budget Honesty Bill 1996 [No. 2] but we sought to constructively strengthen and improve it. We wanted to give it some teeth. Due to the merits of the various amendments which we put forward, many of them were agreed to by the Senate—not a Senate controlled by Labor but a Senate with very broad representation across the political spectrum. These amendments were supported by all of the non-government senators because they unquestionably improve the legislation.	Australia	1,998
I thank the minister for his interjection. The government's outright opposition to 10 highly reasonable, highly sensible, long and carefully debated amendments agreed to by the Senate shows that the charter of budget honesty is not some brave and brilliant new contribution to integrity in government and an enhanced quality of democracy—as it is claimed to be by the government—but nothing more, nothing less than a straight-out political stunt. The government simply do not want to entrench a superior system of accountability with this legislation. They want to give the appearance of reform but they do not want to deliver the substance. They certainly do not want anything to operate even-handedly between the government and opposition of the day which, in so doing, would enhance the quality of democracy debate and accountability; otherwise they would be accepting our amendments. The other thing that the Treasurer does is to falsely claim that Labor is opposing this legislation. As I have pointed out, Labor has consistently voted for this legislation and will do so again. Indeed, we are trying to raise it from a stunt to something of substance and value. The clearest demonstration of these points was the government's rejection right at the outset of the Senate's proposal that the charter be legally binding. The way the bill is drafted at the moment, it is not enforceable through the courts. There are no penalties at all for non-compliance. The bill could quite readily create enforceable rights and duties, as indeed is the case in New Zealand where the Fiscal Responsibility Act 1994 is binding on the Crown. We voted in the Senate to make the charter enforceable, but the government has refused to accept that position. In so doing, the government itself has acknowledged that the whole charter is optional. The notion of an optional charter of budget honesty—while perhaps consistent with the optional approach to honesty that this government has displayed in its last couple of budgets—makes a farce of the government's rhetoric in this area. The second demonstration of our good faith in all of this—before we come to the actual amendments—was our proposal in the Senate that the budget documents ought to contain, amongst other things, an estimate of the effect of the budget measures on national savings. The Treasurer has repeatedly taken other occasions to tell the House—it ought to be noted that he is absent again from this debate, as he so often is when matters of this kind are debated in this place—that the overriding objective of budget policy is to increase the level of national savings. As we argued the last time this matter came before the House, surely against that background it is not unreasonable that the government be asked to attempt to quantify the effect of its budgets in achieving such a key objective. The government, however, succeeded in excluding from the legislation this key measure that we are proposing by recruiting Senator Margetts. I think she took the view that anything to do with saving transparency was a form of economic rationalism and therefore to be treated with the utmost suspicion as a result. But, whatever the reason, we lacked a majority in the Senate for this particular amendment. The key point has to be this: what was the government afraid of in having a provision of this kind put into the legislation? We were perfectly happy to have the information included in the budget about what the estimated effect on savings would be. Why was the government opposed to such a fundamental proposition? What is the Treasurer afraid of? Why shouldn't the public be able to know what the effects of the budget are on national savings? Why shouldn't the Treasurer then be held accountable to whatever targets are included? Unless the government has some answers to these questions, it really approaches this debate with no credibility at all. The opposition is not going to resile from supporting the amendments that were supported in the Senate. We will be moving them again in the consideration in detail stage of this debate. Therefore—and particularly as this bill has been described as a potential double dissolution trigger bill—we need to go through the amendments briefly to reacquaint the House with the detail. The first amendment goes to the principles of sound fiscal management, so-called, set out in part 3 of the bill. This amendment is fundamentally important in terms of the objectives of the government. We believe those things ought to be objectives of any government. We believe that fiscal policy should be directed to worthwhile community goals, not just accounting outcomes. Why do governments set fiscal objectives? They do so to ensure that broader objectives can be achieved. What we want to do with amendment (1) is add to the principles of sound fiscal management, as set out in clause 5 to schedule 1, three further paragraphs which I believe should be supported by every member of this House. The first two subparagraphs should be very familiar to many members because they are contained within the Reserve Bank legislation. These are some of the obligations which the bank has had to take into account in its role in relation to monetary policy. The amendment in question requires, accordingly, the government to have regard, firstly, to the achievement of full employment in Australia; secondly, to the overall economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia; and, thirdly, to the maintenance or improvement of the real value of wages and conditions and the welfare of workers. These principles add a humanising element to the principles of sound fiscal management rather than presenting fiscal management as wholly a matter of fixation on accounting bottom lines, which is the case with the present bill. Of course, it is appropriate that principles of fiscal management recognise, address and require commitment to these accounting criteria. We do not want to remove them. But it is also the case that they should recognise that the application of fiscal policy has a very real impact on the lives and welfare of people. For people's welfare to be enhanced and for their prosperity to increase, there has to be a focus on the achievement of full employment and there has to be a focus on the achievement of economic wellbeing. The pursuit of better employment outcomes should be a key priority of this government. It hardly needs to be pointed out on this occasion—nevertheless, I will do so—that that has not been the case and that the government's record in relation to employment has been very much poorer than Labor's. This is the biggest economic and social problem now confronting this country. We have not even stayed still on the jobs front. We have gone backwards since the Howard government came to office. There was the creation of an employment committee of cabinet to deal with this issue. That whole enterprise has been an utter and spectacular failure. What these amendments seek to do is simply compel the government to focus on the key issues of national welfare, as they are so obviously not doing at the moment, and to do so in a budgetary context, as they are obviously not doing at the moment. I personally regard it as unbelievable—and I think the community ought to regard it as unbelievable—that the government are not prepared to accept this amendment because to do so indicates that they simply do not support improved employment and national welfare outcomes and that they do not see that as any part of the government's budget or fiscal responsibility. The second amendment—which we would expect a decent government to embrace—goes to the accountability of the Treasurer. The integrity of the tax base is absolutely funda mental to the delivery of adequate public services. Taxes are obviously necessary to finance public services, and these are most fairly raised when everyone able to contribute does in fact contribute in a fair and honestly administered system. Ensuring the integrity of the tax base is therefore crucial to ensuring that all taxpayers are paying their fair share. Amendment (2) simply requires the Commissioner of Taxation and the Secretary to the Treasury to provide a report on any material threats to the integrity of the tax system, including the fiscal impact of any of these threats as a permanent and integral part of fiscal reporting. This is obviously an important proposal because it will allow the government—and especially the Treasurer—to be held accountable for the conduct of tax policy. There can be few duties of higher importance for the Treasurer than to maintain a fair tax system. We are concerned to ensure that these concerns, as they evolve in revenue authorities, are made public to enable scrutiny of the Treasurer's performance in his duty of protecting the public revenue. The Commissioner of Taxation can advise the Treasurer on matters that should be undertaken to maintain the tax base, but as things stand at the moment—and, if the government has its way, will remain—he has no power to force the Treasurer to act in the national interest to protect the tax base. The discretion is all with the Treasurer to either accept or reject the advice of the Taxation Office and the Treasury—all in comfortable secrecy. That secrecy, of course, is what the Treasurer relies upon to act against the advice of the tax office or of his own department. There has been no clearer demonstration of the Treasurer acting in this way than in relation to the family trusts tax rort, which the Treasurer has deliberately allowed to continue. On 13 May last year, budget night, the Treasurer clearly rejected official advice and changed the trust loss provisions to exclude family trusts. The continuation of an exemption for injections of income by non-beneficiaries in family trusts, to enable them in effect to traffic in trust losses and pay no income tax on income derived by them in completely separate circumstances from those relating to the trust itself, is one of the more extraordinary and indefensible tax avoidance loopholes to have been left open in recent times. There is no public policy justification for this. There has been none articulated in this place. It is manifestly against the advice of the Treasury and against the advice of the Taxation Office. We know this, not least because advice on this issue was very squarely given to the former Treasurer, Ralph Willis, in our government. There was no question of Labor allowing that exemption or loophole. This government has chosen to do so. We can only speculate as to the reasons for that: that it is of manifest benefit to high wealth individuals in the community and to up to 19 members of this government's frontbench who do have family trusts. What the opposition wants to do is to make this open and transparent. Where it is designed to improve the quality of public administration, in particular fiscal administration, in this country, it needs to be made open and transparent. The amendment the Senate proposed does not seek to alter the Treasurer's right to make tax policy on behalf of the government. What it does do is to seek to ensure that material threats to the tax system, not least those created by the actions of the Treasurer himself, are codified in a systematic way and on a public basis so as to enable the performance of the Treasurer in dealing with these revenue threats to be much more openly and readily evaluated than is the case at present. It is the case that future Treasurers will still be able to refuse to act on the advice of their revenue authorities, but they should not be able to hide their actions or lack of actions from the Australian people, nor the nature of the advice they have received, nor the fact that they are not complying with it. If it is serious about budget honesty, this is exactly the kind of thing the government ought to be prepared to put into this Charter of Budget Honesty Bill 1996 [No. 2] .As it is currently worded, clause 12 of schedule 1 includes only some references to the sorts of risks that may have a material effect on the fiscal outlook. There is a reference in very general terms only. What is not there—and this is the nub of the argument for this amendment—is an explicit reference to particular threats. In opposing this measure in the Senate, Senator Kemp made two particularly ludicrous claims which ought once again to be put on the public record. They were then repeated here in the House by Parliamentary Secretary Miles and mentioned briefly in the Treasurer's second reading speech reintroducing the bill back in December. The first silly claim was that the few pages that do now exist in the statement of risks in Budget Paper No. 1 actually deal with this issue. This is rubbish. What we envisage is that the proposed independent statement by the bureaucrats will not be in generalised language of the kind set out in that section of Budget Paper No. 1 but will take the form of a much more detailed statement about specific schemes and specific issues which will complement the broad information already on the record. Secondly, the government advances the ludicrous notion that publication of information about schemes or other threats to the tax base would encourage their use. The Taxation Office does not dream up theoretical schemes. The tax office and the Treasury detect taxpayer behaviour—often some years after it has become established practice, unhappily—and then advise the government of problems and possible solutions. It is simply wrong to suggest that by this means the tax office could advise the tax industry on ways to avoid tax. In practice, it is absolutely the other way around. The sequence of events works quite differently. If the proposition that is put forward in defence of the government's position here were to prevail, the tax office would, for example, never take any taxpayers to court on the basis that a loss would alert the taxpayers to possible schemes. Clearly, that is absurd and at odds with current practice. We know that the tax system and the threat to its integrity is under constant and sustained attack. In some instances, this may even be as a result of the government's own legislation directly opening up loopholes or deliberately leaving them open. We believe that risks to the integrity of the tax system are always going to exist—that is a recurring problem that every government has to confront—but we do believe, in that context, that one way of ensuring that those risks are properly dealt with is to ensure that the government can be held accountable for failure to act. That is the very point of this amendment. That is why we are going to insist on it. And that is why we are particularly disappointed—and I think the community is going to be disappointed—that the government has taken the path it has and is not prepared to support this amendment. The third amendment goes to inter-generational reporting. It changes the frequency of the proposed inter-generational fiscal reports from five years back to three years. This amendment was moved by the Democrats but was supported by us in the Senate. It ensures that there will in effect be such a report once during every normal term of parliament. The reporting framework of three years which is proposed here aligns with the framework for the other long-term fiscal report which is already presented to this parliament: the report by the government actuary into the long-term costs of the Commonwealth civilian and military superannuation funds. Those reports are prepared every three years. We consider that interval to be appropriate for updating reports to be released. We very much hope that the government reconsiders its position on that amendment. The available evidence is that it will not. Amendments (4) and (5) both relate to the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook report which the legislation proposes to require. Amendment (4) seeks to replace and improve the proposed provisions for a pre-election economic and fiscal outlook report published prior to an election. It suggests that within 10 days of the issue of writs for an election the responsible bureaucrats produce a report to inform the electorate of the economic and fiscal outlook as it is likely to be after the election. The amendment proposes that instead of waiting until an election is called—in the case of a parliament that looks likely to see out its full term—that report should be published in the normal way two years and nine months after the first day of sitting of a new parliament. If an election should be called prior to that time, we argue in the amendment that the report should be produced not within 10 days but within five. We move this amendment for the very simple reason that if a pre-election economic and fiscal report is to be published, for it to be genuinely useful and to genuinely contribute to public debate it needs to be available as soon as practicably possible. This system should not be set up in such a way as to enable such a report to be used as a political tactic by the government of the day simply in order to advance its own political agenda. Obviously the later such a report is released to the public the less opportunity the public has to consider each party's policies in the light of it. Amendment (5) concerns another important matter. The pre-election report that I have been discussing has to be prepared and certified by the secretaries to Treasury and Finance. That is a proper requirement and the opposition agrees with it. The reason for the provision is clear enough: to keep ministers from meddling in the preparation of the report. We support keeping ministers from interfering with the report, and we think it is such an important principle that it ought to be enshrined in the legislation. Therefore, we are proposing to add a new subclause (3) to clause 27 of schedule 1, which will read: Apart from providing information to the responsible Secretaries under subclause (1), the Minister must not participate in the preparation of a pre-election economic and fiscal outlook report. So, in plain, simple English, Labor believes that this legislation should specifically prohibit the interference of the minister in the preparation of the pre-election report. What is the government's position on this matter of probity and proper ministerial conduct? It says, `We are not interested in this.' They will use their numbers to defeat this amendment, thereby preserving the right of the Treasurer to politically interfere and doctor the pre-election document. If that is not the government's intention, why don't they get on board and support our amendment? Amendments (6) to (10) simply attempt to inject some balance into the proposed costing regime. This bill is completely outrageous in that it proposes that the opposition has to send copies of its policies and the assumptions under which they are costed to the Prime Minister prior to getting those policies costed. Then the Prime Minister has discretion about whether he refers the policies on to the bureaucracy or simply refuses to. This is a disgrace. This is being trumpeted out in the electorate as something which will keep governments honest. It is designed to make the position of oppositions absolutely impossible in that we—or, indeed, any opposition in future—should be prepared to hand over policies to the government of the day for costing when the government will be providing the opposition with no such courtesy. If the government is to have a costings regime set in legislation, that regime has got to be fair. Clearly the proposals in this bill are unfair and the playing field is not level. It is severely tilted against the opposition, whoever that happens to be. This bill is not about budget honesty; it is about political advantage. The costing regime is the worst aspect of this legislation, and we will continue to attempt to improve the equity of this proposals. Let me finish my remarks by stressing that, despite the total misrepresentation by the Treasurer and others in the government, Labor will vote for this bill, as we did in 1996 and in 1997. It is simply false to say that Labor opposes this legislation. We do not and never have done. The truth is that the bill will be significantly improved by the amendments proposed, and that is why the opposition will be moving them and supporting them. The audacity of the Treasurer to claim that this legislation represents meaningful reform in its current state is quite breathtaking. The bill is not enforceable; it is simply optional. No-one can seek to enforce the bill if it is not complied with. There are no penalties on the Treasurer or anyone else if the law is not complied with. It is a farce and should be understood as such. In the consideration in detail stage we will be moving, as we did before, to turn it into something of substance and of real value to the Australian electorate.	Australia	1,998
When I defend my seat at the next federal election, the people of Richmond will know exactly how well this government is performing economically. Admittedly, providing the Australian people with details of the nation's fiscal standing is certainly unlikely to embarrass this government, since our prudent economic management means we will be fighting the next poll in a budget surplus. That is the most common of courtesies: affording voters the opportunity to make a fully informed decision, and this certainly was not extended to the people of Richmond in 1996 when Keating was the Prime Minister. More importantly, it will not necessarily be given to them under a future Labor government. Let us look at the obstructions in the Senate. Labor's attempted emasculation in the Senate of the government's proposed charter of budget honesty shows the shadow Treasurer at his hypocritical worst. He now says, `We support the medium-term goal of restoring the budget to balance,' but it was he, as a key member of the government, whose only action in relation to the budget deficit was to deny its very existence; and the member for Wills (Mr Kelvin Thomson) will well remember that. In a media release dated 5 December 1997, this errand boy, the member for Wills, had the gall to claim `the Treasurer has no interest in reform of budgetary processes'. It was this Treasurer (Mr Costello) who actually initiated the reforms of the budgetary process, and it was Labor that blocked it. Earlier, the Democrats, then led by the ALP's leader in waiting, were not sure what their position on budget honesty was. On 1 October 1997, the curiously titled Australian Democrats spokesman for accountability said:. . . this Charter contains some very useful accountability measures which could conceivably ensure that the electorate is provided with better and more accurate information about Government policies and the true condition of the economy prior to the election. That was Cheryl Kernot. A rational statement, except for the fact that the Democrats had just torpedoed the Treasurer's bill. The Democrats leader had another fish to fry on 1 October 1997. This was the day Mrs Kernot informed her biographer that she was going to join the ALP, two weeks before she had told her staff and her colleagues. So, for the benefit of Labor and other minority parties with a short memory, here is a little reminder from February 1996. Of course, it is in relation to Labor's deficit. Before the election, we asked Labor what the state of the nation's books was. The Australian public had a right to know and it was a fair enough question to put to a government, we thought. They evaded it, they squirmed, they deceived, they brought up old figures which they knew were hopelessly out of date. Eventually, they told Australia that the budget was in surplus—in February 1996. In fact, there was a deficit of $10.5 billion. This means that the Labor government was spending over $1 million an hour more than it was collecting—over $1 million an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year, to rack up that deficit. Labor was being outrageously profligate with other people's money and, by contrast, they were being very economical with the truth. `Deficit? What deficit?' That was all you could hear from them. That is precisely why we need the charter of budget honesty. We need it so that no government in the future can ever again get away with Beazley's black hole. Let us look at the charter. The Liberal-National government is already demonstrating its commitment to providing Australians with better fiscal accountability and improving fiscal outcomes. We are already complying in full with the charter's requirements. Why then does the ALP—even the member for Wills (Mr Kelvin Thomson)—oppose the charter, which even the Australian welcomed as `a big step towards honest budgets and sound fiscal policy'? After all, the Courier-Mail, certainly not known for its love of conservative governments—	Australia	1,998
As the member for Maranoa would know, it described the charter as `fundamentally important for good politics and good policy into the future'. That is the Courier-Mail . It is the honesty part that Labor really objects to or does not understand. Because the coalition government already complies with the charter, the ALP has no interest in committing itself to honest budgetary reporting if it ever gains power again. That is unlikely to happen soon, or perhaps even for many decades to come. Labor has not won any election since the federal poll for the last two years. They could not even wrestle the left leaning Australian Capital Territory from the competent hands of Kate Carnell. Still, I suppose it is the duty of any opposition to prepare for government. Surely supporting a bill which really commits them not to tell budget fibs anymore is not such a big ask. The 10 amendments that the opposition has tried to move, along with other minority parties in the Senate, quite frankly would make the bill unworkable, and specifically the greedy amendments relating to the costings of unannounced election policies during a caretaker period would turn the Treasury into a free research centre for the parties. You would see public servants frantically costing a myriad of different policies which may or may not be used, depending on the results of the bureaucrats' investigations. Another quite irresponsible Labor-Democrat amendment which we rejected would require a report on threats to the taxation system and detailed countermeasures. While the intention of this amendment is quite innocuous, the outcome would be to provide tax planners with a recipe for tax avoidance. The other proposed amendments merely clutter the charter and make it more difficult to operate as transparently as designed. The fact is that this bill does not need any amendments from policy free Labor apparatchiks or the power starved Democrats. The bill is comprehensive in its nature and radical in its simplicity. We have already proved that it works by complying with its provisions even before it has been enacted. The charter of budget honesty addresses both fiscal policy formulation and fiscal reporting. Fiscal policy formulation would be enhanced with the establishment of a set of principles which are used to evaluate the government's fiscal policies. The principles are flexible enough to take into account short-term factors such as cyclical economic downturns while still focusing on longer-term issues such as the sustainability of government debt and national savings. The charter would enhance the public profile of the government's economic management—good or bad—to the government's shareholders, the Australian people. Yet still the ALP blocks it. Let us have a look at some fiscal reporting. It is the fiscal reporting aspect of the bill which really worries the Australian Labor Party. Fiscal reporting provisions will allow voters to measure the government's performance against their fiscal objectives. At budget time, the government will be required to report economic projections and forecasts both for the budget year and for the three-year period. The bill mandates a further set of reporting through the financial year in the midyear economic review. When the government released its first midyear economic review under the provisions of the charter in January 1997, many people welcomed the contents, as I did. The point is that the fact that the review was undertaken and released at all was all but universally welcomed. `A landmark document in the management of the Australian economy,' trumpeted the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a body better known for its mastery of understatement than for praise of any government. Terry McCrann in the Courier-Mail must have made the member for Holt (Mr Gareth Evans) choke on his croissants when he said: Peter Costello has made public the sort of budget details that his predecessor, Ralph Willis, did not want to know about . . . and most certainly did not want the voters to know about—budget figures. What budget figures? What budget? . . . The legacy of deficit is a damning and tragic indictment of the Keating-Beazley-Willis government's grossly irresponsible behaviour . . . It was quite irresponsible behaviour, and you know it. This leads us to the most important part of the bill—the one that Labor cannot bear to support and has not got the intestinal fortitude to reject openly—that is, the provisions that require the Treasurer and the Department of Finance and Administration to prepare pre-election reporting, providing an up-to-date assessment of the fiscal and economic outlook at the beginning of the campaign. The big problem that Labor has with this simple measure is that when the voters get too much information about the Labor governments, particularly as they did in the last election, they tend to vote for the National and Liberal candidates. For some time now, Australians have been doing just that in every state and territory except my home state of New South Wales. The current series of backflips that seem to indicate that things are not looking so promising for Mr Carr is another indictment. In conclusion, one can only speculate about what would happen if Labor had been compelled to release an accurate pre-election fiscal report at the last election, in 1996. I suspect that if Western Australians knew about Beazley's borrowing billions he would not be sitting in this House. Come to think of it, that would not have been such a bad outcome for the member for Holt, would it?	Australia	1,998
In my opening remarks in the debate on the original Charter of Budget Honesty Bill 1996 [No. 1] I noted that the legislation was especially important for the coalition, given the commitment of the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) to the electorate at the last election to improve standards of political behaviour. As part of that, it was the Prime Minister's stated intention to restore greater meaning and authority to the parliament in the public eye and to commence this process with a commitment to enhance economic honesty. My comments made some 13 months ago on the strengths and weaknesses of the original bill remain valid because this bill has been returned to the House by the Senate in exactly the same form in which it first left. I was broadly supportive of both the content and the intent of the initial legislation and I remain so. If anything, I have come to view the bill more favourably owing to the widespread support that it has received from the ensemble of business and industry leaders which appeared before the Joint Committee of Public Accounts in March last year when this bill was being considered, although it is a cause for concern that the JCPA prefaced its findings on the bill with the statement that it had to complete its review in an unreasonably tight time frame at the expense of an exhaustive consultation process. While some of those witnesses who appeared before the parliamentary committee suggested areas in the legislation that could be improved, each of them endorsed the general thrust of the bill. Further, representatives of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Society of Certified Practising Accountants, the Australian National Audit Office and the Australian Council of Auditors-General all commended the coalition on specific key features of the legislation. It is a curious thing that so many of our independent economic leaders were prepared to publicly support the charter of budget honesty but that neither the opposition nor the minor parties in the other chamber can see fit so to do. In report No. 351 from March 1997, the JCPA stated very clearly that it saw no reason why the Senate should further delay the passage of this bill. In the interests of improved disclosure of information and an enhanced democratic process, it suggested that those who opposed the original bill should reflect on the evidence provided to the JCPA in March 1997 and re-evaluate their positions. The bill is not immutable. As Mr David Hope, a representative of the Australian Society of Certified Practising Accountants, the ASCPA, suggested in his testimony before the JCPA:The charter should not be set in stone, and improvements should be made over time, in the light of experiences. Another contributor to the public hearing embraced the terms of the charter, describing them as not just a step in the right direction, but a fairly long run in the right direction. But by no means does that preclude future changes to the initial legislation. The JCPA came to a similar conclusion, noting that the charter has `the capacity, within the fixed principles and standards specified, to reflect changes in the demands of accountability, in information technology, and the needs and expectations of the electorate, well into the next century'. The parliament will have the opportunity to amend this bill, if it is deemed necessary, once it has been put into practice, building on its strengths and correcting any deficiencies. The first step, however, must be to expedite enactment. Critics of the terms of the charter of budget honesty note quite accurately that the rights and responsibilities set out in the bill, while desirable, are not legally enforceable. I remain disappointed with the absence of judicial enforceability of any part of this bill. However, I accept that the standards the coalition seeks to introduce will bring about greater discipline in the management of our economy. If a government is fiscally irresponsible, that will be shown to be the case following the publication of its financial reports. The Australian electorate can decide for itself how best to discipline such aberrant behaviour. Similarly, should this or any future government arrogantly ignore the requirement to produce regular detailed fiscal updates, as laid down in this legislation, it is reasonable to expect that both the media and the electorate will take it to task. The strength of the bill lies in the frequency of government reporting. As one witness before the JCPA noted, the combination of the pre-election report, the annual fiscal statement, the budget account, the post budget update and the intergenerational estimate will mean that `we are never more than three months away from a reasonably current view of Australia's economic outlook'.With the recent admission of Mr Ted Evans, the Treasury secretary, that it is in the nature of economic forecasts that they will always be wrong—and we have seen many examples during the life of this and previous parliaments to suggest that Mr Evans is spot on in this regard—the frequent updating of these forecasts will minimise the margin for error. That a government will find it more difficult to avoid public scrutiny of its recent past performance as well as its future fiscal intentions should bring the focus more sharply on delivery at a minimum of a balanced budget. The two proposed financial reports to have won the greatest support from the private sector are those that have not been released by past governments—that is, the intergenerational report and the pre-election fiscal update. The inclusion of these reports puts paid to the claim that the bill does nothing more than codify existing practice. If this bill is enacted, every Australian voter will have access to information about any underlying debt or surplus, levels of government debt and the state of national savings within 10 days of the issue of the writs for a general election. The opportunity currently afforded to political parties to curry favour with the electorate with unsustainable levels of election promising will be severely curtailed under this legislation. Governments may attempt to fudge their economic performance, and oppositions may opt to avoid clearly articulating their preferred fiscal program, but they would do so at the risk of being exposed to the broad Australian public. As Mr Claud Piccini, assistant director of economics with the Business Council of Australia, noted in his evidence to the JCPA:The whole idea of transparency in (fiscal) documents is that they are open to the public. Not only is there the responsibility on government and public servants to be honest about what their expectations are, but there is also an obligation on the commentators . . . to take governments to task. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has suggested that the publication of comprehensive fiscal information prior to an election will increase the pressure on government to act responsibly and that this will have a direct impact on improving the overall level of business confidence during an election campaign. In addition to the publication of material about the short- to medium-term fiscal strategies of federal governments, the Business Council of Australia, the BCA, indicated that it also sought to have information about the long-term impact of these strategies on the national economy made available to the general community. The proposed five-yearly report on the long-term and intergenerational consequences of existing fiscal policy certainly meets that expectation. As the ASCPA made clear to members of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts last year, the requirement on government to produce longer term economic action plans will bring them into greater alignment with the standards expected in the business sector. That is important for sustaining investor confidence in Australian markets, for providing greater stability to the economy and to enable business to determine the likely outcome on the economy of a change of government. For the intergenerational reports to be truly transparent, however, clarification is needed as to the content of those particular reports. It would have been naive to assume that the charter of budget honesty will oblige governments to behave with greater integrity. No amount of legislation can regulate for honesty. What the charter will do is to put the onus on the government of the day to provide the Australian people with a greater pool of data on which to judge the effectiveness of that government's public sector program. The Auditor-General has made that point clear in the public hearing into this bill when he noted that even if the Charter of Budget Honesty Bill 1996 does pass through the parliament: People can [still] query your competence and query the basis of the information on which you made the judgment. Importantly, the Auditor-General went on to say: But they cannot query your honesty in coming out and saying, `This is the judgment we made and this is the reason for the variation of the judgment.'I concur with the findings of the JCPA that reporting is not an end in itself but rather that it is merely another link in the accountability chain. But it is an important link. It is important because it seeks to provide a greater amount of information to the Australian community. Those who oppose this legislation for a second time should think very carefully about their opposition because a vote against this bill is a vote against a better informed public; it is a vote against accountability in government; and it is a vote against a more sustained level of business confidence and investment. As I said in February 1997, it is important that this legislation be supported in this and the other place. If the legislation creating the charter is enacted the second time round, it is incumbent on each of us to ensure that this and future governments uphold their commitment to publishing their fiscal targets and to make regular progress reports against those targets. I support the bill.	Australia	1,998
The Charter of Budget Honesty Bill 1996 (No. 2), which has been reintroduced into this House, will provide, no doubt, one of the triggers for a double dissolution election and needs to be looked at again because the government has refused a series of 10 amendments put together by the Australian Labor Party and other parties. Those amendments go to a number of areas which would have substantially improved the bill originally before the House. The Labor Party supported this bill in the first instance and introduced a series of amendments to it in the Senate. I understand that process will be undertaken again this time. I might start where I will finish and quote from the Department of the Parliamentary Library's Information and Research Services Digest No. 142 1997-98. It says: Arguably the legislation is in most respects unnecessary. What is to be achieved under the Bill can be achieved administratively for the life of the present Parliament, ie within existing executive discretions. Not even regulations are required to allow the government to provide the electorate with the sort of information that the Bill seeks to guarantee. Hence, it may be argued that the Bill, of itself, is a relatively poor indicator of the Government's capacity to govern and the workability of the Parliament. As a test of the Government's capacity to maintain parliamentary support or compliance, the defeat of the Charter of Budget Honesty Bill would not self-evidently present itself as `as a `failure to pass a legislative proposal vital to the execution of a major policy of the Ministry'.I note that here the Department of the Parliamentary Library notes that the last part of the quote—as a `failure to pass the legislative proposal vital to the execution of a major policy of the ministry'—comes from another context: from Sir Garfield Barwick's A Radical Tory .The point being made by the Parliamentary Library is a fairly fundamental one: that, if this piece of legislation is to again be rejected, if amendments made by the Australian Labor Party and the other parties in the Senate are to be refused by this government and if this bill were to be the only bill that the Prime Minister, the member for Bennelong (Mr Howard), put to the Governor-General to seek a double dissolution under section 57 of the Constitution, it would make an extraordinarily interesting test case of the discretion of the Governor-General in terms of whether or not he should grant a double dissolution. There are precedents where advice has been sought previously for other double dissolution proposals. The general notion that a Prime Minister simply advises the Governor-General that he wants to have a double dissolution election because a piece or pieces of legislation have not been passed and, therefore, that should happen, and the Governor-General has to accept that very advice, has come under question in the past. Indeed, the Parliamentary Library's paper underlines that fact by noting that the 1983 double dissolution sought by Prime Minister Fraser was subject to considerable discussion between Prime Minister Fraser and the then Governor-General, Sir Ninian Stephen. The question went to the workability of the parliament being a central factor and that that must be considered by the Governor-General in responding to a request for a dissolution. There have been double dissolutions granted on what we might think of as the fairly narrow grounds of insubstantial bills. In fact, the Parliamentary Library points to a most interesting piece of advice given in 1914. It is on page 12 of the Digest: Prior to the granting of the 1914 double dissolution the then Governor-General, with the approval of his Prime Minister, approached the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia on his powers under section 57. Griffith CJ advised that the Governor-General was an `independent arbiter' who should dissolve both Houses only where he is:and to quote Griffith C.J.:. . . personally satisfied, after independent consideration of the case, either that the proposed law as to which the houses have differed in opinion is one of such public importance that it should be referred to the electors of the Commonwealth for immediate decision by means of a complete renewal of both houses, or that there exists such a state of practical deadlock in legislation as can only be ended in that way. That is a most interesting piece of advice from the then Chief Justice. If this bill were to be the only one presented to the Governor-General—we expect that there may be more—then it could be argued quite sensibly and rationally that the Governor-General would be in a very strong position to refuse to grant a double dissolution because it would not be evidence of the unworkability of the parliament; it would not be evidence of a practical deadlock in legislation. In part, one could use the argument that I quoted initially from the Parliamentary Library—that, arguably, the legislation is in most respects unnecessary; it can be done administratively or by regulation. This underlines part of the great problem with this charter of budget honesty. It is essentially flummery and window dressing. It is essentially a political document which this government wishes to use for a number of political purposes which arise out of their actions prior to the last federal election and the manner in which they attempted to make an argument for more open government and a government that was more responsible to the parliament. In fact, Prime Minister Howard, then opposition leader, in his first headland speech talked about the future coalition government bringing in a charter of budget honesty with a view to rebuilding trust in government. Well, two years on you could ask some serious questions about how much trust has been built in government by this Prime Minister and this coalition government. You could have asked that question yesterday in a particularly pointed way given that the Speaker of this House resigned, for his own reasons and purposes—but we know that that goes to the manner in which he was treated by this Prime Minister and several members of this coalition front bench. Mr Howard argued at the time that he wanted to enhance the position of the Audi tor-General and the role of the parliament. But does this charter of budget honesty really seek to enhance the role of the parliament or is it designed for some other purpose? I think it is designed for some other purposes. For almost the first three weeks of the last federal election the question that dominated the media coverage was the budget. When Prime Minister Keating called the election on 29 January he was just over one month away from the member for Gellibrand (Mr Willis) bringing down a midyear review. When we came to government in 1983, budget reporting, as it had been over most of the period of this Commonwealth government, was almost negligible. Throughout most of the period 1975 until March 1983 the member for Bennelong was Treasurer—an ineffective Treasurer in the view of his Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser; ineffective and ineffectual in getting any major new legislative or administrative programs through the parliament because he could not win in that cabinet. The member for Bennelong, as Treasurer, knows full well that, when he was asked about the budget, about what the budget deficit might be and the fact that there were reports that the budget deficit could be substantial, he gave some estimates, some guesses, about what it might be. We had a figure of $4.6 billion; we had another figure of maybe $6 billion. We are not dealing with underlying structural budget deficits here; we are talking about real headline deficits. When we came to government it was discovered that the member for Bennelong knew, because he had been advised directly, that the budget deficit was $9.6 billion in 1983 terms. That is the full headline deficit. That equates to 1998 dollar terms of $25,000 million. This Prime Minister, the then Treasurer in 1983, knows that he was not honest, open, transparent and truthful in responding to questions about the budget deficit. He knows that he was directly advised by his department and instead of saying, `It is $9.6 billion,' he chose to pick a number out of the air for his own private and party political purposes. So it is this Prime Minister, as ineffective and ineffectual as he was as Treasurer, who is attempting to remake the past history of his time as Treasurer by bringing forward this charter of budget honesty. He is doing it to cover up his past, but he is also doing it for a number of other reasons. He knows full well that when they came to government the mid-year review announced by the member for Gellibrand dealt with the headline deficit and also dealt with the underlying structural deficit. But the brainwave of both he and the member for Higgins (Mr Costello) during the election campaign was a demand to know, right on the election, exactly what the figures were—not the ones of six weeks before but those at that current time. And they have blasted the entire continent of Australia with the notion that they will be up front, clear, open and responsible, and will report to the nation exactly what the state of the budget is. This is a government which will not say what their target is in terms of the unemployment rate that they should be seeking to find. This is a government that when the unemployment rate was 8.5 per cent—currently 8.2 per cent—would not say that it had a target to bring that unemployment rate down. This is a government that will not outline what its aims, objectives and targets are not only in direct economic policy but also in the social policy areas. This is a government that is not true, open and transparent but one that trumpets this piece of legislation which says it will be. This is a government which, in its first and second budgets, stepped away from the accountability and transparency of the budget papers and their presentation of information that had been the hallmark of the Hawke and Keating governments in 13 years of Labor. This is a government that stepped away from that because they have not wanted to tell either the media or the Australian people what the true nature of their measures has been. This is a government that would not outline fully what the costs of those measures would be to the Australian public and would not on budget night have the cuts that they were making to their programs outlined so everyone could see what they were doing. They hid them and they also hid the actual situation by entirely reversing the headline and underlying structural budget deficits, and they have consistently done that for two years. They are not being open. They are not being honest. What is so hard, so shocking and so unreasonable for this government about the amendments passed in the Senate? I will go to a couple of those because they are fairly important. If the amendments put by the Senate were so utterly unreasonable as to negate this legislation and to make it a possible cause of a double dissolution election, you might think they would be extremely weighty. You really have to ask yourself a question not about the budget accounting and the forecasts or the state of the budget that is intended to be put prior to an election but about what the political purpose of this is—not just about the window dressing they wish to put up, not just about the fairyfloss they wish to draw around their present state but about what they want to achieve in muzzling the parliament, muzzling the opposition and putting the opposition in a position where it is not capable at election time of keeping its policies and its costings to itself as an opposition. This is a government and a Prime Minister who want the Prime Minister and the executive government of this country to be in a position to determine absolutely what goes to the Australian electorate, and to be in a position to determine that the opposition will not have a fair and equal chance of putting its policies and its costings before the electorate. So, despite what they say they are doing, they are, in fact, doing the exact opposite. I go to amendments 6, 7, 8 and 9. The Senate proposed a widening of the proposed prime ministerial discretion to request the responsible departmental secretaries to prepare costings of government policies to include unannounced as well as announced policies and, secondly, it proposed allowing the Leader of the Opposition to request the responsible departmental secretaries to prepare costings of all opposition policies, including those not publicly announced. This is not earth-shattering stuff. This is reasonable, sensible and appropriate. What has been the government's response? The parliamentary paper lays out the government's response:. . . that this proposal has the potential to increase enormously the workload of the Departments in preparing costing reports as requests could be made to assess a myriad of policy alternatives and options. That is about it. Apart from that, the government says that process `would also place the Departments in the position of advising Oppositions on the development of policy'—and that that would be against the conventions of what has been done in the past. One would think that is not a very substantial response from this government. The Senate further proposed that `the Prime Minister must agree to a request from the Opposition Leader for Opposition policies to be costed.'Time and time again—in 1987, in 1990 and 1993—this coalition, when in opposition, demanded the right to have their policies costed by the federal bureaucracy. Here the response is that that right should not exist with an opposition leader despite the fact that they demanded it time and time again. The Senate also proposed that:. . . the Bill make it plain that nothing in clause 29 requires the Leader of the Opposition to disclose to the Prime Minister the details of an Opposition policy. This charter of budget honesty seeks to make it mandatory that the Leader of the Opposition, if he wants policies costed, give a copy of those policies to the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister would then be in a position to determine whether he would choose to refer those to the departments for costing. He would then be in a position, unexampled in the previous history of this Commonwealth, where he would have total knowledge of the policies that the opposition was putting up. The government's statements to date have not squarely addressed these two issues, other than to suggest that the proposals would lead to a lack of transparency in the costing process. This is a political document with political intent. The very minor steps they take to build on the work done by Labor in presenting much better budgetary figurings and much better budgetary reporting in the 13 years we were in office—those minor steps we have supported. But here we say that these amendments should go through. (Time expired)	Australia	1,998
I might recall to the House that in 1993, my first year in this place, the circumstances were that a quorum was called upon me midway through what I thought was a particularly impressive speech—and I am sure that the Deputy Speaker would have agreed with me. It was the time of a delicate caucus meeting with respect to the conduct of that 1993 budget. No-one came down to listen, and the House closed on me on that occasion. So I am very pleased that the government of today has come along to ensure I have the right to speak tonight. We are here to debate the Charter of Budget Honesty Bill. This bill has been considered by this House, also by the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and, on from that, the Senate. It has been returned with amendments, the amendments rejected, and it is now being considered yet again. I am the deputy chair of that particular parliamentary committee which considered this legislation some time ago, and I would like to make some comments tonight with respect to what occurred on that occasion. I would also make some general comments about the bill and its history and the issue of the charter of budget honesty. The Public Accounts Committee report No. 351, an advisory report on the Charter of Budget Honesty Bill 1996, has been referred to by a number of speakers in the debate, and there is one thing I would like to make clear. It has been said by some that witnesses in general were quite pleased to see this particular bill coming forward and saw it as being a major leap forward. I think that is overestimating things slightly. A number of witnesses who came to the committee were quite happy and saw it as a step forward. But I would like to quote the words—as I did on the last occasion I spoke on this issue—of Professor Mark Robinson. He made a submission to the inquiry and said: No legislation can compel fiscal responsibility . . . The most positive view of the Bill is that it is merely the latest in a long series of incremental improvements in fiscal reporting requirements. So, as far as it goes, it is a good thing. But it could go further. These things develop over time. The fact is that developments on this issue can occur over time, and should. But I think one thing has to be understood: those developments have been occurring predominantly over the last 13 years, prior to the election of this government, under the Hawke-Keating Labor governments. A range of changes occurred on the question of reporting during those times—a range of developments which saw an improvement in the circumstances of what information was provided to the public on the question of our fiscal position. I guess part of the reason for that goes back prior to the election of the Hawke government, some nearly 15 years ago almost to the day, when the now Prime Minister, John Howard, the member for Bennelong, was the Treasurer—and he was the Treasurer for some five to six years. He made a number of comments then on the circumstances he faced, comments which in the time since seem to have been forgotten by the other side of the House. I would like to take up a couple of those issues today just to set the context for what we are talking about here. At the time, on the question of estimates—and we are talking about estimates with a lot of this stuff—at a press conference on 21 February 1983 when he was Treasurer, he said: I can't put it more firmly than some estimates because the nature of calculating these things is such that you really don't know until much closer to the event precisely where revenue and expenditure are going to go . . .He continued: Let me point out that this time last year when the Government got its first look at the likely shape of the 1982/83 budget it appeared on the basis of calculations then that our deficit position would be a great deal better than what it ultimately turned out to be and the estimates of revenue which made certain assumptions about wages growth and certain assumptions about activity growth were much more buoyant. I genuinely believe that it's impossible to go hard on the size of next year's deficit . . .I think the then Treasurer was making a point about the question of estimations, the difficulty with accuracy of them and the fact that they often need to be changed. During that particular election which led to a change of government we had a situation where, as he has said since then, he was given three different figures from Treasury about the size of the deficit—$8 billion before the election campaign began, $9 billion the week before the election and $9.6 billion the day before the election. Yet these figures were not released until after the event. When questioned on this he later justified it by saying that his figure—some $6 billion—was a personal estimate which he was entitled to produce having been Treasurer for five years. One worries if the current incumbent is in the job for anything like that length of time. When we look at the changes in accountability over that time, we have seen a number of advances. During the time Labor was in government it produced a publication of three-year forward estimates of outlays and revenue—something the previous government, the Treasurer of which is the current Prime Minister, did not do. The former government also introduced a publication of annual tax expenditure statements—again, something the previous government was unable or unwilling to do. The Labor government also introduced a midyear review and a national fiscal outlook—again, things which Mr Howard as Treasurer for a number of years of this country in the late seventies, early eighties was unable or unwilling to do. The question now is something that he needs to answer himself. It seems that on the occasions he is in the House he tries to ignore it. The genesis of this particular legislation goes back to JCPA report 341—Financial reporting for the Commonwealth: towards greater transparency and accountability. Some members of the JCPAA, such as Senator Brian Gibson and the former chair, the member for Fairfax, Mr Somlyay, are worthy of congratulations for their work on this issue. It particularly came about with respect to examinations and consultations that occurred in New Zealand regarding the question of the operation of the system there and adjustments that have been made in recent years. There are criticisms of what has been proposed in terms of how far it goes. I will quote from Hansard from a speech by the member for Werriwa (Mr Latham). He quotes from the spring 1996 magazine Policy from the Centre for Independent Studies. The quote is from Ruth Richardson, who was the finance minister of the New Zealand government when the Fiscal Responsibility Act in New Zealand was being developed and implemented and who is regarded as somewhat of an expert in this field. She said: Similar criticisms apply to the proposed Australian Charter of Budget Honesty , when you compare it with New Zealand's Fiscal Responsibility Act which was enshrined in legislation in 1994. One needs to tie politicians' hands by ensuring transparent quality information about the fiscal position. Only quality disclosure and full knowledge about the long-term consequences of fiscal initiatives will discipline government and parliament. From what I have seen to date, I am not sure whether the Australian Charter will meet these requirements. We know what the characteristics of responsible fiscal responsibility are, yet the Charter shies away from such discipline. Parliament may well dilute clear, binding rules on reporting and auditing of the sort laid down in the New Zealand Fiscal Responsibility Act .I must admit that I am not a great admirer of many things fiscal that have originated in New Zealand, but I think we need to temper our enthusiasm for this bill and for this sort of legislation with the question of how it will operate in the cold hard light of day. The fact of the matter is that it is not quite that simple. Those opposite have made great play of the question of the black hole—which I think I said in speeches previously was a Disney movie some 20 years ago which I saw as a much younger man—and of the situation faced by this government when it ascended the treasury bench some two years ago. However—and I have to be cynical about this—every new government always seems to find major problems with the accounts that they receive and then endeavours to use that as the basis for reconfiguring their own commitments for the future—sometimes justifiably, sometimes not. Will this legislation really change that? I doubt it, but I do think it is a step forward. I think the changes that are being proposed are part of what needs to be done, but it can go further and it should go further. When we look at the amendments which were con sidered and supported by the Senate, we see some of the issues which ought to be embraced by this government and which can be embraced by this government. Let us not misunderstand the circumstances that we now face. The opposition is prepared to pass this bill. The opposition supports the concept and supports the guts of this bill. But there are amendments that can be made, should be made and ought to be made to improve the bill. As we see the incremental development of something such as a charter of budget honesty as part of our financial and fiscal framework which allows accountability on a general and a specific basis and on an ongoing basis, we have a situation where these changes are sensible. They are changes that I am sure many of those opposite would like to support but they feel—because of the constraints placed on them, I suspect, by the Treasurer—that they cannot. But the fact is, as earlier speakers have said, those amendments do make sense. They improve the environment and the circumstances which could operate around the question of a charter of budget honesty. For that reason, I would urge the government to seriously consider it. Turning to one of the amendments which relates to the question of signing off, and I will not go into the detail, the position of the Secretary to the Treasury around the question of signing off reports—not just the final report pre-election but the regular reports that are made of government on economic matters—is that there is no reason why this cannot be done. In effect, it is done now in many respects, but this amendment formalises it. That formalisation is an important part of the process because, as I think we all know, when we are talking about the question of accountability, we are in a situation where it is not only a matter of what people see as happening, what actually is happening, but also a matter of what people agree is seen to be happening. That may sound convoluted, but the fact is that sometimes appearance articulates the substance; and the substance in these circumstances is very important if we are talking about things being out in the open. When we look at the question of budget honesty, there will always be criticisms. I do not believe that this bill, when in operation, will stop those criticisms; I do not believe it will lead to a situation where they end. Hopefully, it will lead to a situation where we are arguing more around the edges than the basic points. When we talk about the question of estimations and forecasts, I want to quote from a comment made by the Secretary to the Treasury at the hearings of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts:. . . it is in the nature of forecasts that they will always be wrong and we have to do our best to minimise those errors. That is a situation we will all face into the future. I urge the government to reconsider its position on these amendments because I believe it can improve the bill. If the government is serious about this issue, then it can adjust its position to incorporate the amendments. This would lead to a situation where we again incrementally improve the whole financial accountability framework within the budgetary system of this country. I urge the government to do it speedily and not use this bill as an excuse to try to rush off to the people on other issues.	Australia	1,998
Let us not pull any punches in this debate tonight: the Charter of Budget Honesty Bill 1996 [No. 2] should be renamed the `charter of budget dishonesty bill', because this is one of the most massive exercises in political and economic deceit that this nation has ever seen. All members should reflect on one particular feature of this bill which we on this side of the House find quite interesting, and that is it is an optional piece of legislation. It is like one of those non-core promises that the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) happened to have made before the 1996 election. Now we have an optional piece of legislation—a piece of legislation that does not bind the government to any standards of fiscal responsibility. We question the very worth of the legislation. This worthless piece of legislation has been foisted upon the fiscal planners of this nation. I find it incredible that the government has failed to accept the reason able amendments that were made to the legislation after it was introduced to this chamber some time ago. If we believe in the democratic process, then surely we believe in a reasonable and rational debate around these particular questions and issues. When this particular legislation came into the House, we on this side moved certain amendments to improve this legislation. The bill then went to another place where many of those opposition amendments were accepted and others were added on. In a spirit of democratic process, I would have thought the government would have welcomed those amendments which were designed to improve this piece of legislation. But, alas, they did not. We need to put this piece of legislation in its correct historical and political context. In a speech that I made on 6 February 1997 when this legislation was before the House for the first time, I said that this legislation was `a crude attempt by the Prime Minister to exorcise a terrible ghost from his political past'. That is really all it is. We had the worst Treasurer in Australia's post-war history returning to the scene of the crime to try to make amends for the mess that he left the Australian economy in and the shambles of an economy that the Australian people and, indeed, the incoming Labor government had to deal with in 1983. In economic debates in this House, we will continue to remind the Australian people and those opposite that the Prime Minister who now leads them was one of the worst fiscal vandals that this country has ever seen. The depth of the gall of the Prime Minister, when he gets up in this place and levies a charge against the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Beazley) about budget deficits, astounds relative newcomers to this House. For goodness sake! The $25 billion man—that is what he is—gets up in this House and lectures us in the opposition about charters of budget honesty and tax reform. What an incredible proposition from a prime minister who deliberately deceived the Australian people in 1983. That is why we have this Charter of Budget Honesty Bill—it is a case of mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. For his sins, the Prime Minister now presents to the House a charter of budget honesty which he hopes will wash away his past political sins so that he can go to political heaven when P1 and P2 move against him in the near future and grab the Liberal leadership. He can at least go to political heaven knowing that he really did make an honest effort to make amends for the shambles of an economy that he left the Australian Labor Party in in 1983 and the political deceit that he foisted on the Australian people when he said, `I didn't really know what the deficit was; I thought maybe it was nine.' No it was not nine; we could not really get the figures out of him in 1983. Prime Minister, I understand how you have come to this place wanting to wash away the terrible sins of your past. The amendments that have been placed before the House are not very controversial at all. One of the most important of those amendments is to ensure that the Commissioner of Taxation and the Secretary to the Treasury provide a report on any material threats to the integrity of the tax system, including the fiscal impact of any of those threats, making it a permanent, integral part of the fiscal reporting framework of this nation. I would have thought that anybody remotely interested in budget honesty and setting up a realistic framework, firstly, would set up a framework that was legally binding and, secondly, would ensure that the integrity of the tax system, the integrity of the revenue base is protected at all times and correctly reported on at all times. But, no, the government continues this sham of introducing a Charter of Budget Honesty Bill to this place. I have a few suggestions for the Prime Minister because I think we have only gone an itsy-bitsy way in getting honesty back into the political and economic system in this country. I am proposing to the Prime Minister that, as well as putting up a charter of budget honesty, he puts up a charter of parliamentary and ministerial responsibility. I think that would be important. We know that the Minister for Industry, Science and Tourism (Mr Moore) has skated on thin ice as far as these issues are concerned in recent times and in the recent debate—he is the big fish that got away, that should have gone down with the Titanic but managed to stay. We say to the honourable industry minister, through you Mr Deputy Speaker, that you are a survivor and we love you for it. We really do, because you are a living witness to the decrepit decay of this particular government. I just happened to open the newspaper today and my heart beat fast because there was the list: the terrible seven or eight—what number are we up to now?—ministers of the Crown who have bitten the dust in what I would have to say is the most incompetent and rotten government that this country has seen in the postwar era. But it does not end there: we have a backbench that is deserting you. Your own members are going onto the crossbenches because they think there is no leadership in your party. Then, of course, you do the former Speaker in and none of you in the government ranks has the gumption to put your hand up and say, `I'll have it; it's a Liberal Party position.' That is no reflection on the current Speaker; we know that he is an eminent Australian and the one person in the coalition ranks with the skill and the knowledge of this House to make a fist of the job. But it does not say much for you lot, when you could not even put up one person from your own party to be the Speaker.	Australia	1,998
I will, Mr Speaker. Might I say that I was going to make another suggestion which really does go to the heart of this question of budget honesty. My suggestion to the Prime Minister is that, as well as introducing a charter of budget honesty and a charter of parliamentary and ministerial responsibility, he might also like to introduce a charter of electoral honesty. Because we had a plethora of promises made by the Prime Minister with that rather cute distinction that he now makes between core and non-core promises made to the Australian people which he later reneged on, on the basis that he was indulging himself yet again in another bout of fiscal responsibility. That was the reason the Prime Minister cutely segregated his promises into core promises and non-core promises. In the few months after he was elected, he was saying that he had a black hole to deal with as far as the fiscal state of this nation was concerned. I wonder what the Prime Minister would have done in 1983 as far as a fiscal black hole was concerned if he had faced the deficit that the Labor Party had to face when it came to power in 1983. He would still be zooming down the $25 billion black hole that he created. But, of course, what worries me is the fact that the Prime Minister gets up in this House and talks as he does. He is a real zealot on taxation reform and, of course, the Treasurer (Mr Costello) is as well. I find it quite extraordinary because we know the Prime Minister was a friend of the tax bludgers and the tax rorters.	Australia	1,998
I want to congratulate the Queensland Sheffield Shield side on their impressive win in the Mercantile Mutual Cup. At the same time, I want to reflect on a couple of players. Firstly, I want to mention Geoff Foley from my own electorate. He played a very important part in the one-day games and has done so in all of them. Secondly, I particularly want to reflect on Matthew Hayden. I do so because I have watched Matthew Hayden since he entered cricket in, I think, 1990-91, and his has been a very sad career. In my view, that career has occurred because in many respects he has never been given a fair go. My father was a very keen cricketer. I also played, but never to the level that he did or to the level of the Minister for Defence (Mr McLachlan), now at the table. When I first started watching cricket, I recall seeing in the 1960-61 famous series against the West Indies probably the greatest left hand batsman ever. That was Garfield Sobers. He was and remains the best left hand batsman I have ever seen, and probably the best all-rounder who has ever played the game of cricket. When I first saw Matthew Hayden playing cricket, he reminded me more than any other player of Garfield Sobers. When Hayden came in he was a dashing left hand batsman. He hit anything. Sometimes it would be barely short of a length or maybe on a good length, but he would hit it and hit it hard. His style was impressive to watch. He was the sort of cricketer who brought people to the game, and I have many followers of cricket in my electorate, particularly people in the Pine Rivers Cricket Club, who are very keen cricketers and have provided a nursery for many cricketers. But to see Matthew Hayden last weekend was a total transformation. He was moving across outside the off stump when he need not do so. Ultimately, he was out LBW for a very low score. Why has that happened? While I do not want to pose as an expert on cricket, I believe it is capable of being traced back to the fact that he was never given a fair go. In his first season for Queensland, he scored more than 1,000 runs. He scored century after century but, when an Australian side was picked, an unknown from Victoria called Wayne Phillips was made the opening batsman. Wayne Phillips played one or two tests and has never been seen or heard of again. Matthew Hayden, who was a great cricketer who should have been playing for Australia right from the beginning, had his confidence eroded from that time onwards. And cricket is about confidence: it is about knowing that you can do the job. Given the treatment that was meted out to him, I do not believe that he has ever been the same cricketer since then. What often happens in sport is that when somebody sees you in that situation they say, `You didn't make the team, but you should change your style. You shouldn't go for everything outside the off stump.' The man had made 1,300 or 1,400 runs in his first season of cricket, but somebody was saying to him, `Your style is a little bit different to that of other people.' But if you compared his style to that of the West Indian batsmen, who have a go at everything, whether it be short of a length, pitched up or on a good length, you would see that that was the sort of style he had. That style of cricket is also what brings Australians into cricket grounds and is the sort of cricket we love and delight in, coming from West Indians in particular. But it was that sort of style that caused somebody to grab hold of him and say, `That's really not good enough. You've got to tighten up a bit. Don't try to flick anything off your legs, you'll get caught'—all those sorts of things. Ultimately, I believe all of those things—his ability combined with a very biased selection process which favoured New South Wales and certainly favoured Mark Taylor, who was constantly picked ahead of Matthew Hayden, despite the fact that he was out of form constantly—have left an indelible mark on him. I hope he can come out of it. I think he is a great cricketer. He is a credit to the sport. He has never said a word or complained that he has never had a fair deal. I do not think he has had a fair deal, but I do not think he has ever complained. I think he is a credit and an ornament to the game. I hope he comes back bigger and better than ever next year, with his style back in shape. I really wish him well, and I wish the Queenslanders well in their quest for the Sheffield Shield.	Australia	1,998
Mr Speaker, congratulations on becoming Speaker of the House. With International Women's Day coming on this Sunday, it is timely that we put down some markers about the impact of the Howard government on Australia's women. Since the Howard government came to power in 1996, Australian women have found it harder to get jobs and wage increases and harder to pay for child care and health care for themselves and their families. They have also found it harder to pay for their own and their children's education and very much harder to pay for aged care. It is Australian women who have paid the ultimate price for the Howard government's deep cuts to health, education and community services. The message from the Howard government to Australian women has been clear: when it comes to balancing work and family responsibilities, you are on your own. You are on your own out there, because there is nothing this government is going to do to help you. Let us look at one of the most important things of all: what this government has failed to do in providing job opportunities for women. Over 300,000 women are currently unemployed, and over 86,000 of those have been unemployed for more than a year. Let us make a very important comparison. From November 1983 to August 1989, during the 1980s recovery, female employment expanded by 850,000 jobs. Women gained 55 per cent of the extra jobs created in that period. Now let us look at the relevant comparison to the current recovery, which of course started earlier in the 1990s. In the current recovery, female employment growth has stagnated, with only 20,000 extra jobs created, whereas in the 1980s recovery, in the comparable period, 215,000 jobs were created. So we are comparing 20,000 jobs created for women under the Howard government with 215,000 jobs under the Labor government. This is material from Jeff Borland from the Australian National University. It is an indictment of this government because it shows that, when it comes to ensuring that you can earn an income to make sure that your family budget is adequate to put food on the table, this government is going to do nothing about making sure that you get a job. What happens with child care is interrelated. Child-care costs under this government, as so many families know—and particularly women—have risen by approximately $20 a week—$20 a week to make up for the $820 million taken out of child care by this government. For many women, the response has been, `I have to reduce my hours.' Some of them have had to leave the work force altogether. Under the Howard government, child care is becoming a luxury. Many working women are having to face reducing their hours or leaving the work force, and what does it mean? They are having to use services that are by no means of the same level of quality that they were getting in decent day care services. What this government, particularly the Prime Minister (Mr Howard), is trying to do—as so many women say to me—is to send women home. They are not creating the jobs so that women can get out and earn an income to contribute to their families, and they are making child care so expensive that those women who have struggled to keep their jobs are being forced out of the work force because they cannot afford an increase in their child-care costs of $20 a week. This government must be condemned for what it has done to Australian women. We will have a lot more to say about this between now and Sunday, because the truth is certainly known by Australian women and we will be drawing all the details to their attention.	Australia	1,998
Thank you, Mr Speaker, and congratulations on this, your first day in the job. During my campaign prior to the March 1996 election, I promised a second EIS on the Badgerys Creek airport site. I promised that the EIS would have widespread public consultation, that it would be independently audited, that it would consider an airport of the maximum size that could possibly be built on that site and that it would contain a no-go option. It was clear to me by the end of 1995 that the 1986 EIS on an overflow airport at Badgerys Creek which the Labor Party had relied on was completely outdated. By 1993, Diane Beamer, the then Mayor of Penrith and now the member for Badgerys Creek, had successfully campaigned to have the airport at Badgerys Creek extended and to have the facilities expanded so that it could cater for international aircraft. By 1994 Laurie Brereton had said, `Sydney West Airport at Badgerys Creek will operate without a curfew, and that is absolutely non-negotiable.'My electorate of Lindsay was Labor heartland, and Labor felt that they could treat the residents of western Sydney like mushrooms. They thought they could not keep them informed, sneak in an overflow airport and have them all jumping up and down for joy because of the wonderful thing Labor was doing for them in representing them in this place. They made that 1986 EIS publicly available and said the results did not preclude an international, non-curfew airport at Badgerys Creek. They proceeded to criticise the Prime Minister (Mr Howard), and Bob Carr and Faye Lo Po' condemned Mr Howard in a motion in the state parliament for his actions in delaying the Sydney West Airport at Badgerys Creek and his decision to conduct a further EIS.The 1986 EIS and the subsequent actions by the Labor Party were a fraud. It was a classic example of Graham Richardson's `whatever it takes' philosophy of Labor politics. Surprise, surprise! A Liberal won Lindsay because Labor heartland got sick and tired of being taken for granted—not just with respect to the airport issue but with respect to our roads. The M4 is a complete joke and Bob Carr is doing absolutely nothing about catering for our needs. Then he comes in with the pokies tax and the land tax. Our hospital waiting lists have blown out. He has given us the cheap option on Warragamba Dam and he has increased tobacco and alcohol excises. He has been fiscally irresponsible in making the residents in my electorate continue to pay. We instituted a new EIS; we delivered for the people of western Sydney. We have made the EIS so that it looks at a proposal that is as big as an airport could possibly be. If Labor should ever sneak back into power—and I hope it never occurs—by telling a bunch of lies out in western Sydney, they would never get away with that sneaky, `Oh, it's just an overflow airport', as Anthony Albanese and Leo McLeay are always saying. It is going to be a very public consultation. I have ensured, with a survey that I conducted in my electorate—as far as Castlereagh, Cranebrook and Bligh Park—that they are aware of the impact of the airport. They are aware of what the EIS has to say about. They are aware of what the Independent Auditor has said about it. The Independent Auditor gave the following summary: The major deficiencies identified by the Auditor in the draft EIS are listed in the preceding chapters. Key deficiencies are in the areas of: project definition; interaction with Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport; the assessment of a do-nothing option and related environmental assessments of impacts both at Badgerys Creek and Sydney (Kingsford Smith); presentation and interpretation of noise information; air quality assessment; land use planning and related social community issues; assessment of surface waters; a visual assessment; economic evaluation and mitigation measures for construction and operation impacts. All of these have to be addressed in the final EIS, and still we have Labor trying to score cheap political points, demanding a decision before the complete EIS is carried out and the full information is available for inner and outer city residents, so that they know that an adequate decision has been made. I urge all my constituents to put in a submission by 30 March and to attend the 15 March rally in Jamison Park. Let us have a say, because we will not be the mushrooms of western Sydney any longer. (Time expired)	Australia	1,998
I rise tonight—and I apologise to my colleague the member for Lyons (Mr Adams) for interceding in his place—because of the exceptional circumstances which have arisen. You will recall, Mr Speaker, that in the Senate estimates Senator Hill gave an undertaking that by close of business today he would be tabling a range of documents particularly relating to decisions which he made where he overturned recommendations on priority orders coming to him from state advisory committees under the Natural Heritage Trust. Unfortunately, it now appears that those documents will not be available for tabling. They were not tabled today at close of business in the Senate. Senator Hill's office rang our Senate leader, Senator Faulkner, and indicated that they required further time for this material to be put in a form suitable for tabling, and we have accepted that. I make no suggestion that there is in any way a sense in which we have indicated that we will not permit that course to take place. But we do understand as a matter of fact, although it was not disclosed in that conversation, that Senator Hill's office has had the full materials available to him since at least noon today. We understand from information we have received that his office has been in crisis meetings all day, and that he is in the process of seeking to put the information in a form which is suitable for tabling and which will enable him to make a presentation statement when that material is put down. I believe that that material ought to have been made available to the opposition overnight so that we would also be in a position to have an analysis made of that material. We expected to be in that position. My staff and other staff were available to undertake that analysis of what we understand will be a substantial volume of materials so that by question time tomorrow the opposition would be in a position to examine and to test the minister in relation to these matters on which we have raised considerable concerns. We may not be in a position to do so, depending on the circumstances and timing of the tabling and our capacity to bring a forensic examination to that material in the time which will be available to us. This, I believe, is yet one more step in a process where the opposition has been sought to be tactically manoeuvred by Senator Hill in an attempt to reduce the impact of what increasingly is being shown to be a scandal of massive proportions. The material will be examined closely by us. We will, I am certain, be in a position to make some preliminary comment in relation to it by close of business tomorrow and we will be looking at it over the weekend. This is not going to go away. The hope that it can in some way be avoided by not providing the raw material to the opposition overnight to enable them to examine it, to have the same time for examination as the minister is requiring for himself, will not make this scandal go away. We have a situation now where the minister has been unable to meet the time lines of his previous undertaking. We are looking forward to that material coming forward. We are also looking forward to the minister making good on his undertaking to supply the full range of unsuccessful applications and a short descriptor of what those applications were for and in which electorates they were sought. Only when that full range of material is available will we be able to have a comprehensive examination of the claim that these determinations were made on merit. I think that will be sufficient for my comments tonight. I again say that there have been crisis meetings in the minister's office. No doubt the reason for those crisis meetings will become apparent tomorrow.	Australia	1,998
Tonight I rise to speak about the disgraceful actions of the shadow Attorney-General, Senator Nick Bolkus, relating to the deliberate leak of information from a confidential Federal Court document linked with Christopher Skase. I would like to address this issue in relation to Senator Bolkus, a man who has without doubt committed an act akin to treason against the Australian people. I believe that the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Kim Beazley, must call for the senator's resignation immediately. As the Minister for Justice, Senator Amanda Vanstone, announced yesterday, Senator Bolkus has been caught red-handed leaking this information in a media conference earlier this year. At the conference, Senator Bolkus, referring to a confidential Federal Court document relating to the case, said: I can't give this document out but maybe if I just read it out off the record. This is the proceedings in court. Mr Speaker, as you can see, this once again demonstrates exactly how many members of the Labor Party feel they can undermine the national interest for personal political purposes. Senator Bolkus is a shining example of this. Senator Vanstone announced on Monday of this week that the trustee of Mr Skase's bankrupt estate, Mr Max Donnelly, described the material published from the document as the most damaging of all information that had been released to the media. Here we have the federal government trying valiantly in a process to recover the debts of one of this country's most wanted men, while people like Senator Bolkus attempt to intervene for the benefit of Australia's most wanted man, Christopher Skase. This process will see Mr Skase finally brought to justice over this ongoing, outrageous and flagrant abuse of the Australian people and our justice system. Show me the logic in that, Senator Bolkus. The fact is, there is no logic whatsoever in his actions; it is just another example of his contempt for the Australian people, who have made it quite clear that Mr Skase must be brought to justice. Throughout the Skase chase, Senator Bolkus has continually denied any role in the leaking of this information. However, the latest evidence proves that he is willing to undermine the people of this country for his own political purposes. Mr Speaker, I am sure you will be interested to note that Senator Bolkus was most certainly part of a government which failed in its efforts to bring Skase to account during the Keating government's reign, when Mr Skase was allowed access to his passport which, in turn, saw him flee justice. This action by Senator Bolkus over the last two months strongly demonstrates the contempt, as I said earlier, he has for the Australian court processes. Once again, I call on Mr Beazley to demand that the senator resign. As Senator Vanstone said so correctly, Senator Nick Bolkus's actions prove that he is unfit to hold the position of Australia's alternative Attorney-General and Minister for Justice. Mr Speaker, I say to you once again: Senator Bolkus has committed an act akin to treason against the Australian people and must be sacked. I call upon the Leader of the Opposition to demonstrate some form of leadership and rid the other place of a senator whose actions prove he is unfit to hold such a high office in our land. Before I finish, I would just like to add that we should not forget that Bolkus recklessly endangered the extradition of `Dolly' Dunn. He was recklessly indifferent to the success of the Dunn extradition even though US authorities warned that public debate risked the extradition. In fact, our Attorney-General (Mr Williams) had to send a letter to Beazley re the behaviour of Bolkus and others, which is absolutely shameful and disgraceful, and typical of the Australian Labor Party today.	Australia	1,998
Mr Speaker, I congratulate you and wish you well in your new office of Speaker. The plan to privatise the CES was outlined in the ministerial statement Reforming Employment Assistance which was released with the 1996-97 budget. The government took public consultation on the process and released the results in December 1996. In the end, the government launched its new job network to replace the CES late last month and announced successful tenderers for the services previously provided by the CES.The evolution of the job network has seen some changes, not least of which was a change in the minister responsible. I am greatly confident in the abilities of the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (Dr Kemp)—he is one of the best ministers in the cabinet. I believe that he is sincere in the approach he has taken to privatise the services involved in helping the unemployed find work. However, I am less confident in the processes being undertaken as a consequence. One of Minister Kemp's press releases said that there is a total of 306 organisations that have been contracted: 153 are private, 134 are community and 19 are government organisations. My colleagues the member for Lowe (Mr Zammit) and the member for Calare (Mr Andren) in the last couple of days have raised in the House their concerns about the process for awarding contracts. I am sure that there are members of the coalition who have private concerns, but I very much doubt that we will get to hear of them publicly other than those comments made by Senator Eggleston, which he had to withdraw about five hours later on being informed of the actual fact of the matter. Today at question time, the member for Prospect (Mrs Crosio) raised an issue of a winner of a tender to provide services allegedly having no staff, no equipment, no premises and, in her words, presumably no track record of delivering these services. This person is alleged to have won the contract ahead of existing service delivery organisations with good track records. If this is true, it is a worry. Unemployment is a very serious problem for hundreds of thousands of people who do not deserve to be punished further by sloppy contracting, if this is the case. If it is true, it will also show the government may not be able to rise above the experience under the Labor Party. I recollect that it was the current Prime Minister (Mr Howard) who, in 1987, was so scathing of the Labor government's decision to grant contracts for coastal surveillance of northern Australia to a company which did not even have aircraft at the time. In my electorate I have begun to hear from many people who are concerned at the way some contracts have been allocated. I have no doubt that some very good work will be done by the successful organisations. I do not want to reflect on the organisations that have been successful, because I know they have, in all of the cases, very strong pedigrees. My concern is about the perception and the process involved in the tendering. I know that this policy of privatisation is a significant break with the past, but most people coming to me knew and accepted that, and prepared for it. They were keen to be part of it and expected that, based on their high levels of performance, they would be part of the change. They were looking forward to the challenge. I have been approached by representatives of organisations that were established in the community and working with success rates in excess of 85 per cent. They had tendered for contracts at a reasonable rate and have been overlooked. One might argue that their prices were too high, but they have advised me that they have ascertained that their tendered price was lower than that of the organisations which gained the contract. They were advised that they were not competitive. Since the criteria was not just price, I can only assume that the government contract managers must have decided that they were less able to provide the services than the successful tenderer. I am on the record in this place for my defence of the new enterprise incentive scheme. I fought against Labor's plans to abolish it when they were in government, and I lobbied against Minister Vanstone's attempt to stop funding it. It has been one of the most spectacularly successful employment programs in operation in recent times. The NEIS program has been unique in that not only do the participants create their own jobs through the creation and establishment of their own small businesses but these businesses end up as employers as well. Eight new and additional jobs were created for every 10 NEIS businesses established. This saved the Commonwealth $65.8 million in unemployment benefits in 1996-97 alone. I want to touch very briefly on a letter from the chairman of the North West Metropolitan Business Centre in Moore to Minister Kemp, which has just been sent to him, reflecting on the decisions of the administration of NEIS. It states: The decision to award the administration of the NEIS scheme on what can only be seen as a cost basis can do nothing but backfire . . . Without the income generated by the NEIS scheme, many business support facilities such as ourselves, the Business Enterprise Centre and others, will be forced to downsize, and in some cases close altogether. This will result in a lack of assistance to business which in turn will increased the failure rate of businesses and, of course, simply increase the queues at Centrelink. These comments are worrying to me. They are not being made by someone who is driven by a profit motive. The North West Metropolitan Business Centre have provided free community services for eight years and have done it very well. They are not part of the unemployment problem; they are part of the solution and should be listened to by the government.	Australia	1,998
The following notices were given: Mr Bradford to move: That this Parliament: (1) congratulates the Australian Cancer Society and the National Heart Foundation for their `Call to action on tobacco' and supports the endeavours of these organisations in their efforts to cut tobacco use particularly among children; and (2) calls upon the Government to give urgent consideration to the recommendations contained in the `Call to action', viz.: (a) the development of a comprehensive smoking prevention strategy to reduce under-age smoking; (b) improved funding for education and counselling; (c) reform of the excise duty on tobacco; (d) development of a State-based national licensing system for tobacco retailers; (e) the establishment of an appropriate legislative framework to regulate nicotine and tobacco products; and (f) ensuring that Australian tobacco companies are prevented from continuing to engage in misleading and deceptive conduct in relation to the health effect of smoking, the addictive qualities of nicotine and marketing practices that influence young people to take up smoking. Mr Williams to present a bill for an act relating to the making, registration, Parlia mentary scrutiny and periodic repeal of legislative instruments, and for related purposes. Mr Williams to present a bill for an act to amend the Privacy Act 1988, and for related purposes. Mr Ruddock to present a bill for an act to amend the Social Security Act 1991, and for related purposes. Mr Warwick Smith to present a bill for an act to amend the Aged Care Act 1997 and other acts, and for related purposes. Mr Miles to present a bill for an act to make consequential amendments relating to Commonwealth places.	Australia	1,998
I would like to say at the outset that Labor will be supporting this legislation, the Insurance Laws Amendment Bill 1997 . I commend the government for bringing it to the parliament for debate. Labor will always be supportive of legislation which significantly improves the protection of consumers, and the insurance industry is one in which investors certainly do need government protection. The recent unfortunate events in Townsville and in Katherine are two cases in point, where confusion as to what type of damage was caused by what type of natural disaster has led to some insurance companies trying to avoid having to pay out on what I would consider to be legitimate claims. When in government, Labor had a sound record of regulating the insurance industry in a way which aimed to strike a balance, ensuring effective protection for consumers but not overly burdening the industry with cumbersome red tape. We established a complaints tribunal in relation to insurance companies, where consumers who are dissatisfied with an insurance company's performance—or failure to pay out a claim—could seek relief in the first instance without having to go to the courts. An accessible, effective and low cost complaints resolution mechanism is an important component of ensuring that all insurance consumers, regardless of their wealth or their standing in the community, get equal treatment from insurance companies. This bill should go further towards improving the protections that consumers have against insurance companies trying to slip out of insurance contracts and their appropriate obligations on technical grounds. The Insurance Laws Amendment Bill 1997 , the bill before us, consists of technical amendments to three separate acts: the Insurance Act 1973, the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 and the Insurance (Agents and Brokers) Act 1984, relating to the regulation of Lloyd's of London and including various technical changes to the supervision of insurance activities to improve consumer protection. I want to deal with each of those three items separately. Firstly, I will deal with Lloyd's of London. Due to its unique structure, there are special regulatory provisions concerning Lloyd's of London insurance business in Australia. Currently the key protections for Lloyd's Australian policy holders are, firstly, the requirement to lodge a bank covenant with the Treasurer, based on the value of premiums received and, secondly, a statutory capital adequacy deposit to the Commonwealth of some $500,000 which may be used by the Commonwealth to cover any outstanding Lloyd's liabilities should the need arise. The proposed amendments are intended to more closely align the regulation of Lloyd's with the rest of the insurance industry and will replace the bank covenant with a series of trust funds approved by the Insurance and Superannuation Commission with deposits based on Lloyd's potential liabilities, rather than the often inadequate premiums measure currently used. They will increase the capital adequacy arrangement from $500,000 to $2 million and will improve the ISC's powers to obtain additional information, carry out an investigation, give directions and require actuarial assessments, which will bring the supervision of Lloyd's more closely in line with regulation of other insurance companies in Australia. I should note that there is an excellent discussion of some of the background to this issue in the Parliamentary Library bills digest service. I would just make a couple of observations about the background to this which come directly from that digest service, to which I am indebted. Lloyd's is a major international insurance market based and operated in London. It is a society of individuals known as `Names', and corporate members, who form syndicates to accept insurance risks. The names are, in fact, sole traders and the syndicates are run by professionals, called managing agents. These agents, in turn, employ insurance specialists, called underwriters, who deal directly with brokers. The underwriter negotiates with the broker on the acceptance of the risk and the level of premium to be paid. Lloyd's plays a major role in the global reinsurance market and is an important participant in the Australian insurance industry. Lloyd's business is to ensure a wide range of global insurance risks, and it is best known for marine and aviation cover. However there are syndicates within the market that cover home contents and motor insurance. As many people will be aware, Lloyd's underwriters incurred large property and liability losses in the late 1980s and early 1990s, estimated at over £8 billion. These losses threatened the operation of Lloyd's market, and this crisis was averted by a restructuring of its business and the raising of additional finance from companies. The restructuring involved the separation of the losses of 1992 and earlier into a new company called Equitas Limited. In the words of the Insurance and Superannuation Commission which monitors the operation of Lloyd's in Australia this restructuring will provide Lloyd's with a clean platform from which to plan and manage future business. In Australia, the Lloyd's underwriters are subject to the Insurance Act, part VII of which governs the authorisation and conduct of business of Lloyd's underwriters. So we get the derivation of regulation of Lloyd's business from there. We have here a proposal to replace the bank covenant with a series of trust funds which are to be funded on behalf of underwriters from syndicate funds held by Lloyd's intermediaries, or reinsurers. One would expect that the identity of these intermediaries will change over time, and it may well be the case that not all the intermediaries, at any given time, will have signed the trust deed governing the terms, the conditions and the liabilities of the trust funds. What that means, as the government's explanatory memorandum points out, is that there may be some legal risk that an intermediary who has not signed the trust deed but who has contributed to the trust may not be bound by the trust deed in the event of a claim made against it. The proposed section 71 of the bill attempts to limit this legal risk through the concept of `presumption of regularity'. That states that any money transferred into a trust is taken to be held on trust in accordance with the trust deed, regardless of the intention or authority of the intermediary. In other words, if you put your money in a trust fund, you accept the risk and you cannot weasel out if a claim is made against your investment. There have been some doubts expressed about whether the presumption of regularity concept could overcome some legal irregularities which could arise out of these syndicate funding arrangements which may be sourced from the United Kingdom, which is, of course, Lloyd's home base. This anomaly has the potential to create a risk for Lloyd's Australian policyholders, who may not have the jurisdiction to claim on moneys which are held in trusts but sourced from the United Kingdom. However, the bill does contain measures which allow the Insurance and Superannuation Commissioner to monitor the appropriateness of the trust funds which are underwriting Lloyd's Australian policyholder liabilities and to request an actuarial assessment of those trust funds. If the commissioner was to take such action, that would send a clear message to Lloyd's policyholders that there may be a threat to their capacity to claim against their insurance policy. In addition, the commissioner has the power, with the authority of the Treasurer, to direct Lloyd's underwriters not to renew or issue any new policies. While the powers of the commissioner may not be the best way to ensure protection for Lloyd's insurance policyholders, we believe, on balance, that this bill does represent an improvement to investor protection for Lloyd's Australian policyholders and we will be supporting these parts of the bill. In concluding my comments on this aspect of the bill, I note that the United Kingdom government, the Blair government, has announced plans to give powers to its super-regulatory authority, the Financial Services Authority, to supervise Lloyd's of London which are designed to allow a greater independence to Lloyd's regulation. In fact, if you go back historically, Lloyd's was the subject of self-regulation. But there was an inquiry by the Treasury and Civil Service Committee of the House of Commons which looked into the adequacy of self-regulation at Lloyd's in 1995 and which did express some concerns that the regulatory failures of the past not recur and proposed that legislation be introduced to transfer to an independent body responsibility for the regulation of Lloyd's. Indeed, the Financial Services Authority is now to end that 300-year-old tradition of self-regulation of Lloyd's and is to oversee these areas and will have the capacity to deal with disciplinary and solvency measures at the market. We have a situation where, while the ISC in Australia is not Australia's super-regulator, allowing Lloyd's to be regulated by the Insurance Act and the ISC already creates some independence in Australia. But with the intention on the part of the government to create Australia's own super-regulators, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the Australian Corporations and Financial Services Commission, perhaps this is something that the government may wish also to consider. I turn now to the issue of consumer amendments—amendments designed to increase protection for consumers in the general insurance industry. Under the duty of disclosure laws in the Insurance Contracts Act 1984, insurers can ask the insured what we might describe as non-specific questions in seeking information to assess the insurance risk. They ask questions like: `Is there anything that we ought to be aware of which might influence our assessment of the risk,' or, `Tell us anything else that we ought to know.'As the insured cannot be reasonably expected to know what specific information the insurer needs to adequately and accurately assess the insurance risk, it is difficult, if not impossible, for them to provide all the relevant information. You are being asked to know what is in the minds of the insurers as to what they might consider relevant in assessing what type of risk a particular policy holds. It is our view that a person seeking insurance cannot possibly know all of the information which an insurance company may need to determine an insurance risk. It seems to us to be much more prudent and much more transparent to ask the insurance provider itself to ask specific questions rather than open-ended questions when seeking information from the consumer. Indeed, under the current arrangements, some insurers have avoided paying out insurance claims by stating that the insured did not disclose adequate information in response to the insurer's questions. I think that is not acceptable. It is simply being used as a kind of catch-all, get-out clause in circumstances where the claim ought to be paid. It results in an environment where consumers may not have confidence in the industry but, indeed, have little option but to take out insurance anyway and accept a risk that the insurance provider may seek to wriggle out of a claim on a technicality. I think that the amendments in this bill go some way, or should go some way, towards changing that situation by requiring the insurer to ask specific questions relating to the insurance risk rather than general questions. For example, if the insurer wants to use the fact that someone had a drink-driving conviction 15 years ago, they ought to have a question on the form which asks, `Have you had any drink-driving convictions?' It should be something that seeks specific information rather than just some general catch-all question. I note that this ought to be shifting the onus of disclosure from the consumer to the insurer, which is where it should belong. I note comments in today's Age newspaper from the Insurance Council of Australia that they worked with the government in developing the new provisions. The opposition welcomes their support for tightening this aspect of the industry. Finally, Mr Deputy Speaker, Labor is also supportive of the more technical aspects of the bill. These relate to the streamlining of the accounts and statements lodgment process, the removal of technical difficulties and interpretations and increasing insurance protection for the owners of non-commercial marine leisure craft. I do not have one of those myself, but I am sure that the owners of those craft will welcome the moving of the regulation of insurance contracts for those craft from the Marine Insurance Act 1909 to the more consumer friendly Insurance Contracts Act 1984.	Australia	1,998
It is indeed. Our only concern with this aspect of the bill was whether the Insurance and Superannuation Commission was still collecting the right amount and the right information from insurance companies in order to continue that role as the prudential watchdog of the industry. However, in a briefing to opposition staff, the ISC has reassured us that it will still collect the information that it needs in order to fulfil that role. I want to offer the opposition's support for this bill and, indeed, I congratulate the government and the industry. We do not have too many opportunities to congratulate the government on legislation, but I think this is one where they are entitled to congratulations for the way in which they have moved to improve consumer protection. Labor will always support measures which improve the stability and efficiency of the insurance market in Australia and, in particular, changes to the duty of disclosure requirements which will further protect consumers from attempts by insurers to wriggle out of claims on the grounds of failure to disclose relevant information. This will help to avoid, although not completely remedy, those recent situations which I referred to in Townsville and Katherine where some insurers may refuse to pay claims based on an unfair use of the current duty of disclosure provisions. On that issue, and in the light of the recent terrible damage done to those two towns and to other towns in the past, it is high time that there was a review of the issue of what constitutes storm damage and what constitutes flood damage. The people in places such as Townsville, Katherine, Coffs Harbour and a range of other cities and towns in Australia are entitled to some clarity and some explanation as to why they believe they are insured yet their insurance companies take a different view. I would like to raise that issue with the government and stress that the opposition would support a review. The opposition hopes too that the insurance industry would also be supportive of a review, given the public concern which this issue has generated.	Australia	1,998
The opposition supports the Insurance Laws Amendment Bill 1997 now before the House. I do not intend to traverse the ground already covered so eloquently by the honourable member for Wills (Mr Kelvin Thomson). The measures in this bill in our view will improve the efficiency of the insurance market in Australia and we support this legislation on that basis. I will confine my remarks to the duty of disclosure requirements in this bill which we hope will further protect insurance consumers. There have been some notable experiences recently which I have encountered in my capacity as shadow spokesperson on northern Australia which I hope will be attended to by improvements proposed in this legislation. I had the experience of visiting Townsville soon after the extensive flood damage to that particular town, and also Cairns. I also visited Katherine in the wake of the disastrous flood there. There were many issues raised with me during my visits but one very important issue related to the capacity of the insurance consumers to access some respite under the policies that they held. Many of the consumers, already battling to recover after the disastrous floods and the impact that they had on their personal lives and businesses, were having great difficulty due to the uncertainty that arose from their attempts to access their insurance policies. In the main, the insurance industry has been forthcoming and prompt in settling many of the claims that have been made by residents of Townsville and Cairns and Katherine under the policies they hold. However, it was brought to my attention in the course of my discussions with local government officials, business people and individuals who had been affected by the flood damage, what they considered to be undue delays and procrastination by certain companies in the industry, and haggling over issues such as what constitutes flood damage and what constitutes storm damage. Indeed, in some instances insurers were refusing to pay some claims based on the unfair use of the duty of disclosure provisions in this particular act. I am sure honourable members whose electorates have been affected by those floods will certainly name the companies involved on the floor of this chamber. However, when people are recovering from the devastation of flood, one thing that they need is certainty about their future. Their past has been damaged, their future does not look bright, so they look to accessing their insurance claims quickly to get back on their feet and get back into the ring of life, if I can put it that way. They want to get their businesses started, they want to get their houses repaired and their furniture replaced. They want to get on with the business of living and reconstructing their towns and their communities. But when these sorts of insurance issues constantly niggle at these communities, it does affect their morale in that very, very important post-damage period. This was particularly true of my experience in Katherine where the flood was extraordinary. The flood in Katherine had a devastating impact on the public infrastructure, on many businesses and on many individuals. While the spotlight is on these communities I guess those businesses and individuals are in there punching to reconstruct their lives. But there comes a time when the cameras go, when the government officials go, and when the politicians go that the hard reality confronts these people in business and these individuals of how they are to reconstruct their lives. What upsets them more than anything is when they feel they have a just claim, under a policy that they thought covered them for some of these contingencies, and then find themselves thrust into a situation of eternally haggling with the industry to get access to claims under the policy. I am very pleased that this duty of disclosure matter is being addressed in the context of this legislation. It is something that I strongly support. In my concluding remarks on this piece of legislation, I pay tribute to the communities of Townsville and Cairns, and Katherine in the Northern Territory in the wake of these disastrous floods. It is not an easy job to reconstruct a whole town in the wake of a disastrous flood of the kind that occurred in Katherine but I met there an extraordinary commitment on the part of the community to get their town up and running. That would have been detected by anybody who visited Katherine in the wake of the floods, and that particular sentiment would not have been lost on people in the insurance industry or, indeed, people in the banking industry. I say to people in those industries that we acknowledge your efforts in coming to grips with the complexities of the claims that are upon your businesses in the wake of these flood but we also ask you, in the national interests and in the regional interests, to take the long view on these sorts of issues because, in future, those particular customers will be buying your product and seeking to insure in a variety of ways through you. I was particularly pleased with the response of local government and the leadership shown by the Mayor of Townsville, the Mayor of Cairns and the Mayor of Katherine in the reconstruction effort. I was very impressed with many of the business people I talked to. They showed an extraordinary commitment to getting their businesses up and running again.	Australia	1,998
The opposition will be supporting these two pieces of legislation. I had the great honour, during my time as Minister for Communications and the Arts, to help fund and launch the national relay service, in no small measure due to the support I had of the then Minister for Human Services and Health, Dr Carmen Lawrence, the member for Fremantle. She was a very strong and determined advocate for the national relay service. Some people might ask, `What is the national relay service?' The national relay service is something that is essential for Australians who are deaf or have hearing or speech disabilities. Many people who are deaf have taken the trouble to purchase telephone typewriters—TTY machines. These allow them to basically type a message into one TTY, which is then connected by ordinary telephone link to another person with a hearing disability or person who has no disability but has a TTY. They are able to communicate with each other using the TTY and an ordinary telephone line connection. The difficulty comes when someone who does have a disability wishes to communicate with a person who does not have a TTY machine. The national relay service is the intermediary that can make sure that messages can be passed to and from people who are deaf or have speech or hearing disabilities. For example, if a family relation or someone doing business with a deaf person wants to get a message to a deaf person who has a TTY, they ring the national relay service. The national relay service have access to TTYs. They send the message to the person who has the disability. Alternatively, if the person with the disability wants to communicate with someone who does not have a TTY machine, they use their TTY to send a message to the national relay service who make sure that the message gets to the person or organisation for which it was intended. It is not a cheap service. When it was first launched in April 1995, we provided $26 million for that contract. I think it was a three-year contract and one that was very good value for the Australian community because it made sure that a number of Australians with disabilities were given an equal opportunity to participate in our society. The basic change that is taking place through this legislation is twofold. First of all, not wanting to pay for this service after 1 July, the government is making the carriers, and therefore all of us as taxpayers, pay for the service through the universal service levy. That is something which means all of us will pay a fraction of a percent on top of our current telephone bills. Given the total revenue of telecommunications these days, no Australian will notice the difference and it does ensure that there is a guaranteed funding stream for the national relay service for many years to come. Secondly, at the moment the universal service obligations can only be provided by carriers. Currently the national relay service is provided by an organisation called Australian Communication Exchange, which resulted from the merger of Deaflink Incorporated and Deaflink Resources Australia, who before 1995 provided services to people in the deaf community. They, of course, are not a telephone company. If we are to use the universal service levy to pay for this service, then we have to allow organisations other than telecommunications carriers to provide universal service obligations. That makes sense and is why the opposition supports those particular clauses of the legislation. I understand the current contract will expire on 30 June 1998 and that then raises questions about what process the government will be going through either to renew the contract with the existing organisation or to go to tender and allow other organisations to bid for the supply of the national relay service in future years. I might acknowledge the presence of the minister representing the Minister for Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts in the House, the Minister for Family Services (Mr Warwick Smith), and perhaps he might be able to give us some assurance, first of all, that there is to be a tender process. Secondly, if there is a tender process I am sure that everyone involved, even the current contractor, would want to make sure that that was a fair and open process. But, if the current provider of the service is unsuccessful in the tender, we would want to have some reassurance that there will not be any inconvenience during the transition from the current contractor to any future contractor. I am sure most of the deaf community, most of the people who are using the current service would be hopeful that the current contractor might continue. I do not know what the government's plans are there but I am sure that they would be very keen to make sure that there is no inconvenience for people with disabilities as a result of any decision the government takes with the awarding of the new contract. Could I just very briefly touch on two other issues that affect Australians that are deaf or have hearing disabilities? First of all, concerning access to TTY telephones in public areas: in the past, Telstra provided several dozen TTY telephones in public places. They look like ordinary public telephones but you put in a special code and a little keyboard pops out. People who are deaf or have hearing or speech disabilities can then use a public telephone TTY to send a message. In my own electorate, the deaf community asked that Telstra have one installed at the Central Coast Leagues Club which is very close to the local railway station. They felt that they would feel safer if that public TTY was inside a club rather than out on a public street where they were concerned someone might sneak up on them without them being aware that someone might have ill intent. That has worked very well. My concern is that I am not quite sure how speedily Telstra is rolling out these public TTYs and, if not today, I would be more than relaxed if the minister could undertake to provide me a note advising how many of these public TTYs Telstra has installed in each of the last five years and if there are any plans for future roll-outs by Telstra of public TTYs. I think they are still unfortunately only a rare commodity and we should be, I think, expecting our telephone companies—especially Telstra, as the 600-pound gorilla in the Australian telecommunications market—to meet that social obligation to make sure that we do year by year build up the network of TTY public telephones. The last thing I want to touch on involves access. You could say it is connected to this legislation because of the convergence between television and telephony and computing. We now have in Australia subtitling for the main evening news bulletins on ABC and SBS because of a government funding decision that was announced during the previous government. I think it is time that the three commercial networks looked at whether they had a social obligation to also provide subtitling for the commercial television news bulletins. It is more common than we realise in other countries these days. I admit it would not be cheap for the television networks, given that they have different news bulletins in each of the states. They would have to have a different subtitler working in each of the capital cities to make sure that was provided. But I think that, given the substantial profits that the commercial television stations are earning these days and given the very hefty broadcasting fees that commercial television networks are providing to the government, there should be some scope there for the government and/or the commercial television networks to fund a subtitling service for the commercial television news bulletins. I know we have come a long way in the past three or four years. In the old days, all that people with hearing disabilities had access to was the ABC late night news bulletin, which was completely unsatisfactory for deaf people. For them to get only four or five stories running for five minutes on ABC television was quite discriminatory. While we have come some way on public television, there is still a way to go on commercial broadcasting. That is something which I think is important. That is not to deny the fact that commercial television has made quite an effort in making sure that there is subtitling available for drama programs, especially for a lot of imported as well as Australian drama, and that is to be welcomed. As important as drama is, Mr Deputy Speaker Quick, I am sure that you could understand that, if you did not have access to commercial television news and the only news you could watch was on ABC television, you would feel that you had been cheated of something that you were entitled to. Knowing, of course, that the ABC provides a very unbiased and very balanced news service, you would probably feel that you were very well informed, but I am sure you would on the odd occasion also appreciate the ability to switch across to one of the commercial television networks to see and read the subtitles for what is happening there. I will leave my comments at that. The opposition is very happy to support this legislation and would welcome any undertaking from the government or from the minister to provide us, perhaps at some time in the future, with something on the other issues I have raised.	Australia	1,998
I thought that, before I made a further contribution to the debate, I would raise a couple of points. I state at the outset that I certainly support the Telecommunications Amendment Bill (No. 2) 1997 , as obviously do the government members. In relation to a couple of the points made by the member for Dobell (Mr Lee), there certainly seems to be, from what I have seen, a growing expanse of subtitling services being provided by commercial operators. Certainly, in some of the discussions that I have had with commercial television stations and their peak body, one of the things they look at among the prospects of services provided under a digital television regime is to extend their already quite solid contribution towards providing titling services. I certainly join with the member for Dobell in wishing to see that occur. I am sure both sides of the House would join in putting pressure on commercial television stations nevertheless to expand to all Australians the already extensive community service obligation that they meet. Really, when it is all said and done, the bill before us today is a result of the changing regime that we have in this country in telecommunications. It is forever changing and forever expanding as a result of new carriers and new examples of emerging technology. Bills are going to continue to be introduced into this place, and I imagine they would be supported by the opposition simply to ensure that consumers, average Australians, have access to a guaranteed level of quality of service, regardless of which carrier they might happen to use. The bill before us is certainly about ensuring that there is access for all, or certainly for most, Australians to the services that are provided by the national relay service. It is a very important and valuable service that is being provided to those who are speech- or hearing-impaired or perhaps profoundly deaf. As far as the total cost from this point on is concerned, there is a tender process to come. The government has stated very clearly that we want to ensure a continuation of the service under any contractual obligations or arrangements that are reached. We imagine that funding arrangements will be similar to those that are currently in place. I guess the amendments before us today will ensure that text-to-voice and voice-to-text human translations will be available and will continue to be available. The service provided by the national relay service has been very important to a lot of people. The points about Telstra and its role as the 600-pound gorilla of telecommunications—	Australia	1,998
Sometimes 900 pounds. The points about its role in telecommunications in Australia are also important. But I guess it is a matter, as all these things are, of ensuring that if a service is provided it is going to be used; and choosing community points to have these TTY machines certainly makes very good sense to me. When it is all said and done, the passing of this bill will ensure that the national relay service is in fact on a sound footing and will certainly ensure that it is consistent with the competitive structure of the new telecommunications industry. This vital service will ensure that those who are deaf or have hearing or speech impairments have full access to the telephone system and all the benefits that it brings. It is important that the funding for this important service is secure for the future. This bill is certainly all about achieving that particular result. A number of loopholes discovered in the Telecommunications Act 1997 will be filled by this bill. There was the concept of `nominated carrier', which was intended as a way to enable someone who owns telephone lines—but who does not want to be a carrier for the purposes of the act—to actually nominate someone to act as the carrier in relation to those particular lines. On the current wording of the act, that particular nominated carrier, and this terminology, do not necessarily meet the obligations imposed on a carrier under the act. So there is a subversion of the intention of the act. This bill will certainly correct that particular problem. It will ensure that the act can continue to do its effective job of delivering pro-competitive and very important reforms in telecommunications and, of course, ensuring that there is a consistent service standard. These two bills before us today also ensure that it is the carriers who pay the levy to run the NRS. Whilst the previous speaker suggested that that in fact will mean a minuscule impact on the average telephone bill, when it is all said and done, it is only right that the telecommunications carriers, rather than those in this country who are profoundly deaf or speech impaired, meet an overall obligation to fund an important service. We have certainly taken a good look at the Telecommunications Act that was introduced and passed in this place last year and we have been prepared to say, `Well, look, there are a couple of aspects to that bill that haven't quite hit the mark.' Quite frankly, I think it is the mark of a very good government that it is prepared to recognise that. The package of bills that we are amending today—or certainly part of what we are amending today—was a huge package of bills. To find the need to make an alteration in it in every evolving technology-based industry, such as telecommunications, proves that it is much better to acknowledge the fact that things might not be as good as we had hoped, than to pretend that it is and bluster your way through and, as a result, find that average Australians are suffering from the lack of a result. This is a government that is all about results. It is actually getting outcomes from the system, not just simply having the system perpetually move on ad nauseam, ad infinitum, without any real results coming out of it. I think it is interesting to reflect upon the changes that have been suggested—minor changes—to the Telecommunications Act of last year by comparison to some of the failures that the previous government left us in the area of telecommunications. The member for Dobell, as the minister for communications in the Keating government, signed the document that locked us into a position on digital telephones, for instance, in rural and regional Australia. The people of those areas would really like the government to walk away from that contract. I think the few opposition members from rural and regional Australia—perhaps you, Mr Deputy Speaker, are the token Labor representative—and certainly those on the government side will back me up completely. After all, they represent rural and regional Australia. People in that area are particularly upset about this enforced regime of throwing the analogs out and having a digital telephone thrust into their hands because of a contract which the previous government signed away and signed us into. The will of the people is not going to be met unless this government is prepared to pay that sort of contract out, which is, I think, from all views, obviously a very ugly prospect. I submit that locking the policy makers of today into a position determined a few years ago is something that this government is not prepared to do. We realise that telecommunications is a technology-based industry, ever evolving and ever changing and that therefore it is worthwhile constantly checking the realities of contemporary wants and needs. This bill certainly fits that pattern as well. One last thing I want to acknowledge is the role of Telstra. Telstra also actually do a very good job for those with other disabilities, particularly those who are blind, or certainly sight impaired in some form or another. Mrs Davidson of Robertson, in my electorate, recently contacted me over some of the concerns she had in trying to access through the normal directory assistance service an address of a friend of hers. She is fairly heavily sight impaired but still able to see large text. Telstra, on the 013 number, were not all that cooperative, so I made a number of inquiries. It is just worth noting here in the House that there is an 1800 number, 811707, which allows people who are sight impaired to register themselves with Telstra to have provided a range of services which you and I, Mr Deputy Speaker, take for granted, that is, access to people's addresses through the Telstra telephone database. I congratulate Telstra for that particular service that they provide to everyday Australians, but I submit that, in view of the fact that Mrs Davidson was not well aware of it and had to contact my office, perhaps Telstra might need to advertise that service. Obviously, Telstra should also talk very proudly about its role with the TTY service, a service which under this bill will continue with certainty for funding and certainty for the quality of the service that it has provided under the national relay service. I commend the bill to the House.	Australia	1,998
I wanted to make some comments on the Telecommunications Amendment Bill (No. 2) 1997 , which enables the government to provide a service for people with a hearing impairment or disability. I commend the government for their actions on that. One of the things that it does highlight is the strength of the telecommunications industry in Australia and also in my own electorate of Bendigo. I want to quote to the chamber some comments from Rosemary Mullaly, the Telstra corporate affairs manager for Victoria and Tasmania. I have been having some briefings and discussions with her on the strength of Telstra in regional Victoria and the ability of it to provide the sorts of services that are provided under this piece of legislation. Rosemary Mullaly commented to me recently that it has been a matter of public record for some three years now—which takes us back to the previous government's time—that Telstra is reducing staff numbers nationally. To put that into proper perspective, one has to say that there has been quite an amount of outsourcing by Telstra into the private sector, some of which has flowed on to firms in the Bendigo electorate. We now have four private sector telecommunications consultancy service firms in my electorate. There is one firm operating in the area of telephone answering and call diversion equipment. There is one firm operating in the area of telephone answering and message services and there are seven firms operating in the field of telephone systems and equipment. Of course they are all principally staffed by people who have perhaps gained their early skills under Telstra or under other telecommunications firms who have chosen to set up their own telecommunications business. There are a further three firms operating in the area of telephones and accessories; and there are another three firms operating in the area of telephone systems, installation and maintenance. The city of greater Bendigo has embarked on a very vigorous program of attracting call centres to the city. There are six call centres currently operating, and they are desirous of including more call centres in Bendigo because of the very high presence of Telstra in the Bendigo region. I want to comment on the staffing situation there. No staff are being arbitrarily dismissed, and standards of service in regional Victoria are not being negatively affected. In fact, Telstra service standards in regional Victoria are not declining. To the contrary, the change to staffing arrangements that is being talked about is aimed at improving service delivery by ensuring that the best trained staff are located where they are most needed. I took the opportunity to have a briefing by Telstra about their commitment to the electorate of Bendigo to enable them to provide the sorts of services that this bill is able to provide to people with disabilities. Telstra have a substantial presence in the Bendigo region, which includes exchanges, operator assisted services, network design and construction, and the Telstra Friends, who do an excellent job. I am sure the former spokesman for the telecommunications industry and the Telecommunications Ombudsman would understand how the Friends of Telstra operate. Recently we had Clean Up Australia Day. The Friends of Telstra were once again very active in that, and I commend them for it. We also have part of the Iterra satellite system in Bendigo, and the T-Shop. In all, some 500 people are employed in Bendigo by Telstra—more than in Geelong, Ballarat and all other Victorian regional centres. In addition, there are 400 people employed by Telstra in central Victoria to provide the services which are available. Customers are the main source of revenue for Telstra, who are doing everything possible to provide the best level of service and the best product possible to customers. That includes the regional customers. The confidence of the Australian people in the recent Telstra float was never more evident; they had confidence in the organisation and in the value—	Australia	1,998
I will declare my interest. I am more than happy to do that. I am pleased to see that there were two members on the other side of the House who had the wisdom and the foresight to invest in what has been one of the most successful floats in Australia's history. It attracted a lot of new investors, people investing for the first time in Telstra, which I believe has an outstanding future in Australia. I did encourage all of the employees of Telstra, prior to the 1996 election, to take a share in the industry in which they were working. I am delighted to say that 92 per cent of a total work force of Telstra took up the opportunity to invest in their own enterprise. I think that was a magnificent achievement. That money is being put to very good use in the Natural Heritage Trust. I look forward to receiving more money from the Natural Heritage Trust to fix up some of the environmental problems in my electorate, which is part of the Murray-Darling catchment basin. I want to talk about the economic growth of telecommunications as compared with the overall economy. During 1996-97 the telecommunications area grew by over 14 per cent, when the economy overall grew by only four per cent. So one can see the rapid growth that telecommunications is experiencing, enabling provision of the sorts of services that are involved in this piece of legislation. Under the Telstra mode of operations program up to the year 2000, Telstra plan to spend $200 million to upgrade technology in rural Victoria. I have agitated for many years to have the same services available to rural Victorians as are available to all other residents of Australia, including those in the metropolitan area. We are now seeing a great change in the upgrading of the equipment and the services that are provided to rural Victoria and rural Australia. Telstra are also modernising 700 telephone exchanges. An amount of $20 million will go into the Bendigo region to upgrade the exchanges and other services so that all of the very latest services which are available under Telstra's banner are available to the public, who will thus be provided with facilities to communicate with anyone in the world. The future mode of operation and programming in the electorate of Bendigo includes the exchange network being upgraded to the latest digital technology and provision of ISDN services, giving access to the latest digital products and services, including fast access to the Internet. Telstra is also investing in the Bendigo district and employs local people. I have gone into that in terms of numbers: over 500 people are employed in Bendigo itself, and 400 others in central Victoria. The other thing that I would like to touch on is the REACH video network closure. Telstra's video network was originally constructed in the 1960s for use by the television industry on a stand-by basis, and access was given on the basis that it would be denied if the spare capacity was required as a backup. In some areas, the REACH network is used for less than half an hour a year. With an increase in customer demand for telephone, fax and data transmissions, we need this under-utilised network capacity to fulfil these demands. One REACH video point requires the same capacity as 44,000 calls. The minister might choose to make some comment about that because I understand that the industry has come to an arrangement whereby the REACH facility will continue for some time. I am delighted to hear that because it means that rural and regional television operators will be able to continue operating for a period of time, so there is an adjustment period. The minister might have the opportunity to make some comment on that. The other thing that I would like to talk about is the global network operations centre and the decision to locate the new global network operations centre in Melbourne. That is going to add in excess of $66 million to the Victorian economy and I want to say that the centralisation of the global network operations centre will have absolutely no effect on jobs in the Bendigo electorate. In Victoria, the sites employing 286 staff are metropolitan based, with the exception of a small number in Ballarat. I mentioned to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, the Telstra Friends activity, and how they are an integral part of the communications industry. I keep in reasonably close contact with them and I want to say that they are committed to supporting the local communities in which they work, and improving the Telstra image in the community. They have a substantial presence in Bendigo, especially in comparison with other Victorian regional areas. In Bendigo—the minister would be interested to hear this—262 people are members of the Telstra's Friends. In Geelong, by comparison, there are 96, in Ballarat 88, and in Shepparton 46. So there is a level of high community commitment by the employees of Telstra in that area. Telstra, in fact, wants to continue working with the people of Bendigo to minimise any changes that might result in a reduction of jobs in Bendigo, or anywhere else for that matter. I have already indicated that there is an upside to it with the transfer of resources and outsourcing of part of the telecommunications industry to the private sector. In fact, there has been an increase in the number of jobs involved in the telecommunications area. Finally, I would support the Telecommunications Amendment Bill (No. 2) 1997 which provides a service for people with a hearing impairment or disability.	Australia	1,998
in reply—It is my task to sum up the debate. In doing so I thank honourable members for their contributions. The amendment bill is in two parts, as members would know, because of the constitutional requirements of section 57, in that the NRS Levy Imposition Bill 1997 is required to be dealt with separately because it is a taxation matter. I am pleased that the government have been supported in these matters by the opposition. We certainly welcome that. The amendments primarily relate to the funding of the national relay service, the NRS. That, as members would know, is a service to provide people that are deaf or have a hearing or speech impairment with access to a standard telephone service on terms and circumstances that are comparable to those under which other Australians have access to standard telephone services. It is obviously a sentiment that all in the parliament and in the broader community would accept as a necessary matter. The member for Dobell (Mr Lee), some would say an eminent former communications minister, who has some knowledge in these areas, expressed strong support for the process. Indeed, I can indicate that in a former position I held, as ombudsman, I had some dealings with him during that period in the earlier development of TTY services and I know his personal commitment to the delivery of these services to people that need them. He raised the issue of the expiration of the current contract on 30 June 1998. I am informed that the tender process will obviously be a normal process, that expressions of interest have already been called and also that that was done internationally and not just in Australia. It is a contract that is worth somewhere in the vicinity of $10 million to $12 million a year to provide these services. A decision will be made about that by my colleague the Minister for Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts, Senator Alston, in April this year. The member for Dobell also mentioned the issue with regard to TTY public phones offered by Telstra. That is part of Telstra's overall universal service obligation plan. I can indicate that I have first-hand knowledge of Telstra's commitment to disability issues, right across its employment practices and also in its services to the community, and I know that they will be continuing with their commitment to roll out the TTY services. He mentioned a specific instance in his own electorate and I am sure that he would have contacts within Telstra to take that matter forward if he wished to do so. The final matter that the member for Dobell raised related to the captioning and subtitling on the ABC and SBS, and whether or not that should be extended to commercial television networks. That has been an ongoing matter of discussion with the commercial television networks. The Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations would be the appropriate body to take that matter up with. But I think it would be fair to say that the community, particularly those that utilise the national relay service and that are so impaired, would find the extension of such a service to be a welcome move. My colleagues Mr Hardgrave, the member for Moreton, and Mr Reid, the member for Bendigo, who have both now left the chamber, had some obviously knowledgeable and wide-ranging remarks about a whole series of matters in relation to telecommunications. The future mode of operations point that was made by the member for Bendigo is a fundamental. The building blocks for the telecommunications industry are the exchanges. If exchanges are upgraded, then obviously the utilisation of the newer technologies—digitisation and so on—becomes achievable. That is why the government, in agreement with Telstra, is keen to see the development of ISDN services and so on that we have talked about on other occasions. But the commitment of extensive amounts of capital to ensure that all parts of Australia have the latest technology and latest exchanges is the fundamental building block, as I say, to the success of a telecommunications system in this country. The member for Bendigo mentioned briefly the REACH program. My colleague Senator Alston announced—I think it was last week—in a press release that we have negotiated with Telstra for a continuation of the REACH program for a period of time to ensure the uplinking capacities in regional areas—and, Mr Chairman, you will be pleased to know that that also benefits Tasmania. I think we are all pleased about that and we would thank the minister and Telstra for their accommodation of those particular needs. It is the appropriate thing to do. The global operations centre in Melbourne and the impact on jobs in Bendigo was made quite clear by Mr Reid. He also mentioned that the Telstra Friends in his area were 200 in number. All I can say is that he is lucky, and I wish I could be so lucky to have 200 friends! But that is obviously a very good group and they service the needs of the community broadly in a whole range of areas. This is an important amendment. It is appropriate that it be proceeded in the way that we have indicated. I thank those members who have contributed positively to the debate. The whole parliament supports the delivery of these services. It will be done by way of a tender; it will be arms-length. The reasons are spelt out in the second reading speech, which I delivered some time ago. It also establishes a funding mechanism which is contributed to, under a formula, by the carriers. I would also take the opportunity to thank the carriers for their continued commitment to people with disabilities. I refer to all carriers, because I know that they all have a commitment to employment practices and services that they deliver that take account of people with disabilities. I saw that in a previous incarnation as ombudsman and, interestingly now as the minister responsible for disability services, I continue to have an interest in this area. So I commend them for the work that they do and, therefore, commend the bill.	Australia	1,998
The Customs and Excise Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 3) 1997 is probably one of the least controversial pieces of legislation ever to come before this place. We are always delighted to see that that is the case. Effectively, there are three issues which are to be dealt with by this amending legislation. The first is to amend the Customs Act 1901 to clarify that the Customs Act does not extend to the Australian external territories and that in the Customs Act, Australia does not include the external territories. There has been some uncertainty as to just how that particular element of Australia's landmass was dealt with by the Customs Act, and this is to provide some certainty. The second amendment amends the Customs Amendment Act (No. 1) 1997, which was one of three acts which introduced the cost recovery regime for the provision of certain import related services to defer by six months the commencement of the reduced entry threshold for goods imported by post. Again, there is no disagreement from the opposition there. And, finally, it is intended to amend the Australian Postal Corporation Act 1989 to correct an anomaly in the exercise of Customs powers of examination of mail arriving into Australia from the external territories. The bill will also make several technical amendments to the Customs Act 1901 and the Excise Act 1901.This particular legislation is uncontroversial, and when you look at Australia's relationship with our external territories, that cannot be said of the way in which the Customs Service, as an entity, is being asked to deal with a number of difficulties arising out of its role and responsibility as a patroller of the border of Australia. I think that it is important when one thinks that these amendments affect the postal service deliveries coming into this country, and similar concerns may well be raised there. I noted with some alarm that the Minister for Customs and Consumer Affairs (Mr Truss) recently went to great lengths to say, `Wasn't it fabulous that so many illegal substances and so much heroin and other drugs were being interdicted by the Australian Customs Service and the Australian Federal Police?' Then, somebody stopped to say, `Hang on. If there is more being caught now, what does that tell you about the amount that is coming into the place?' And the same minister and people in the Australian Customs Service tell you that if they are lucky, they are getting 20 per cent of it. In fact, it is probably a much lesser figure. How does this work when you think back and reflect that a report was commissioned and done when we were in government that saw the reduction in personnel in the Australian Customs Service, and then this government decided to take it a step further and slash and whack the Australian Customs Service where it hurts most, that is, at the barrier and in the roles and responsibilities that they have. Mr Deputy Speaker, I am sure you, as a representative of a coastal electorate, would be acutely aware of the concerns that are raised from time to time about the devious methods being employed by people to import banned substances into this country and then have them then turn up on the streets of Sydney or Melbourne or, dare I say it, in rural Australia these days, in the hands of young people and turning them into junkies. I am sure you have the same sorts of concerns that I have as a representative of an electorate which is on the coast and which is adjacent to the port of Port Kembla. We know that the number of officers employed by the Australian Customs Service to carry out this sort of interdiction work and carry out the general work that the customs service is expected to do has been slashed. So, if we are making amendments in terms of the Australian Postal Service as far as customs is concerned, is that reduction in staff numbers going to lead to an increased use of that medium for the importation or attempted importation of some of these banned substances? Anybody who has been reading and watching reports in recent months of the explosion in the amount of these sorts of substances coming into Australia, anybody who has been hearing the concerns that have been voiced by people like Premier Bob Carr about the fact that numbers in the Australian Customs Service and the AFP have been reduced, would have to say that there are some real concerns here. The minister has just come into the Main Committee and I am delighted that he is here. He has come into this job with the full knowledge that it is not going to be easy to stand up and defend previous customs ministers who have gone into ERC after ERC offering up budget saving measures and then being whacked across the ear, like his predecessor was, and responding by saying, `What we could do is cut staff.'In the port of Port Kembla, staff numbers have been reduced from 15 to five. They work from 8.58 a.m., or whatever it is, to 4.51 p.m. and then they clock off because they do not have the resources to continue a 24 hour a day operation. He would be well aware that at the port of Port Kembla it is no good talking about surveillance cameras and that sort of stuff because half the time they are broken and there is no-one to fix them. There is no point in the minister responding by saying, `Yes, but we've got flying squads and we use intelligence more and more now.' That's great, I fully support the use of enhanced intelligence operations. I fully support that because, as I have said in this place many times before, I once conducted an inquiry into the Australian Customs Service in the late 1980s and saw for myself the dedication of those officers who work in customs. I have seen the dedication of those officers who work in the AFP, I know the constraints that they work under, and I know that they rely heavily on intelligence these days. That is appropriate, but it does not stop there, it does not stop with the use of intelligence only, it actually requires a presence on the waterfront. As I have said time and time again in this place, if you think of those five officers at the port of Port Kembla, they have responsibility for looking after an area that stretches from Port Botany down to the Victorian border. They look after not only the ports that are there—and there are fishing ports and all the rest of it—but they also look after the normal work that customs people are expected to do such as the collection of duties and so on. When you have a situation of only five people—somebody might be sick one day, someone else might be away at a course at another time, and they are working public service hours—it is not hard to think that it is opening up problems for us. I know people say from time to time, when I have raised this as an issue, that I am just trying to mount some sort of a scare campaign, but I can tell the minister I am not. I am genuinely concerned about these sorts of issues, just as I am genuinely concerned about the growth of other forms of narcotic substances being brought into Australia. There seem to be people who try to keep one step ahead of the Australian Customs Service and the Australian Federal Police. There seem to be operations involving Australia's northern frontier. The yachts and the boats and the heavy freighters and so on have illegal substances attached to their sides and if a customs boat or a police surveillance launch happens to approach them then they simply, through an electromagnetic current being turned off, drop the illegal substances into the water where they are never to be seen again. There is no proof. That is all there is to it. How often in recent times have we seen—I must say that this even happened when we were in government—reports of illegal substances being washed up on the shores of north Queensland? Clearly these substances have been dropped by yachts or vessels, passing through the Great Barrier Reef, that had intended to land in Australia but somehow got washed off course. People are making a profit out of the misery of drug addicts and their families in Australia. In making those profits, they are prepared to risk losing a lot of the volume of the material that they are bringing in because, at the same time, they are still landing some and making money out of it. We have to stop and think, `How much money actually is in this? How big a problem is this going to be for our country?'I think it is rather sad—in fact, it is rather shameful—to see the reduction in the number of officers in the Australian Customs Service as a savings option. Customs is there to do a job and that job is to be at the barrier, principally, to protect Australia. I note that one of the briefs about this amendment talks about our external territories, where we have been the subject of people coming from other countries trying to come here as boat people or whatever it might be. Because of some of the political difficulties with one of our near neighbours, people are talking about that possibility increasing. Because of the vastness of this coastline, because of the fact that these people are clever, resourceful and so on, there are opportunities there for the taking for illegal substances to be landed here. If that involves illegal immigrants coming into the country that would be of concern and, of course, the Australian Customs Service is involved with that. From time to time, and I have discussed this with the minister, the view has been put that maybe we need to look at a closer relationship between the Australian Customs Service and the Australian naval forces. From time to time, people even suggest that we need to have something like the coastguard that the United States has. I accept the arguments that it is probably not possible or feasible for a country the size of Australia, with such a vast coastline, to have that. I also accept that Navy has been involved, very closely, with Customs in recent times in carrying out appropriate actions when intelligence has made certain connections with yachts and other vessels, and when other things have been happening around Australia. I commend the Australian Customs Service for the coastwatch program that it has had in place for quite some time. However, I think we need to rev that up a touch. It is time for people in remote and regional Australia to be given a bit of a reminder about that because, whilst we are particularly talking about sea vessels here, we can also make the same claims about light aircraft coming into Australia. We can also make the claims about the vastness of this continent and about the ability of very resourceful and clever people, in gangs, because of the profits that they can make off the misery of drug addicts, being prepared to take all sorts of risks to get this material into the country. Again, I simply say that I think there is a genuine will within the parliament to do something about the drug problem that is in Australia today. I do not think the drug strategy response of the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) tapped the right nerves. I think he probably thought he was doing the right thing there but I am not sure that he has tapped the right things that need to be done. Quite frankly, on the one hand to slash and burn in the Customs Service, to cut down the number of employees there, and say that we can do things a little better and, yet, on the other hand—	Australia	1,998
The Minister for Customs and Consumer Affairs was a little late coming in. I said that I accepted that Labor, in a report that was done, made recommendations and that, Minister, as a consequence of that, there were some changes. But in the two years of your government, you have accelerated that and we have seen another massive reduction in the work force that is there. It is no good the minister shaking his head. The facts speak for themselves: the work force has reduced. Let the minister come to Port Kembla and see for himself that once there were 15, then there were 12 and now there are five. Do not tell me that your government did not reduce the numbers down there to fight these sorts of issues. The point I make is that it is rather difficult for people to accept that, on one hand, the government is cutting the resources of the Australian Customs Service, which is trying to do a tremendous job, and, on the other hand, it is throwing a few dollars back into the system by way of some drug strategy that is not targeted at the right people. As I have said, this legislation itself is not controversial. The proposals that have come before it are not controversial, although I notice my friend the shadow, the member for Curtin (Mr Rocher), over there has been following debate in first the House this morning and now here this afternoon. He seems to believe there are some untoward or unintended consequences. I am sure he will raise those with the minister shortly. We certainly will not delay this. We, again, take the opportunity from our side to say to the government quite genuinely, `We are as one with the government in its endeavour to try to stop the menace that is drug running into Australia. We are as one in looking at meaningful solutions to try and quell the growth of this most insidious attack on our youth in this country.' But where we differ is that we are not quite sure that the government has pushed the right buttons in some of these areas. We are always willing to work hand-in-glove with the government if we think that that is working for an improvement to the circumstances. I suppose it is quite opportune at the moment, while we are thinking about the next budget. I am sure the minister is putting forward some suggestions to his colleagues on the Expenditure Review Committee as to how he would like to see funding for the Australian Customs Service `improved'—I will use that terminology—in the coming budget. I wish him every success. I will lend him the support of the opposition in trying to get his colleagues to improve the budget circumstance of the Australian Customs Service. Quite frankly, as I have said in this place before, the dedication of the people in that service is absolutely outstanding. As a consequence of that, I think the support that government owes them in the difficult job that they do can only be given through appropriate resourcing. I would like to think that this happens. I wish this legislation speedy passage through the parliament. The Labor Party, the opposition, will not be delaying it. It will give it support in the other place. I am sure that the minister will respond to some of the comments that I have made. Regrettably, I have to go and speak in the other place. The member for Curtin is following me just after that again. I will read what the minister has to say in Hansard.	Australia	1,998
The Customs and Excise Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 3) 1997 has been introduced to make a variety of amendments to the Customs Act 1901, the Customs Amendment Act (No. 1) 1997, and the Australian Postal Corporation Act 1989. I will confine my comments to the amendment to the Customs Amendment (No. 1) Act 1997. For the sake of brevity, I will probably refer to it as the 1997 act or the 1997 amendment act. That act deals with the commercial importations of goods by post. The 1997 amendment act reduced the value limit of goods imported through the post which require a formal import entry and which therefore attract an import entry processing charge. An import entry is a communication to the Australian Customs Service of certain information concerning the goods. Before the 1997 act, goods worth less than $1,000 imported by post did not require formal entry. The act provided that only goods with a value of less than $250 were exempt from the formal entry process when imported by mail. This provision under the 1997 act is to commence on 1 April 1998.The amendment proposed by the bill before the Main Committee will defer for six months to 1 October 1998 the commencement of that reduction. The reason given by the government for the deferral of commencement is a refreshingly honest one. The honourable Minister for Customs and Consumer Affairs (Mr Truss), in his second reading speech on 3 December last said that the government had received a significant number of representations concerning the impact that the decrease in the threshold will have on many small- to medium- sized businesses. The minister said: In response to this, the Australian Customs Service is examining options to simplify the entry procedures for the goods imported by post which will become subject to the entry requirements. In my view that is not enough. It is useful to revisit the 1997 amendment act to understand the circumstances of the import processing charge. In the 1996-97 budget the coalition government announced that it would legislate for the cost recovery of elements of the Australian Customs Service's commercial activities that are directly or indirectly required to process import transactions. In evidence before the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit inquiring into Internet commerce the Australian Customs Service explained the customs procedure for the importation of goods. The officers testifying gave evidence that if goods are imported by air or sea freight and they are valued at $250 or more then the person or company importing the goods is required to lodge a formal declaration or import entry with Customs. The entry is either an electronic declaration or a manual declaration. If the goods are valued at less than $250 but duty and sales tax payable on the goods are more than $50 then an informal customs clearance document, or ICD, can be completed and the tax is collected. Customs explained that goods valued at less than $250 on which the duty and sales tax payable is less than $50 are not required to be declared. These goods are described by Customs as screened free or cleared out of the system. The procedure for goods imported by post is slightly different. With mail articles the threshold for an import entry is not $250 but $1,000. Accordingly an importer bringing in by post goods valued at below $1,000 but subject to duty and sales tax of $50 or more need only complete an informal clearance document and pay the duty and tax. A business importing by post goods valued at below $1,000 on which the customs duty and sales tax is less than $50 need not even complete an ICD.Until the change introduced by the 1997 act takes effect there is an anomaly, Mr Deputy Speaker, that favours importers who choose to use the post instead of an air or sea freight carrier. According to the Customs officials who testified to the joint committee during its Internet commerce inquiry, the reasons for the anomalous treatment of goods imported by post is an historical one. The principal distinction between air freight and postal freight was originally that air freight was used by commercial and industrial interests while the mail was used by individuals and once a year importers. Although air freight was more expensive than post for businesses the speed of getting goods into one shop or factory was worth the extra cost apparently. Goods coming through the mail tended to be either for private use or for businesses that imported only intermittently, perhaps once a year. The policy of Customs was that this distinction was significant enough for the system to facilitate or encourage the private or intermittent importer. Naturally, it costs money to process a declaration and it is this cost that the government, in its budget decision, sought to recover from importers. The customs officers who appeared before the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit explained the cost of processing the importation paperwork. The cost to the government of processing an electronic import entry is approximately $25. The fee charged to importers for lodgment and processing of such an entry is $22.80. There is an additional fee of 20c for each line once the number of lines on the customs declaration exceeds 10. A very small proportion of import entries are manual as distinct from electronic. Customs estimates their cost of processing a manual entry at about $45. The charge imposed on importers making a manual declaration is $44.55 plus $1 per line after the first line. Australia Post gave evidence to the joint committee that the postal service handles almost 12 million inward packets and parcels each year. The total cost of handling, processing and delivering these items is about $30 million per annum. Australia Post advised the joint committee that to decrease the formal entry threshold from $1,000 to $250 would affect some 20,000 articles and would increase handling costs accordingly. The Corporate Secretary of Australia Post, Mr Gerry Ryan, noted that a decrease in the threshold would create a need for additional storage facilities and would introduce some delay in deliveries. Further, Mr Ryan said that customers who would normally collect mail items from a local post office would presumably have to go to locations where customs officers are in attendance, and so there would be some further delay and inconvenience for the customer. As I understand it, the Australian Customs Service is opposed to the government's policy of lowering the threshold value for postal goods. On 3 February this year, Mr Graeme Austin, Director of Customs Commercial Advisory Service at the Australian Customs Service, told the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit that the position held by Customs is that it is `inappropriate to implement the lower threshold'. Mr Austin referred to an A.C. Nielsen survey conducted on behalf of Customs in November of last year, a survey which indicated that, if the threshold were to be lowered, an additional 17,000 postal consignments would become liable for entry processing. Mr Austin told the committee that the cost to Customs—and, thus, to the taxpayer—of processing these entries would be nearly $500,000. The revenue raised would be only $380,000.Mr Austin concluded that Customs would be unable to justify imposing a cost recovery of that magnitude, when the amount of revenue raised was so comparatively small. He went on to say that there would also be cargo delays and increased costs to business, and that a major and costly upgrade of Customs' existing computers may also be needed. Mr Austin's view was that all this would outweigh the benefits of a lowered threshold. Those benefits include the provision of more accurate statistics to the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, to Customs and to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. As the minister has admitted, the proposal under the 1997 amendment act to lower the postal entry threshold from $1,000 to $250 has met with a strong reaction, particularly from small importers and cottage industries—a reaction, I might add, that I anticipated in my contribution at that debate. These businesses are either retailers that on-sell the imported goods, or small manufacturers that use the imports as raw materials before adding value for sale in Australia or for export. As a matter of practicality, under the new law, many small businesses will need to hire a customs broker to perform the customs clearance on their behalf. This will mean added inconvenience, added delay and added cost. The cost, which includes the import entry processing cost recovery fee and the customs broker fee—which, I understand, is currently about $80 per consignment—would be difficult for many small businesses to absorb, particularly for those one-off or once-a-year importers. The additional costs of compliance imposed by this measure will, of course, be passed on to the consumer, and a consignment worth in the region of $300 or $400 could be rendered simply unprofitable. In addition to these costs, I understand from the Importers Association that businesses can expect an additional one or two days for the goods to clear customs. As I said during the debate on the 1997 amendment act, it is ironic that substantial new costs for small businesses and consumers were being imposed by the then Minister for Small Business and Consumer Affairs, the honourable member for Forrest (Mr Prosser). The greatest irony is that the costs that the government is seeking to recover from the users as part of a cost recovery program are costs that are generated by the government's very own regulations. You put the rules in place and then you make the poor old user pay: not a bad little earner! The legislation means that more people are required to fill in a form and are then asked to pay for the cost of processing that form. The following example might be useful in explaining that. Until the change to the law takes effect, a person who imports a package of goods valued at $300, on which sales tax and duty is less than $50, pays no duty and no tax, fills in no customs declaration forms and pays no administrative fees. When the 1997 amendment to lower the threshold takes effect, the same person importing the same package will now be compelled to complete a customs declaration form. If the importer completes the form by hand, they will have to pay a fee of $44.55, plus some if they exceed the lines. If he or she uses a customs broker who completes the form electronically, he or she will have to pay $102.80—33 per cent of the value of the goods. If it is possible to complete the declaration without the assistance of a customs broker, combined with access to the facilities to do so electronically instead of by hand, the absolute minimum fee for the pleasure of filling out that form is $22.80.But this exercise is totally pointless because, having done the paperwork and paid the so-called cost recovery charges, their parcel will still be screened free with the government receiving no revenue in the form of duty or taxes. Surely it is unacceptable for a government to create an unnecessary cost in this way and then seek to recover that cost from the people who are affected—or should I say afflicted. Instead, the government should have ascertained whether the process was necessary. I do not see any evidence of the government's having done so to this point. Nor does the proposal sit well with the government's pre-election promise to cut small business red tape by 50 per cent over the term of this parliament. Not only does it increase red tape, but it does so for micro businesses, which are the most likely to be driven out of business. It is fair to say that not all businesses are affected. Small businesses that import goods in packages with a dutiable value of below $250, or those that import high value items such as jewellery or electronics in consignments exceeding $1,000, would not be affected by the proposed lowering of the threshold. Other importers will be able, lawfully, to keep below the new lower threshold by structuring their consignments so that each is of a value below $250. My concern, however, is that many importers will not be able to structure their consignments in this way. During the second reading debate on the 1997 amendment act, the Democrats in the Senate supported the government's proposal on condition that the introduction of the lowered threshold would be delayed by 12 months to 1 April this year to give Customs the time to further develop and encourage use of the Internet for processing of imports. Senator Murray claimed that such a facility would provide a `cost-effective solution for low volume importers'.This may have satisfied the Democrats, but it did not, and it does not, satisfy me. It begs the question whether the increased burden is justified in the first place. Senator Murray acknowledged as much by saying that a number of small businesses will continue to use the manual system. His suggestion to protect the interests of these businesses was for the government to monitor their needs and numbers with the aim of ensuring that they are not unfairly burdened by the legislation. With all due respect, this parliament has a duty to get the law right in the first place, rather than passing legislation with identified and potentially fatal effects for businesses. I do not make a habit of quoting Senator Bob Brown, Mr Deputy Speaker Nehl, as I am sure you will know—and you would probably even understand the reasons why—but I will make an exception for his terse response to the Democrats' proposal, namely that no review of legislation can bring a business back from bankruptcy. In view of the evidence of witnesses to the Public Accounts and Audit Committee's inquiry into Internet commerce and the concerns of small businesses, I urge the minister responsible for Customs to do more than simply defer for six months the commencement of the reduction in the threshold value of postal items for import entry processing purposes. It is most inappropriate for the government to put into effect an alteration to the existing position until after the Joint Statutory Committee of Public Accounts and Audit has tabled its report into Internet commerce. For the reasons I have given, I do not support item 7 of clause 3 in the bill in its present form.	Australia	1,998
in reply—Before summing up this debate, and being conscious of the fact that we are going to go somewhat over time, may I thank the member for Cunningham (Mr Martin) and the member for Curtin (Mr Rocher) for their contribution. May I say before the member for Curtin leaves—I know he is in a hurry—that unfortunately it seems he was not made aware of the fact that the government proposes to amend the particular section to which he has some objection. I hope that he will be well satisfied with the amendment that will be coming before the Main Committee in a couple of minutes time. I must respond briefly to some of the comments made by the member for Cunningham. Whilst I very much welcome and accept his sincerity—and the sincerity, indeed, of all members of the House—in wanting to reduce the drug problem in our country, in wanting to ensure that there are far fewer illegitimate substances coming into our nation, some of the comments which he made were, frankly, inaccurate and do indeed need to be corrected. He indicated that he had some genuine concern about reductions in Customs and cutbacks in the Customs budget, and he quoted New South Wales Premier, Bob Carr—a sadly unreliable source—to support his arguments. Of course, the very powerful argument that the member for Cunningham needs to address is the fact that between 1991 and 1995 the Keating-Beazley federal Labor government reduced the number of customs officers by more than 800. The staff reductions occurred under Labor, and so it is pretty hypocritical for opposition spokesmen now to be crying crocodile tears about the lack of personnel in particular ports. Indeed, if we look at the Customs budget under this government, last year the budget was $422 million. That was an increase of $18 million over the previous year and $32 million more than the year before that, so the cutbacks under this government referred to by the member for Cunningham have been largely an illusion. It is true that Customs redirects its resources so that we are able to most effectively carry out the responsibilities that are entrusted to us. He knows and accepts that there is a much more important need these days to maximise the use of technology to ensure the resources that we have are used effectively, that we know where to look rather than having large numbers of people going around on needle in haystack exercises. In fact, it is interesting to note that the United Nations international drug control program report stated recently: Detecting illicit cargo is almost impossible without prior intelligence. So we have a lot of authority on our side to suggest that it is important that Customs devotes its resources to upgrading technology, and that, of course, is where the major part of new expenditure is occurring at the present time. Finally in my response to the member for Cunningham, I need to make some comment about Port Kembla, because he specifically raised that matter and I know it has some parochial interest to him. The reality is that there have not actually been any major drug interdictions at Port Kembla. Whilst no-one can ever say that any port is free from problems, it has not been an area where there have been major drug interdictions in the past. Customs does have flexible anti-smuggling teams available which specialise in shipping enforcement activities, and these can be readily deployed to Port Kembla. I might add that when the new capital expenditure into CCTV surveillance on the Australian waterfront is undertaken in the months ahead Port Kembla will be a priority, and so we will be ensuring that the quality of the surveillance available at Port Kembla will in fact be upgraded. So there has been a lot of activity. It is also important to note that over recent times Customs has had record numbers of seizures. So the measures are succeeding; the strategies that have been put in place, along with the diligence and effectiveness of customs officers, are achieving real results for Australians. This bill does not actually deal at all with those sorts of matters. The key items in the amendments deal with the definition of Australia in the Customs Act and also in the Postal Corporations Act, to make it clear that the definition of Australia in these circumstances does not extend to the Australian external territories. That is the substance of the matter before the House. I did not hear any adverse comments on the need to clarify those matters. I commend the legislation to the Main Committee.	Australia	1,998
I move:(1) Schedule 1, item 7, page 4 (lines 4 to 6), omit the item, substitute:7 Subsection 2(2) Omit "subsections (3) and (4)", substitute "subsection (3)".7A Subsection 2(4) Repeal the subsection.7B Item 12 of Schedule 1 Repeal the item. This amendment to the Customs and Excise Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 3) 1997 addresses the issue raised quite eloquently by the member for Curtin ((Mr Rocher). The purpose of the amendment is to remove the proposed reduction in the entry threshold for goods imported through the post. This will have the effect of leaving the postal entry threshold at $1,000.Originally, the entry threshold of $1,000 for goods imported by the post was to be reduced to $250, to align with the threshold applying to air and sea cargo, as a part of the customs cost recovery regime. This amendment was originally to take effect from 1 April 1998, to allow importers through the post more time to adjust to the impact of change. During 1997, a significant number of representations from small business prompted a review of entry thresholds across air, sea and postal importations. The review has been focusing on options to simplify the entry procedures, to lessen the burden of customs requirements on small business once the threshold is reduced and goods become subject to entry requirements. As part of this review, Customs also proposed a further deferral of the commencement of the reduced postal threshold to 1 October 1998. This proposed amendment is contained in item 7 of schedule 1 of this bill, the item referred to by the member for Curtin. The Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit is presently conducting an inquiry into Internet commerce. In light of the reporting time frame of the JCPAA, it is the government's view that we should not proceed with any proposed changes to existing entry thresholds until the government has had sufficient time to consider the committee's findings on this issue. The committee is examining entry issues in the wider context as an integral element of the electronic commerce issues. Instead of deferring the commencement of the postal threshold reduction, it is proposed to remove the original amendment altogether so that the current $1,000 entry threshold will continue. The government will examine the recommendations of the JCPAA report when they become available. I commend the amendment to honourable members, and present a supplementary explanatory memorandum. Amendment agreed to.	Australia	1,998
Defence Industry, Science and Personnel Mrs Bishop —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) Yes; as at October 1997 benefits were being paid on behalf of 188 children. $56.30 per week is paid on behalf of each child and a lump sum is either held in trust (for those under age 18) or paid to the child (if over age 18) on the death of an ADF member. The lump sum payable on death is currently $168,937.90 and this is shared between all the family members who were financially dependent on the deceased. (2) To qualify for the benefits referred to in part (1) the children would have had to have lost at least one parent or guardian in compensable circumstances. More detailed information is not maintained by the Department of Defence. (3) The total benefits in respect of children were: weekly paymentslump sumstotal(a) 1992-93—$446,280$122,690$568,970(b) 1993-94—$458,640$86,950$545,590(c) 1994-95—$451,800$38,330$490,130(d) 1995-96—$502,150$88,610$590,760(e) 1996-97—$489,810$333,130$822,940 (4) In recognition of the special nature of military service and the fact that members of the ADF are not public servants in uniform, on 10 June 1997 the Government decided that increased compensation would be paid to severely injured ADF personnel and to the wholly or partly financially dependent spouses and children of those ADF personnel who lose their lives in compensable circumstances. A severe injury is defined as an injury to the brain or spinal cord resulting in quadriplegia, paraplegia, hemiplegia, an organic brain syndrome or chronic blindness or a condition of similar effect. The additional benefits for deaths occurring on or after 10 June 1997 will be paid under Defence Determination 1998/3 made under section 58B of the Defence Act. All children of deceased ADF members who lose their lives in compensable circumstances will be entitled to the additional compensation. All payments in respect of Black Hawk victims' children have been made on an ex-gratia basis. (5) To date 5 children have qualified for a payment under the Determination. Each has one parent. (6) Not applicable. (7) For the families of those ADF personnel who lost their lives in compensable circumstances between 7 April 1994 and 10 June 1997, additional compensation is being and has been paid on an ex-gratia basis to the remaining parents or guardians of the 55 children who have been identified as eligible. (8) The increased cost is: (a) 1996-97—$500,000; (b) 1997-98—$2,507,500 (estimated)—includes retrospective payments to April 1994. (c) 1998-99—$507,500 (estimated). (9) In future, all dependent children of ADF members who die in compensable circumstances, whether on peacetime or operational service, will qualify for the additional benefits. On average, 10 children become eligible for compensation each year, although the exact number is likely to vary widely from year to year. If the additional benefits were to be made available in respect of deaths before 7 April 1994, the additional cost, in the first year of operation, would be some $500,000 for each year for which retrospective payments were made.	Australia	1,998
Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs; Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service Dr Kemp —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) I am informed that no report has been prepared by Griffith University about tertiary places on the Gold Coast. However, I have received correspondence from the Gold Coast City Council which contains statistics suggesting that public university places per head of population on the Gold Coast are below those in other regions. According to figures supplied to my Department by Griffith University, the number of student places on the Gold Coast has grown from 2,445 EFTSU (equivalent full-time student units) in 1993 to 4,617 EFTSU in 1997. The number of places is expected to increase further, to 5,000 EFTSU by 2000. As almost all of these are Commonwealth-funded places, this demonstrates that the Commonwealth is committed to improving higher education provision on the Gold Coast. However, simply counting the number of Government-funded students at a particular local university campus is not an accurate measure of a region's educational participation. Such a measure does not take account of student mobility or of the increasingly flexible nature of the way in which courses are delivered, such as the increased use of distance education or the improved interaction between TAFE and universities. For example, nearly 40 per cent of students studying in Canberra come from outside the ACT while 30 per cent of students from the ACT study in other States. (2) While there are no new fully subsidised student places available for allocation beyond 1999, the Commonwealth has announced a number of initiatives which are designed to ensure that universities are able to respond to the emerging needs of their communities. From 1998, for the first time the Commonwealth will pay universities $2,517 for each HECS-liable student enrolled above the number of fully subsidised undergraduate places. This will enable universities to offer additional places at marginal costs to undergraduate students without charging fees. In addition, from 2000 the Commonwealth has announced its intention to progressively re- focus its Capital Development Pool funding away from traditional `bricks and mortar' and towards communications and information technology infrastructure. Developments in electronic infrastructure are leading to more flexible modes of educational services delivery and increased competition within Australia and internationally. By enabling universities to respond to these trends, the Commonwealth is helping universities provide greater choices for students who wish to remain in their local area. The Commonwealth recognises the needs of the Gold Coast and is committed to increasing educational opportunities for all Australians.	Australia	1,998
Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs; Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service Dr Kemp —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) Information on Consultants engaged between 1 July 1995 and 30 June 1997 is contained in Volume 2 of the Department's 1995/1996 and 1996/1997 Annual Reports. The information requested for the period 1 July 1997 to 20 November 1997 is attached. (2) The estimated cost of consultancy work being undertaken for the Department for which no payment had been made as at 20 November 1997 is $1,755,031 of which $757,000 related to establishment of the Public Employment Placement Enterprise. DEETYA consultants engaged between 1 July 1997 and 20 November 1997 ConsultantNature of the ConsultancyAmount Paid ($) 1.7.97—20.11.97ACIIC LtdServices & expenses to prepare presentation to the West Committee4,500Allen Consulting GroupStrategic analysis by sector of potential for take-up of new apprenticeships95,240Australian Government ActuaryEstimate Higher Education Contribution doubtful debt16,751Buick & AssociatesConsultancy services relating to forms and publications services4,633Carr Clark Rapp CollinsDevelopment of creatives and advertising for a marketing campaign about New Apprenticeships441,318Clauden Pty LtdReport & recommendations on; the government's IT infrastructure initiative; implementation of new arrangements for providing touch-screen service; and separation of the Public Employment Placement Enterprise IT infrastructure from DEETYA45,000Coopers & LybrandProvide report on universities reporting requirements73,100Coopers & LybrandReview of the activities of the Australian Student Traineeship Foundation93,000Cull Egan DellDevelopment of remuneration options for Department26,000Dench McClean Associates Pty LtdProvision of options to overcome constraints of working capital for expansion of apprenticeships/trainees employed in small business by group training0Duesbury's Chartered AccountantsReview the taxation considerations of the proposed 1998 Austudy Actual Means Test, and provide advice on the Austudy/Abstudy supplement35,133Dwyer PartnersPrepare a report and provide advice on the relationship between income and consumption versus assets and liabilities and concepts of permanent income and consumption20,600Ernst & YoungReview of Integrated Employment System versions 8.9 and 90Forbes Mason & AssociatesPublic Employment Placement Enterprise—Tender documentation preparation/review26,400GKL ConsultancyImplementation of the Turkey labour adjustment project26,665Hamilton James BrucePublic Employment Placement Enterprise—Recruitment services0Kaye Schofield and AssociatesAdvise on Australian Education Sharenet0Global Alliance LtdProvide report on the impact of globalisation & technology on the Australian Higher Education sector & resultant implications49,990KPMG Management ConsultingNational Office of Skills Recognition business process review78,550Nolan & NortonDesktop bench-marking DEETYA's operations from a business perspective56,000 People & Strategy (ACT) Pty LtdAssistance in the Selection of Graduate Administrative Assistants 1998 intake24,865Price Waterhouse UrwickBusiness Requirements Study60,089Queensland University of TechnologyReview of Firewall3,500Recruitment SolutionsPublic Employment Placement Enterprise—Recruitment services0Smalls RecruitingPublic Employment Placement Enterprise—design and review of recruitment processes0Reefton Management ServicesHuman Resource Management Strategy for Public Employment Placement Enterprise44318Strategic Growth Pty LtdDeveloping client service standards in all Australian education centres in overseas countries4,050Towers PerrinSuperannuation advice43,688University of MelbourneReport on the administration & regulatory mechanisms affecting school autonomy in Australia20,000University of WollongongStudy on school autonomy and performance6,000Wallis Consulting Group Pty LtdSurvey of non-completing trainees0Walter & TurnbullPublic Employment Placement Enterprise—Risk assessment for Integrated Employment System 58,880Walter & TurnbullEducation Student Assistance System 98 Review10,780	Australia	1,998
Attorney-General Mr Williams —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) Information on consultants engaged by my Department during the 1995-96 and 1996-97 financial years has previously been published as part of the Department's annual reporting process and has been provided separately to the honourable member with his agreement. My Department has provided the information set out below which covers the period from 1 July 1997 until 20 November 1997. It includes consultancies valued at more than $2,000, which is the threshold used in my Department's annual reports. ConsultantNature of work undertakenAmount paid $Acumen AllianceBusiness processes re possible centralisation of financial processing functions2,390 Admiral Computing Australia Pty LtdIT Systems Security Audit35,700AdvantEdge Business Solutions IT Consultancy—National Information System Project28,910Allan Platcher & AssociatesAccounting services63,600Anderson Software ServicesIT Network communication and Help Desk Technical Support Services57,189Barrack ConsultingIT Consultancy—LA Office3,818Bayne, Peter JohnIndependent external view on Departmental recommendations in relation to federal offenders1066Bimberi Systems Pty LtdNetwork Communications support services43,956Career PeopleIT Centre Help Desk Technical Support Services95,056Career People Database Development6,903Charlton, Anne LOIS IT User Training services55,090Cider PressPublish ITSA Annual Report10,764Community Link AustraliaQuality Service Consultancy565,707Computer People Pty Ltd IT Centre Help Desk Technical Support Services19,338DAS Support ServicesRecruitment scribing6,150Davidson Trahaire Counselling services13,613Davidson and AssocJob Search workshop2,000Davis Computer Consultants Pty LtdSystem design, analysis and programming services37,645Deloitte Touche TohmatsuOTISS Review41,000 Department of FinanceIT Consultancy—National Information System Project3,115Diamond, MichaelAssistance at SAC-PAV counter terrorist negotiators course5,378Domestic Violence & Incest Resource CentreTraining in violence issues55,740Donovan ResearchMarriage Relationship Education Consultancy50,000EdutekExcel Training3,490Ernst & Young Financial and planning issues relating to decision to establish AGS as statutory authority62,237Ernst & YoungNational Campaign Against Violence and Crime Planning Workshop2,600Ernst and YoungDevelop strategic business plan for Australian Protective Service14,070Falls Corporate Research1997 Client Survey & Client Service Charter15,600Falls Corporate Research1997 Post-Survey Services26,469Falls Corporate ResearchEmployee survey5,452Free Range Computer Systems Pty LtdNetwork communications technical support services6,900Griffith UniversityEarly Intervention & Developmental Approaches to Crime Prevention40,000Harris & Doyle Pty LtdFraud Prevention Investigation & Detection Training Package 12,500Heaney BlaylockInformation sessions & consultancy for Workplace Relations Act21,606Human Development Consulting Pty LtdMarriage Relationship Education—develop delivery models25,985InfolexLitigation support services 67,576John Gunn & AssociatesCommunity Development Officer Consultancy20,000King, JohnServices to Australian Legal Assistance Board12,200Latcom Pty LtdSystem design, analysis and programming services3,553Leeming, MarkFurther work on Administrative Review Council's Report on Appeals from Administrative Appeals Tribunal to Federal Court 1,750Les Deutsch Architects Pty Ltd AGS/AGD accommodation changes7,891McMahon & AssociatesAssist steering committee manage SAC-PAV exercise and training review2,704McMillan, JohnIndependent external view on Departmental recommendations in relation to federal offenders1,325Management SolutionsIT Consultancy—LASSIE6,133MC Computer ServicesIT Consultancy—LA Office52,115Melbourne UniversityNegotiating Young People's Use of Public Space20,000Mercer Communications Pty LtdVoice Communications Facilities Management Services35,483Morgan & BanksManaging career workshop7,200Murdoch UniversityEvaluation of Models for Community Crime Prevention15,000National Federation of Blind Citizens of AustraliaWork associated with development of disability standards30,000North Melbourne Legal Service Fees—National Information System National Association of Community Legal Centres Representative3,127Olney, Lindsay Edit Departmental Annual Report14,070Pennay, EleanorLegal services, particularly in area of commercial law20,335Perception PsychologicalNational training for service providers for Contact Service Centres6,000Pinnick, Carol Support—Australian Legal Aid Board2,030Poulton, RobertImplementation of user pays systems21,917PRMRComputer Services18,421Public Service Merit Protection CommissionReview of staffing structure23,250Rogen AustraliaPresentation Skills training9,369Rush Social ResearchLegal aid needs study31,500Select Computer TechnologyDevelop a Management Information System for Office of Strategic Crime Assessment13,200Skills Pty LtdCommercial writing, legal publishing26,962Spirit Networks Pty LtdIT Technical Support Services12,327 SPL WorldgroupNational Information System Help Desk35,566Stancombe ResearchCrime Prevention Resource Audit28,385Statistical ServicesStatistical Measurement services4,861Strategic Action Pty Ltd`Taking Charge of Change' senior management course6,500Strategic Partners Pty LtdResearch consultancy in Family Child Mediation59,325Strategic PartnersHomeless Youth Project30,000Team SystemsGender awareness training sessions8,100Thew, Anthony Legal Professional Development Training Services18,338Topic Systems Australia Pty LtdSystems development services3,000Total Communications and Media ConsultingProduction of training video for SAC-PAV33,187University of South AustraliaCrime Prevention Practitioners Training Needs Assessment70,000Waugh, JohnLegal Information and Publishing services23,823WizardSpecialised support for development of costing model for family services organisations14,653WizardSpecialised support—FAMQIS, Quality and Information System for Family Relationships Services Program4,867Workplace RelationsStaff training sessions4,561Wright, Murray (Dr)Psychological services on SAC-PAV police negotiators course3,841Zifcak, Spencer (Dr)Methodology paper for Administrative Review Council's project on Internal Review in Commonwealth Agencies8,100 plus associated travel, accommodation and living expenses (2) I am advised that the estimated cost of consultancy work being undertaken for the Department for which no payment has been made is $1,122,071.	Australia	1,998
Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Mr Ruddock —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) and (2) Information on consultants engaged by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) during the financial years 1995-96 and 1996-97 is provided in the attached printout from the Departmental Consultants' Register. Copies of the printout are available from the House of Representatives Table Office. The information in the table below, therefore, covers the period from 1 July 1997 only. Details of consultants engaged by DIMA from 1 July 1997 onwards are as follows: 1) Consultants engaged by DIMA since 01/07/972) Estimated cost of consultancy work not yet paida) namesb) nature of workc) sum paidM Cumpstondesign & write computer programnil$17,000A Wilsoncomputer testingnil$5,550J Macken, Advocate, Dept. of Workplace Relations and Small Businessrepresent DIMA at Industrial Relations Commission Hearingnilapprox. $1,168Coopers & Lybrandtaxation advice$750nilEmployment Conditions Abroadsystem advice$1,400nilAcumen Allianceindependent quality assurancenil$50,000D Sadlierreview of entry arrangements$12,500$12,500Vanspall Nominees Pty Ltdprogramming; develop and review systems$34,671$35,529Planning Support Inc Pty Ltddevelop tender documentation$67,825$3,100M A Grayprovide specialist consultancy services to tender evaluation team$9,075$5,762Computer Training & Consulting (engaged last financial year)ongoing system support$783,756payments made on time/material basis and cannot be estimatedAndersen consultinghelp desk support$89,892$204,813Parity Peoplehelp desk support$20,204$51,208Dr T Quinnreview of National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research (NCELTR)$20,159nilDr A Cummingsreview of NCELTR$16,753nilG Burkereview of NCELTR$8,875nilR McDonaldreview of NCELTR$5,892nilEureka Strategic Researchundertake market research$31,500$343,500Wizard Personnel & Office Services Pty Ltdlegal work$7,038$13,770Brewerton & Associates Pty Ltd (engaged last financial year)develop notes for guidance for assessment of medical documents$21,540$176,460CSC Australia Pty Ltdredevelopment of computer system under Strategic Alliancenil$477,000Health Services Australia Ltdprovide and review health assessments$92,345approx. $184,690 (estimate based on invoice for first quarter)Minter Ellisonlegal advice on tender process and contracts$21,378nilAustralian Property Groupevaluation of infrastructure aspects of tender$7,610nilWalter & Turnbullaudit of financial analyses of tender proposals$7,587nilPurchasing Australiaprobity investigation of successful tenderer$5,000nilDASprobity investigation of successful tenderer$3,000nilW S Gregory & Associatesprobity investigation of successful tenderernil$10,094L Geversstaff training$589nilAndersenNatural/Adabas analysis and programming (2 contracts)$48,984$113,641Computer PowerNatural/Adabas analysis and programming & other programming (2 contracts)$87,619$144,380MC Computer servicesFoxPro & Acess programming$38,597$74,618 Natural SystemsNatural/Adabas analysis and programming$43,098$79,398PaxusNatural/Adabas analysis and programming (4 contracts)$37,851$312,088StratagemNatural/Adabas analysis and programming & other programming (3 contracts)$99,875$224,052WizardNatural/Adabas analysis and programming$38,387nilAustralian Government Solicitorlegal advice$17,797nilAustralian Government Publishing Servicereview of contract and advice$14,690nilPeter Day Consulting (engaged last financial year)impact statement (Joint Commonwealth/ State Consultancy)$21,159$16,025Calendo Investmentsstrategic advice$5,400$3,000KPMG Chartered Accountantsaudit of new TIS system$19,500$11,550CSC Aust P/LTISIS 2 development & user training (2 contracts)$78,629$169,850Oracle Systems Aust P/LOracle Financials; technical advice; modifications; interface (4 contracts)$47,023$271,500Andersen ContractingOracle programming; network administration (2 contracts)$32,272$135,460Assist P/LOracle Financials (2 contracts)$89,405$5,060Media Marketing Group (engaged last financial year)produce citizenship booklet$36,740approx. $75,753Adrian Lingford (Scientific Services Laboratories)OH&S assessmentnil$4,340Jordan Schaan, QCITOH&S training$1,820nilS Kusherstaff development training$2,250nilMorley Consultingstaff development training$5,904nilArthur Alexander, ITASstaff development trainingnil$2,500ASIOadvice on access control systems$4,412nilCSC Australia Pty LtdYear 2000 project$11,750nilMC Computer Servicescommunications support$19,593$46,862Computer PeopleLAN support$31,928$49,822Lateral Concepts and DesignLAN support$22,700nilApproved Systemso/s technical helpdesk support$20,400nilStantonLAN auditing$3,777$4,743PAXUSLAN support$17,256$44,744Seer Technologies Aust P/Limplementation of SEER*HPS$304,550$413,450Business SynteticsICSE project$15,506$100,744Computer PowerCICS system support$1,220$59,780MC Computer Servicesprovision of technical personnel$1,575$51,225CSC Australia Pty Ltdpartnership arrangement$893,498future costs according to projectsIBMconfiguration of SEER OS/2nil$6,000Oracle CorporationOracle 7 installationnil$10,000Computer Peopleo/s technical help desk supportnil$38,220Cisco Systems Aust P/Lnetwork design & router configurationsnil$49,000Absolute ComputingNOTES environment supportnil$20,400SearchSoftware AmericaSSAName 3 implementation for MALnil$18,197Fox Clark & Companyo/s advertising for business entry$43,956nilMike Kerr Communicationso/s advertising for business entry$9,115nil A Daws, Edge Computing (engaged last financial year)development of o/s archiving programnil$2,870Wizard Scribe Servicesscribe services for recruitment$1,640nilCP Resourcingscribe services for recruitmentrecruitment not finishedapprox. $3,500S Eiselstaff training$1,850nilCanberra Institute of Technologystaff training$3,700nilT D'Arcystaff training$5,890nilAustralian Federal Police National Training Centredeliver training course for `Certificate in Investigation'nil$55,300Donna Bevan & Associatestraining of DIMA-funded workers$2,600nilRelationship Australia (engaged last financial year)training of DIMA-funded workers$3,000$5,800Lend Lease Financial Plannersredundancy consultations$300nilPersonal Financial Plannersredundancy consultations$290nilC Walsheredundancy consultations$300nilCount Financial Group P/Lredundancy consultations$300nilMarket Attitude Research Servicestrial of forms packagenil$5,000Total Value$3,457,445.00$4,221,018.00	Australia	1,998
Veterans' Affairs Mr Bruce Scott —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) Information on consultants engaged during the financial years 1995-96 and 1996-97 is provided in the "available on request" component of the Department's Annual Report. The reports do not include commencement dates, therefore information covering the full financial year for 1995-96 has been provided. The following information covers the period 1 July 1997 to 8 December 1997. Corporate Services Division ConsultantProjectCost—$Morgan and BanksOutplacement consultancy$10,000Deloitte & ToucheHuman Resource Review$31,722Deloitte & ToucheHuman Resource Services Review$71,185Heaney Blaylock & AssociatesAssistance in developing Agency Workplace Agreements$2,497OCR Management ConsultantsAssistance in developing Agency Workplace Agreements$750Coopers and LybrandImplementation of Human Resource system$15,300Palm ManagementProject planning for selection of Human Resource system$4,725IBM AustraliaFacilitate Continuous Improvement training$9,660IBM AustraliaFacilitate Continuous Improvement training$4,118Ernst & YoungTeam training$1,350IBM AustraliaFacilitate Continuous Improvement training$1,704IBM AustraliaFacilitate Continuous Improvement training$2,272Performance ImprovementConsultancy Skills workshop plus manuals$3,885Palm ManagementPreparation and facilitation of Leadership Workshop$6,322Palm ManagementDevelopment and facilitation of Investors in People Workshop$6,000Ingenious CommunicationConsultation and delivery of Ninetrack Workshop$1,000Cultural ImprintExecutive Management Group Leadership Retreat$2,450 Simsion Bowles & AssociatesReview and rewrite of the Department's Strategic Information Management Plan$69,143.50Ernst & YoungInformation Technology Audit services$153,404Ernst & YoungBusiness Contingency Plan$23,441.70National Management Education CentreRisk Analysis training$11,100Price Waterhouse UrwickFacilitate conference$4,800Bill Godfrey & AssociatesScenario planning$3,000Brenda FranklinLegislation history$3750.21 Health Care and Services Division ConsultantProjectCost—$University of Western SydneyDevelopment of a classification and costing model for community nursing services$95,420NSW College of NursingDevelopment of a classification and costing model for community nursing services$ 1,673NSW HealthDevelopment of a classification and costing model for community nursing services$ 1,860IBM AustraliaReview of Repatriation Transport Booking System$5,893.90Robert Barnett & AssociatesReview of Repatriation Transport Booking System$6,899Newcastle UniversityPreventative Care Trial$822,137RTK CorporateYounger Veterans Health Study$3,610Green Bay Pty LtdReview of Repatriation Transport Booking System$9,955.50AustligReview of Repatriation Transport Booking System$10,840Robert Barnett & AssociatesDraft of Annual Health Care Plan$8,585.55University of SydneyInstallation of software$ 1,899.50Susan Munter CornmunicationsDevelopment of Notebook of Administrative Arrangements for General Practitioners$4,036Simsion Bowles & AssociatesHealth Care Information$2,930Michael LewisVocational Rehabilitation$ 1,113.75Quantitative EvaluationVocational Rehabilitation$1,000High Performance HealthTelephone Help line—Vietnam Veterans$35,102.50Health InnovationsDevelop best practice model to administer hospital contracting$8,900NSW Therapeutic Assessment GroupRepatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme schedule review$36,925Heather PymRepatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme schedule review$4,823.89Victorian College of PharmacyWound Dressing Review$7,798Pharmaceutical SocietyMediWise Kit development$42,700Hospital Pharmacy ServicesSouth Australia Nursing Home education$2,000School of PharmacyWound Schedule$3,000The Rowland CompanyPortfolio evaluation of Repatriation Private Patent Scheme$23,331Roy Morgan & AssociatesSurvey of Entitled Veterans, War Widows and their Carers$189.060 Compensation and Support Division ConsultantProjectCost—$Cullen Egan Dell LimitedMedical Officer Review Report$ 15,800I-Case InternationalAssistance with various components of the Breakthrough Project$119,540.95Softlaw CorporationAssistance with various components of the Breakthrough Project$7,116Ernst & YoungAssistance with various components of the Breakthrough Project$1,492.50Tactics ConsultingAssistance with various components of the Breakthrough Project$21,600Yve RepinBranch Future Direction Workshop$3,205Yve RepinThink Tank Workshop$1,590Softlaw CorporationIntegration of Statements of Principles into Compensation Claims Processing System$63,052.90F1 SolutionsVietnam Veterans' Mortality Study—Roll data entry system$3,360JetformPilot study of electronic claims lodgement$3,000Tactics ConsultingInformation mapping of Disability Compensation pamphlets$2,587.50Execsec ServiceRepatriation Medical Authority review$534University of Western Australia Chair in Public HealthRepatriation Medical Authority review$2,000 Professor CDJ HolmanMinisterial Appointment to conduct review of the Repatriation Medical Authority and Specialist Medical Review Council$24,225Professor Dennis PearceMinisterial Appointment to conduct review of the Repatriation Medical Authority and Specialist Medical Review Council$40,000 Office of Australian War Graves ConsultantProjectCost—$D.M. Taylor Landscape ArchitectsAssist in design of Australian Corps Memorial Park, Le Hamel, France$34,600Look Film ProductionsProduction of audio support material for Australian Corps Memorial Park, Le Hamel, France$16,940Corlett SculptureMemorial sculpture for Australian Memorial Park, Fromelles, France$160,000 New South Wales State Office ConsultantProjectCost—$Peter Williams & AssociatesAdvice on DVA properties for the purpose of reducing occupancy costs$5,255Palm ManagementFacilitate DVA Business Planning workshop and preparatory workshops for senior management$4,725Tracey Brunstrom & HammondPrepare a report on consolidating space in Centennial Plaza with a view of vacating floors and renegotiating the lease$22,880Michelle Moynihan Pty LtdCoordinate personal development course aimed at middle Management women$1,200Michelle Moynihan Pty LtdCoordinate personal development course aimed at middle management women$7,000Kelly CommunicationsListening Skills Workshop$1,000Kelly CommunicationUsing Your Voice Workshop$1,000Charlie LynnMastering the power of your potential$1,950Accelerated Reading & Learning Pty LtdCourse in accelerated reading skills$3,700Good Decisions Pty LtdCareer development and techniques$1,002 Victoria State Office ConsultantProjectCost—$International Celebrity Management Pty LtdSeries of leadership workshops$7,500Heaney Blaylock & AssociatesWorkshops to advise staff of effects of Agency Agreement$6,063Smith Madden GroupAccommodation Review of State Office$4,500Drake IT SolutionsHigh level technical advice on local database applications$4,400 Queensland State Office ConsultantProjectCost—$Godfrey PembrokeFinancial Planning$900PSMPCContract Law$4,200Heaney Blaylock & AssociatesWorkplace relations$3,675Ingenious CommunicationsTeam profiling$1,405 South Australia State Office ConsultantProjectCost—$CommNetInterview Techniques and Job Applications$9,000Psychology at WorkVocational Assessments$18,000Heaney, Blaylock & AssociatesWorkplace Relations Information Session$3,000 Western Australia State Office ConsultantProjectCost—$INDRADEmployee Assistance Scheme$6,500Maggie Cox & PartnersChange Management Course, Career Transition$28,400Interiors AustraliaUpgrade office accommodation$153,873 Tasmania State Office ConsultantProjectCost- $Nil (2) $2,035,762.	Australia	1,998
Defence Industry, Science and Personnel Mrs Bishop —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) In the Systems Integration Request for Tender, Defence identified 463 applications that potentially required migration to the new Russell systems environment. Of these, 38 were identified as Lotus Notes applications. (2) Yes. Lotus Notes will continue to be used both within Russell and in sites outside Canberra. Staff in Russell will be provided with continuing access to all Lotus Notes applications that are required to be migrated to the new Russell systems environment. (3) Yes. (4) Lotus Notes applications data will be migrated to the new Russell systems environment in several ways: data may be retained on existing servers and those servers relocated to Russell; data may be retained on servers and those servers relocated to a site outside the Russell system boundaries (such as the Defence Computing Bureau in Deakin); Lotus servers may be rationalised and Lotus applications data collocated onto a new server in Russell; Lotus applications data may be converted to a Microsoft format and migrated to the Russell environment; or the Lotus application may no longer be required through being overtaken by rationalised Corporate Support systems which will deliver common support tools throughout Russell (for example, document and file management, and asset management). (a) The cost of dealing with each individual Lotus application will vary according to the method of treatment of each. These costs will not become visible until a decision is made as to the disposition of that application. If the application is not migrated then there will be no cost to the Project. (b) Yes.	Australia	1,998
Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Mr Ruddock —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) The Government supports the maintenance of publicly funded English as a Second Language tuition for migrants under the provisions of the Immigration (Education) Act 1971. However, it believes that contracting out these services to migrants through competitive tendering is the best means by which greater contestability can be introduced into service delivery to the benefit of AMEP clients. Accordingly, it has tendered the provision of AMEP services throughout Australia. (2) AMEP services have in the past been delivered through Memoranda of Understanding with some States and by contractual agreements with tertiary institutions. While ensuring best value for money is an important consideration in tendering the program, and the competitive tendering process allows for the consideration of both the quality of the service and its price, the primary objective in subjecting the market to competition is to achieve improvements to program delivery for clients. (3) AMEP tendering in Victoria and Western Australia was not a trial but the first stage of a systematic tender process which began in 1996. The first stage was completed with the recent award of contracts for the delivery of the AMEP in Victoria and Western Australia over the next five years, subject to review in the third year. The AMEP tender process will be completed nationally in July 1998 when new purchasing arrangements for the AMEP will be in place in all States and Territories. Tenders for Victoria and Western Australia were firstly assessed on their "technical worth", that is the extent to which they met DIMA's operational and policy requirements as described in the Statement of Requirement (SOR). A financial evaluation of each tender was then carried out and the results were combined to produce a value for money rating. In Victoria, all contracts were awarded to regional consortia led by the Adult Multicultural Education Service (AMES Victoria) and also including Swinburne University of Technology, La Trobe University, the Young Women's Christian Association Melbourne (YWCA), the Free Kindergarten Association, Holmesglen Institute of TAFE and Kangan Institute of TAFE. In addition to the above organisations, each consortium includes partnership arrangements with a range of community organisations such as Migrant Resource Centres, Neighbourhood Houses and ethnic organisations. Tuition contracts in Western Australia were won by North Metropolitan TAFE (formerly WA AMES) and Central Metropolitan College of TAFE. The contract for the provision of an Independent Assessment Service was won by the WA Department of Training Overseas Qualifications Unit. In both Victoria and Western Australia the new contracts are with high-quality service providers who offer significantly better client outcomes in terms of improved client choice, flexible tuition options in a wider range of locations, better options for clients to move to and from community-based tuition as appropriate and improved client pathways through the AMEP entitlement and into employment or further training. They also offer good value for money and long-term stability of pricing. (4) AMEP service delivery in NSW is currently the subject of a tender process which was announced in August 1996.	Australia	1,998
Primary Industries and Energy Mr Anderson —The Minister for Resources and Energy has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question: 0 A Subsidiary Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of Japan provides for tuna long line fishing by Japanese vessels in offshore waters (i.e. generally outside 50 nm) of the Australian fishing zone (AFZ). These arrangements have been in place since 1979 and are negotiated annually. (a) Jurisdiction to allow foreign fishing in offshore waters is vested with the Commonwealth Government. (b) Japanese vessels have restricted access to three areas of the AFZ. On the east and west coasts of Australia, they can only operate outside 50 nautical miles (nm) and north of the latitude 34 degrees South. Adjacent to Tasmania Japanese vessels can operate outside of 17 nm. They are further excluded from areas such as marine parks and reserves. (c) The Bilateral Agreement specifies the terms and conditions under which Japanese vessels may take tuna and associated species within the AFZ. The predominant species is yellowfin tuna followed by big-eye tuna and broadbill swordfish. Southern bluefin tuna (SBT) is also caught in the waters off Tasmania and NSW. Different types of catch restrictions are applied to Japanese vessels in each of the three access regions of the AFZ. On the west coast a maximum of 15 vessels were permitted to operate in 1996/97. In the east coast area, Japanese fishing operations are limited on the basis of vessel, boat day and hook numbers. Under the 1996/97 Agreement, these were 55, 2575 and 7.5 million respectively. Around Tasmania, restrictions are in terms of permitted tonnage for SBT, which for the 1996/97 season was 200 t. In addition, Japan is allowed up to 200 t of SBT as bycatch in the east coast area. All SBT caught by Japanese vessels fishing in the AFZ is acquitted against Japan's national catch allocation granted under the Convention for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT). The global total allowable catch for SBT for the 1996/97 season, which is set by the CCSBT Commission, was 11,750 t, of which 5,265 t was allocated to Australia, 6,065 t to Japan and 420 t to New Zealand. (d) For the 1996/97 bilateral access season the value of catch taken by the Japanese fleet operating in the AFZ has been estimated at $30.2 million. The value of catch varies annually depending on the restrictions Australia places on the Japanese fleet, how much fishing effort Japan applies in the AFZ within those restrictions and seasonal variations in fishing conditions. (e) For a shortened five month access period in 1997, the Australian Government was paid $3.4 million, a fee which compares favourably to previous full year access fees, which the Agreement normally provides for. (f) The activities of Japanese fishing vessels in the AFZ are under strict controls. Japanese longline vessels are subject to daily monitoring of catch and effort through electronic vessel monitoring systems and the requirement to carry specially trained Australian fisheries observers on a regular basis. The on-board observer programme covers between 10 and 50% of all fishing trips by Japanese vessels, dependent on the fishing region. Observers act to validate the vessels' daily catch and effort reporting, as well as noting any incidental bycatch or other impacts the permitted fishing activity may have on the marine environment. (g) Australia's current policy regarding foreign fishing is linked to its international rights and obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Under UNCLOS Australia will consider applications for foreign fishing vessel access to fisheries stocks which are not fully utilised by the domestic fishery. Where foreign fishing operations are permitted the main objective is to maximise genuine, tangible and assessable benefits to Australia. Presently, the only licensed foreign fishing activity in the AFZ is that of the Japanese under the Subsidiary Agreement. In regard to tuna longlining, the domestic industry does not yet possess the capacity to fully utilise the tuna and billfish stocks within the AFZ. The Australian Government considers that while this is the case, there are a number of benefits for Australia in permitting access by Japanese fishing vessels to our zone. These include direct financial returns, co-operative research projects, fisheries data provisions, technology transfer opportunities for Australian fishers and a substantial in port expenditure by visiting Japanese vessels. However, Australia's long-term policy aim is to progressively replace Japanese access with domestic operations in the AFZ. The Government has a strategy of enabling domestic expansion (within sustainable limits) whilst reducing the effort that Japan can deploy in the AFZ.	Australia	1,998
Health and Family Services Dr Wooldridge —The Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs has provided the following information to the honourable member's question: 0 (1) The "Director" is defined in the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 to mean the Director of National Parks and Wildlife and does not have a specific function under section 50(1A) of the Land Rights Act. The purpose of section 50(1A) was to allow for land proclaimed as National Park in the Alligator Rivers Area and vested in the Director, to be deemed unalienated Crown land for the purposes of the Land Rights Act. This allows National Parks and reserves proclaimed in the Alligator Rivers area to be claimed by Aboriginal people claiming traditional ownership to them. Indeed, a number of areas have been granted by the Minister in Kakadu National Park under highly acclaimed and successful joint management arrangements with the Aboriginal traditional owners. The Director does however have functions under section 16 of the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act 1975 to manage these areas proclaimed by the Governor-General as National Park in the Alligator Rivers Area. Sections 17, 17A to 17F, 18, 19 and 20 set out the powers of the Director in relation to these areas. (2) It is assumed that the question refers to subsection 50(3) rather than section 53. From when the Land Rights Act commenced on 26 January 1977 to 30 June 1997, Aboriginal Land Commissioners have submitted 51 Land Claim reports to the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs. The information that the Honorable Member seeks about the dates when these reports were made and which claims the reports relate to, is contained in the report of the Aboriginal Land Commissioner's Annual Report tabled in Parliament every year. A report for 1996-7 is expected to be tabled shortly. However the following list has been prepared by ATSIC based on previous Annual Reports and other sources: Inquiries completed and reports submitted by Commissioners Report No.Claim No.Name of ClaimLand CouncilDate forwarded to Minister11BorroloolaNLC3/3/7822Warlpiri and Kartangarurru-KurintjiCLC4/8/7833Alyawarra and KaititjaCLC30/11/78429Uluru (Ayers Rock) National Park and Lake Amadeus/LuritjaCLC31/8/79517Yingawunarri (Old Top Springs) MudburaNLC19/10/79621Anmatjirra and Alyawarra (Utopia Pastoral Lease)CLC30/5/80724Lander Warlpiri Anmatjirra (Willowra Pastoral Lease)CLC30/6/8085Limmen BightNLC30/12/80939Finniss RiverNLC22/5/811019Alligator Rivers Stage IINLC2/7/811126Warlmanpa, Warlpiri, Mudbura and WarumunguCLC30/9/8112 &2033Gurindji (Daguragu Station)CLC18/11/81; 4/85137Daly River (Malak Malak)NLC12/3/821425Kaytej, Warlpiri and WarlmanpaNLC26/3/821536Yutpundji Djindiwirritj (Roper Bar)NLC31/3/8216NLC1720Nicholson River (Waanyi/Garawa)NLC26/7/841814Cox River (Alawa/Ngandji)NLC20/11/841940Mount Allan StationCLC14/3/8520 (See Report 12)2158Timber CreekNLC19/4/852257Mount Barkly StationCLC30/5/852346Warlpiri, Kukatja end NgartiCLC18/6/852438Ti Tree Pastoral LeaseCLC30/5/862515MurranjiNLC7/10/862623Tjilla Warlpiri (Chilla Well Pastoral Lease)CLC17/7/872713 Jawoyn (Katherine Area)NLC6/10/872844 Lake AmadeusCLC23/6/882969 Mataranka AreaNLC14/12/883031 Kidman Springs/Jasper GorgeNLC31/3/893122 WarumunguCLC8/7/88 3295 McLaren CreekCLC28/2/903365 Garawa/Mugularrangu (Robinson River)NLC14/3/903442 Wakaya/AlyawarreCLC8/5/903599 Bilinara (Coolibah-Wave Hill Stock Routes)NLC21/6/9036107 Stokes RangeNLC28/6/903732 Upper DalyNLC10/8/89; 8/2/90; 22/3/903843Western DesertCLC24/9/903967FinkeCLC31/10/904037Kenbi (Cox Peninsula)NLCFederal Court referred back to ALC41126North-West Simpson DesertCLC6/9/9142124Tanami DownsCLC30/3/924379Yurrkuru (Brookes Soak)CLC10/4/924480Harts RangeCLC20/5/9245134North Simpson DesertCLC29/9/924645AmanbidjiNLC9/10/9247137 and 140Ngaliwurru/Nungali (Fitzroy Pastoral Lease) and Victoria River (Bed and Banks)NLC22/12/9348*111 and 142Jawoyn (Gimbat Area) and Alligator Rivers Area III (Gimbat Resumption—Waterfall Creek) (No. 2) RepeatNLC28/6/954930Warnarrwarnarr Barranyi (Borroloola No. 2)NLC26/3/9650133Malngin and Nyinin claim to Mistake CreekCLC18/6/9651135Warlmanpa (Muckaty pastoral lease)NLC18/3/97 Report 16 publishes seven decisions on procedural and jurisdictional issues arising in Kenbi (Cox Peninsula) Land Claim (No. 37) between 1979 and 1982. Refer Item A. * Report No. 48, relating to the Jawoyn (Gimbat Area) Land Claim No. 111, dealt with part only of the Alligator Rivers Area III (Gimbat—Goodparla) Land Claim No. 111. Refer Item A and see note to claim No. 111 in list of land claims. Details of Item A Inquiries commenced but not completed Claim No..Name of ClaimLand Council37Kenbi (Cox Peninsula)NLC48Palm ValleyCLC67FinkeCLC111*Alligator Rivers Area III (Gimbat—Goodparla)NLC143Loves CreekCLC146AlcootaCLC156WangkangurruCLC Finding in Report No. 40 set aside by Federal Court of Australia and claim referred back to a Land Commissioner to be heard and decided according to law Report No. 39 dealt with part of the land claimed; other parts were scheduled and the railway reserve remains subject to the claim * Report No. 48 related to parts of the land claimed. See note to claim No. 111 in list of land claims. These reports, although not required to be tabled in Parliament under the Land Rights Act, are by convention usually tabled by the Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and should be held in the Parliamentary library. (3) No.	Australia	1,998
Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Mr Ruddock —The Minister for Social Security has provided the following answer to the honourable member's question: 0 (1) The Department of Social Security allocates payments to the States under the Aboriginal Rental Housing Program (ARHP) a tied funding program under the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement (CSHA). These funds are administered by State and Northern Territory Governments. The ARHP has been used predominantly for the acquisition of additional housing stock, either as public rental housing for indigenous tenants, or housing which is owned and managed by indigenous housing organisations. Indigenous people have access to the range of payment types delivered by Centrelink on behalf of the Department of Social Security. Centrelink has a number of service delivery strategies to ensure that indigenous people have equitable access to Social Security payments and services. These are the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Officer (AILO) scheme, Community Agent Program (CAP), Support Network for Aboriginal Parents (SNAP) and Remote Visiting Teams (RVTs). (2) ARHP funds The following figures are for SA's Rural and Remote Programs (RRP) formerly the Homelands and Community Housing programs, and represent part of the ARHP funds administered by the Aboriginal Housing Unit, SAHT. These funds have been used for housing construction and upgrades and some consultation. The figures are calculated by using the ceiling price for a house in regional SA ($110,000) and multiplying it by the number of houses purchased in Grey Ward. 1994/95—$2,685,000; 1995/96—$2,239,000; 1996/97—$5,472,000. Payments Data on receipt of Social Security payments by Aboriginal persons are based on self-identification, and hence are believed to be understated. The following figures show the number of identified indigenous people in receipt of each payment as at June 1997. The expenditure amounts shown are estimates based on the average amount of payment per customer for Australia for 1996-97. PersonsExpenditureAge Pension66$517,000Disability Support Pension199$1,706,000Wife & Carer Pensions27$193,000Sole Parent Pension308$2,621,000Newstart Allowance440$2,905,000Youth Training Allowance49$230,000Parenting Allowance130$433,000Other pensions/allowances21$165,700Family Payment660$2,293,000Family Tax Payment536$170,000 Centrelink indigenous customer service strategies Two Centrelink Areas administer programs in the electoral division of Grey, Area South Australia (ASA) and in the far north of Grey, Area North Australia (ANA). ASA (funds per annum) 1994-95AILOs$140,998SNAP$43,351CAP$40,208RVTs$47,8201995-96AILOs$149,092SNAP$43,351CAP$62,080RVTs$49,5201996-97AILOs$149,698SNAP$43,351CAP$62,080RVTs$49,520ANA1994-97CAP pa$19,162 An AILO would visit communities in the far north of Grey from time to time, but this is impossible to cost. (3) Funding levels in 1997/98 ARHP$6,062,225PaymentsReliable estimates are notavailable at this level of detail. CentrelinkALOs$152,363SNAP$43,351CAP$81,242RVTs$50,020	Australia	1,998
Attorney-General Mr Williams —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 I am advised that the following areas of the portfolio have provided assistance to Aboriginal persons living in the electoral division of Grey: Attorney-General's Department Legal Aid and Family Services (1) (a) The Commonwealth Community Legal Centre Program provides recurrent funding to the Women's Legal Service South Australia for the provision of legal assistance to indigenous women in South Australia, including the electorate of Grey. (b) The Family Relationships Services Program provides funding to the following organisations in the Grey electorate which provide services to all residents living in the electorate of Grey, and as such are not exclusively for the benefit of Aboriginal People: (i) Relationships Australia South Australia which provides family and relationship counselling in South Australia, including Port Lincoln in the Grey electorate; (ii) the Wesley Uniting Mission which provides family skills training solely to the Grey electorate; and (iii) the Whyalla Counselling Service which provides marriage and relationship education services solely to the Grey electorate. (2) and (3) The table below summarises the funding allocated in 1994/95, 1995/96, 1996/97 and 1997/98, to the organisations mentioned in part (1)(a) and (b) (above): (a) Women's Legal Service South Australia: 1994/951995/961996/971997/98Nil$90,000$88,697$89,215 (b) Relationships Australia, Wesley Uniting Church and Whyalla Counselling Service: 1994/951995/961996/971997/98Relationships Australia South Australia$782,892$794,636$807,352$820,268Wesley Uniting Mission$99,579$101,072$102,688$104,332Whyalla Counselling ServiceNilNil$22,498$30,480 Portfolio Agencies National Native Title Tribunal (1) No specific allocation of financial assistance has been made directly to Aboriginal persons in the electorate of Grey, but assistance has been provided in the form of resources supplied or made available. (a) National Native Title Tribunal Assistance to Applicants Procedures, issued under s123 of the Native Title Act 1993 for the implementation of s78 of the Native Title Act 1993: Assistance to Potential Applicants. These procedures are applicable to all types of applications lodged with the Tribunal (including non-claimants) and as such are not exclusively for the benefit of Aboriginal People. Assistance to Aboriginal persons has been in the form of resources (maps) supplied to applicants, and access to existing Tribunal resources. (b) National Native Title Tribunal Regulations (Amendment) Statutory Rules 1996, No. 186, 4 Regulation 8—Fee Exemptions. These regulations are applicable to all types of applications lodged with the Tribunal (including non-claimants) and as such are not exclusively for the benefit of Aboriginal People. (2) and (3) The table below summarises the total expenditure allocated in 1994/95, 1995/96, 1996/97 and 1997/98, in respect of the procedures and regulations referred to in part 1(a) and (b) above: 1994/951995/961996/971997/98National Native Title Tribunal Assistance to Applicants Procedures—Assistance to ApplicantsNil$491$426NilNational Native Title Tribunal Regulations—Fee ExemptionsNil$1104$736$5000	Australia	1,998
Minister for Regional Development, Territories and Local Government Mr Somlyay —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) There are two programs: . financial assistance grants paid to local governing bodies under the Local Government (Financial Assistance) Act 1995; and . the Local Government Development Program (LGDP). Neither program provides assistance exclusively for Aboriginal persons. For instance, all the coun cils in the electoral division of Grey (including four aboriginal community councils) receive financial assistance. Amongst other reasons, the financial assistance grants are provided by the Commonwealth to: . improve the capacity of local governing bodies to provide their residents with an equitable level of services, and . improve the provision by the local governing bodies of services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities. (2) Assistance to local governing bodies in the electoral division of Grey from 1994-95 to 1996-97 is as follows: Program1994-951995-961996-97$$$Financial Assistance Grants15,975,14616,876,73916,939,595Local Government Development Programnil50,000nil The LGDP project, approved in 1995-96, involves funding Ceduna District Council to formulate a policy framework under which Aboriginal Homelands (or outstations movement) could be facilitated. The project involves detailed research into the local regional issues which have given rise to the motivation for Homelands development. The investigation will be relevant to other geographic areas of South Australia and should be a suitable model for other local government responses in other States. The project is due for completion in March 1998. (3) Assistance to local governing bodies in the electoral division of Grey in 1997-98 is as follows: Program1997-98$Financial Assistance Grants16,854,315Local Government Development Programnil	Australia	1,998
Prime Minister Mr Howard —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 The Native Title Act 1994 was enacted on the assumption that under the common law, the grant of a pastoral lease extinguished native title. The only places in Australia where it was generally believed therefore that native title could continue to exist was vacant Crown land and other Crown land such as national parks and reserves—around 39 per cent of the area of Australia. As a result of the High Court's Wik decision, an additional 40 per cent of Australia consisting of pastoral lease land is potentially claimable as native title land, 79 per cent in all. Because of that assumption, the current Act contains only very limited mechanisms for dealing with native title on `co-existing' tenures—it allows for the grant of mining leases; and for other government acts to be done either by agreement with native title holders or through the compulsory acquisition of native title rights and interests. As compulsory acquisition is not consistent with the continued existence of native title, these limited options are not necessarily appropriate given the wide range of activities which have traditionally been undertaken on pastoral lease land and on other co-existing tenures. Moreover, under the current Act, unless there is agreement with native title holders, the only means available to a government to allow mining activity (including renewals of current mining leases) or allow development or to allow other activity for the benefit of third parties (which requires the acquisition of native title rights and interests) on any of the 79 per cent which may be subject to native title is to go through the right to negotiate process. In its practical application, the right to negotiate can amount to a significant constraint, and in some cases an effective veto, on these activities in the light of the delay and expense it involves, as well as the sheer impracticality of applying it to the thousands of applications for mining and exploration titles that are routinely received by governments throughout Australia. By way of example, in New South Wales there are annually some 7,500 mining titles granted or renewed (7,000 of which are opal mining titles). 7,300 of these are on pastoral lease land. In Western Australia, the average number of titles granted or renewed in the period 1994 to 1996 was around 3,300, over 2,200 of which were over pastoral lease land. (a) It is not possible to provide a comprehensive figure for the number of parcels of land involved in the 79 per cent of Australia that is claimable by potential native title holders as this land includes pastoral lease land, land already held by indigenous people under Commonwealth and State legislation, and various categories of Crown land in all States and Territories. (b)(i), (c), (d),and (e) The other matters in relation to pastoral leases raised in the question are the responsibility of state and territory governments. Information held by the states and territories is not sufficient to enable individual leaseholders to be confidently distinguished from corporate leaseholders or for Australian leaseholders to be distinguished from foreign leaseholders across Australia. However, data from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) farm survey provides some indication of the ownership of pastoral properties. ABARE estimates that in the pastoral zone in 1994-95, 66 percent of the area operated in the zone were operated by families and 34 percent were operated by corporate organisations. ABARE also estimates that in the same year, 3,762 properties in the zone were family-owned and that 259 were corporately-owned. The following information is, however, able to be provided in relation to the pastoral lease area of Australia: Western Australia:561 pastoral leases,94,814,800 hectares,37.5 per cent of Western Australia. South Australia:331 pastoral leases,38,000,000 hectares,38.6 per cent of South Australia. Northern Territory226 pastoral leases,68,205,000 hectares,50.7 per cent of the Northern Territory. Queensland1,526 pastoral leases,86,990,319 hectares,50.3 per cent of Queensland. New South Wales4,250 pastoral leases,29,926,000 hectares,37.3 per cent of New south Wales. Australia6,894 pastoral leases,317,936,119 hectares,41.4 per cent of Australia. Pastoral properties often comprise more than one lease. (b) (ii) Information published by the Australian Survey Land Information Group in 1993 showed the following areas of public land in each state and territory: Queensland12,050,000 hectaresNew South Wales8,560,000 hectaresVictoria7,220,000 hectaresSouth Australia21,760,000 hectaresWestern Australia109,500,000 hectaresNorthern Territory13,790,000 hectaresTasmania4,060,000 hectaresAustralian Capital Territory150,000 hectaresAustralia177,090,000 hectares	Australia	1,998
Defence Mr McLachlan —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 No. Flight operations of the Defence Force Squirrel helicopters have been suspended since 1 September 1997, however, the aircraft have not been grounded and test flying is under way. (a) and (b) The suspension was initially imposed as a result of an accident involving the failure of a component of the rotor system (the Starflex) during a running landing. Although the Starflex issue was dealt with quickly, the accident highlighted further anomalies with hydraulics failure procedures. Following the accident at Fairbairn in March 1997, hydraulics failure procedures were modified to require run-on landings that ensured 15—20 knots through the rotor disk. On subsequent advice from the manufacturer, this proved to be in conflict with the recommended maximum run-on speed of 10 knots; a phenomenon which possibly contributed to the Starflex failure. As a result of the investigation into the March 1997 accident, Navy withdrew its Squirrel Flights embarked in FFG frigates in July 1997. (c) Although the problem with the Starflex was resolved, it was assessed that the aircraft could not be confidently operated due to the possibility of an actual hydraulics failure. A comprehensive flight test schedule is being conducted to determine the safe operating envelope for hydraulics out flight with a tail rotor load compensator fitted in order to re-establish flight operations. The tail rotor load compensator reduces the effort required to maintain lateral control during an hydraulics failure. (d) (i) A qualitative trial (a partially instrumented assessment of the handling of the aircraft by a test pilot), just completed by Navy has indicated that the tail rotor load compensator will sufficiently improve the handling of the aircraft with an hydraulics failure to warrant acquisition and fitment of the equipment to the fleet as soon as possible. The installation is expected to be complete by, conservatively, the end of May 1998 at a cost of $322,000 to the Department of Defence. A quantitative trial (objective assessment of aircraft performance using a fully instrumented Navy test aircraft) has commenced which will determine the limit of the flight envelope and if there is a need for a dual hydraulics system modification for the training aircraft operated by the Australian Defence Force (ADF) Helicopter School. This trial is due to be complete by mid March 1998. Incorporating the dual hydraulics system in the Squirrel will take approximately 18 months from the date of decision. The cost for the modification of all aircraft is $3.197m consisting of $666,750 for development and $2.53m for the equipment and installation. If only the six Navy aircraft are modified with the dual hydraulics system and the remaining 17 aircraft operated by the ADF Helicopter School have the tail rotor load compensator fitted the total cost will be $1.565m, consisting of $666,750 for development, $660,000 for dual hydraulics system modification and $238,000 for the tail rotor load compensator modification. (d) (ii) As the Squirrel aircraft still holds FAA certification, it should be difficult to prove manufacturer's liability for modifications made for military use. (e) Assuming that the current trials reveal that most training tasks can be performed with the installation of a tail rotor load compensator, training using the Squirrel at the ADF Helicopter School could recommence, conservatively, by the end of June 1998, and at the earliest by the end of February 1998. Due to the hazards of over water flight with an hydraulics failure, naval operations at sea would be restricted. The dual hydraulics pack includes a tail rotor load compensator. If a decision is made to fit dual hydraulics systems, the 18 month delay identified above will not affect the return to service for training or restricted naval operations of the Squirrel as the tail rotor load compensator element of the package can be fitted without the timely development required for the other elements of the dual hydraulics system. Training programs have been modified to minimise the impacts of not having the Squirrel available for basic helicopter pilot training, instructor pilot training and basic loadmaster training. In the short term, no courses have been cancelled. Loadmasters are being trained in Townsville using Iroquois from 5 Aviation Regiment, instructor training is being conducted in Canberra using Kiowas brought out of storage, and the current basic helicopter pilots course will be delayed by three months, with training commencing at Oakey on Kiowa and Iroquois on 12 January 1998. The above course of action is temporary and is based on the Squirrel being ready to recommence training by July 1998. Withdrawal of the embarked Navy Squirrel Flights has meant that in the second half of 1997, two less ships have had embarked flights, while a third was due to have embarked in early 1998. Squirrel continuation training and shore based support to the Fleet has not occurred since the suspension in September 1997. Aircrew have maintained a degree of currency of other aircraft in the interim. Following the quantitative trial, Navy expects to be able to resume the important deck-landing training in March 1998 with ships off the coast. Operational embarked flights are not expected to go back to sea until mid 1999 when a dual hydraulics system is fitted.	Australia	1,998
Defence Mr McLachlan —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) (a) Purchase Order FP 790687 was raised in order to pay the Defence Housing Authority (DHA) the balance of its interest in the Willoughby Army Reserve Depot, Sydney. The DHA interest comprised four houses adjoining the Depot. Defence paid DHA a total of $1,560,000 under a revenue sharing arrangement whereby both the Defence site and the DHA houses were to be sold as a combined lot and the revenue split in proportion to the agreed valuations. (b) Purchase Order FP 790216 was originally approved to a value of $10,000 in September 1996 to fund the engagement of Minter Ellison to provide legal advice for disposal planning at HMAS Platypus. The Purchase Order was increased to $19,000 in April 1997. A second increase of $21,000 to $40,000 was approved in June 1997. This increase was required for additional funds for continuing advice in regard to environmental remediation, title searches, the Sydney Regional Environmental Plan, and right-of-way and access issues. (c) The original purchase order was for $391,222.15 for the development of masterplanning options for the $133.1 million Lavarack Barracks Redevelopment Stage 2 project. A variation of $62,221.15 was approved to develop living-in accommodation options. The development of these options included architectural, cost estimating and masterplanning services. (d) Purchase Order FP 790216 was originally approved to a value of $10,000 in September 1996 to fund the engagement of Minter Ellison to provide legal advice for disposal planning at HMAS Platypus. The Purchase Order was increased to $19,000 in April 1997. This increase was required for additional funds to meet the costs of additional advice in regard to the contamination and site remediation plan, title searches for two adjoining properties, a Registrar General application, and other miscellaneous costs including the attendance at meetings. (e) The Beecroft environmental and services advice Purchase Order covered costs associated with the provision by Environment Australia (Biodiversity Group) of environmental management and advisory services on the Naval Gunnery Support Range, Beecroft Peninsula, NSW. Items incurring the expenditure were: . environmental research and survey (eg mangrove protection, fire management plans, water sampling); . Repairs, maintenance and construction work (eg Aboriginal site protection, weed management and revegetation programs); . Salaries and associated personnel costs; and . Administration and operational expenses. (2) The Planning Manager for HMAS Platypus, National Project Consultants, is coordinating and managing the planning team and preparing an application for development consent of the HMAS Platypus site. National Project Consultants is a member of the Defence Sydney Planning Manager panel and was appointed following the resignation of the original Planning Manager. The Purchase Order funds all fees of the planning team to undertake a full site assessment and prepare development concepts for the site. (3) (a) The RMC Duntroon Ovals Upgrade was part of a Government approved scope of works, as part of the RMC Redevelopment Stage 2 Project. The amount of $63,490 was a variation paid to Woden Contractors to cover the cost of additional soil blending, gypsum and fertilisers needed to improve the quality of the soil on the site. The soil was tested prior to the commencement of the project and these results indicated a better soil quality than was actually found. This was regarded as a latent defect. (b) Purchase Order FP7A4185 is one of three purchase orders to SEQEB (South East Queensland Electricity Board) for the upgrading of the power supply to Gallipoli Barracks, Enoggera. Gallipoli Barracks has had extensive capital investment over the past few years and, in line with community standards, has seen a substantial increase in the demand for power. This Purchase Order catered for the sub-station supplying the Deployable Joint Force Headquarters building which was recently refurbished. As for the remainder of the Barracks, the increased demand for power has been brought about as a consequence of improved technology in the workplace. The power upgrading project was cost capped at $1.22 million. (c) The Oakey water supply Purchase Order relates to a negotiated upfront capital contribution of $1.6 million to the Jondaryan Shire Council for supply of water from the Toowoomba City Council system, in return for 30 years exemption from annual capital water supply infrastructure charges. The current water supply is reliant on groundwater for which the capacity and quality is deteriorating. The capital contribution was approved after a study of funding options and the development of a business case. (d) The Townsville Army Aviation Works Purchase Order covers the Managing Contractor's (Thiess Contractors Pty Ltd) remuneration. The remuneration comprises a management fee which is to provide for the Managing Contractor's off-site overheads and profit margin in relation to the project and the managing contractor's sum which is the lump sum payable for performance by the Managing Contractor of the Managing Contractor's Work. (e) The Oakey water—hydraulic services and upgrade Purchase Order was for the construction of on-base water reticulation system which included fire and drinking water. (4) Purchase Order F850001RF was raised for $100,000 not $1,000,000. The Purchase Order was raised as a `blanket order' to cover future unplanned minor maintenance tasks such as repairs to leaking cisterns, burst water pipes, electrical faults etc which are not able to be foreseen and included in a planned maintenance program. In excess of 230 minor repair works have been undertaken under this Purchase Order at a total cost of $99,997. (5) Urgent Unforeseen Maintenance is a defined Account Group. No changes are proposed as unplanned and unforeseen maintenance will always occur and is normal in any asset.	Australia	1,998
Mr Martyn Evans asked the Minister for Industry, Science and Tourism, upon notice, on 1 December 1997: (1) What has research and development of Pixelgram and Exelgram technologies cost the CSIRO to the date of answering this question. (2) Will the CSIRO continue to fund research and development of the technologies; if so, what is the estimated future expenditure. (3) Has the CSIRO been involved in litigation concerning the technologies; if so, (a) what legal expenses has the CSIRO incurred since 1 January 1991, (b) has the outcome been satisfactory to the Commonwealth in each case and (c) what are the estimated further legal costs of litigation concerning the technologies. (4) Has the CSIRO incurred legal costs in a dispute with Charter Pacific Corporation Ltd over the Exelgram technology; if so, have the CSIRO's legal costs been examined to ensure that they were properly and responsibly incurred and that the sums involved are reasonable and competitive in the circumstances. (5) Has the CSIRO received royalties from commercial uses of the technologies; if so, what sum did it receive in each financial year it received royalties. (6) Has the CSIRO entered arrangements to further the commercial exploitation of Exelgram technology; if so, (a) by what means, (b) with whom, (c) with what result, and (d) where a licensee or agent is involved, has the CSIRO ensured that no conflict of interest arises between its obligations to exploit the technologies commercially and the licensee's of agent's other interests. (7) Has his attention been drawn to the statement by Dr Malcolm McIntosh, the Chief executive of the CSIRO, to a Senate Estimates Committee hearing on 26 February 1997 that he thought the CSIRO had been massively conned by Charter Pacific in relation to negotiations which led to the settlement of previous litigation between the two organisations; if so, how did he assess the statement. (8) In its negotiations with Charter Pacific concerning the technologies, has the CSIRO had adequate access to competent legal and patent advice which was subsequently considered by senior executives. (9) What attempts has the CSIRO made since 1 October 1996 to resolve existing litigation with Charter Pacific. (10) Has the CSIRO made adequate and reasonable efforts to avoid expenditure on litigation. (11) Did the CSIRO engage or receive reports from a private investigator or person acting in that capacity about the personal or business affairs of directors of Charter Pacific or persons associated with the company; if so, (a) why was the investigation undertaken, (b) when was it undertaken, (c) what did it cost, (d) who was engaged and (e) have the relevant files been retained by CSIRO or a person acting on their behalf. (12) Did the CSIRO record telephone conversations of conferences with officers or employees of Charter Pacific without the knowledge and consent of all participants.	Australia	1,998
Industry, Science and Technology Mr Moore —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) Direct CSIRO expenditure on the Exelgram/Pixelgram project (including legal expenses) from July 1988 to date is $12,689,049. (2) CSIRO has made no firm commitment to the expenditure of funds on further research and development of Pixelgram and Exelgram technologies beyond the current financial year. However, it is expected that the program will continue at least into the financial year 1998/9 at approximately current levels of expenditure which are running at about $1 million per annum in direct expenditure. (3) Yes. (a) The CSIRO's records show a total of $4,080,166 in legal expenses associated with litigation in connection with Exelgram/Pixelgram technologies since 1 January 1991. (b) No. (c) No firm estimates are available but if the matter proceeds to trial the additional costs are likely to exceed $2 million and the CSIRO would expect to recover a substantial part of its total legal costs. (4) Yes: yes. (5) Yes: 1994/95—$65,812; 1995/96—$80,835; 1996/97—190,488; 1997/98—$447,845. (6) Yes: (a), (b), (c) The CSIRO has issued two co-exclusive licences for Pixelgram and Exelgram technologies, one each to Leonhard Kurz GmbH & Co., and Astor Universal. Kurz has secured a contract to apply Exelgram to the Hungarian 10,000 forint banknote and Astor has secured a contract to apply Exelgram to American Express traveller's cheques; (d)The CSIRO's licensees were originally chosen because they were already active foil makers and as such they had, and continue to have, commercial interests which are not necessarily identical to those of the CSIRO. (7) Yes; the statement was made by Dr McIntosh in his capacity as Chief Executive of the CSIRO in answer to a series of questions which had been raised in a Senate Estimates hearing and, because it was a reflection of his views, it was entirely appropriate for Dr McIntosh to make the statement in that context. (8) Yes. (9) CSIRO officers and its legal representatives have had a number of discussions on a "without prejudice" basis with representatives of Charter Pacific; no proposal has emerged from those discussions which the CSIRO would consider to be realistic. However, the CSIRO remains prepared to consider any reasonable offer put forward by Charter Pacific, particularly if it includes a complete severance of relations or some alternative means of preventing further wasteful litigation. (10) The CSIRO is the defendant in legal proceedings brought against it by Charter Pacific and as such it has no choice but to comply with requirements imposed on defendants by legislation and the courts, including in this case very expensive requirements relating to discovery caused by the ambit nature of Charter Pacific's claims. Within these constraints the CSIRO has used all available means to minimise expenditure consistent with the protection of the legitimate interests of the CSIRO, including the need to protect the Exelgram licensing business from breaches of obligations of confidentiality owed to licensees and their customers. (11) No. However, the CSIRO did instruct its solicitors to carry out a due diligence study of Charter Pacific because it was suggested at one time by Charter Pacific that it should become involved in the Exelgram business as more than a passive receiver of potential proceeds from the business. Such an involvement would have required Charter Pacific be given access to highly confidential material and therefore be required to satisfy stringent security and probity standards. The CSIRO has not received any report on these matters. (12) No. On one occasion in November 1995 an officer of CSIRO carried a pocket tape recorder during a meeting with Charter Pacific which was left running for a short part of the meeting without informing other persons present at the meeting but the machine failed to make an intelligible record and the tape was erased shortly afterwards.	Australia	1,998
Defence Industry, Science and Personnel Mrs Bishop —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) and (2) I refer the honourable member to my reply to a Question Without Notice asked by Mr McDougall on 24 September 1997 (as published in the House of Representatives Hansard of 24 September 1997, on pages 8326 and 8327), concerning the Government's decision with regard to the establishment of the Australian Active Service Medal 1945-1975 and its impact on the award of bars to the Vietnam Medal. You would also be aware that on 11 July 1997 I announced the Government's intention to provide recognition of warlike service between 1945 and 1975 with the award of a distinctly Australian medal. I am pleased to say that after further consideration the Government has established the Australian Active Service Medal 1945-75 to recognise those who received, or have an entitlement to, an Imperial General Service Medal for service in the Korean War 1950-1953, the Malayan Emergency 1948-1960, the Indonesian Confrontation 1962-1966 and the Vietnam War. Eligibility will also be extended to those who have received or are entitled to the Vietnam Medal, and to former and current serving members of the Australian Defence Force who are entitled to receive or are recipients of the Vietnam Logistic and Support Medal (VLSM). Since holders of the Vietnam Medal are included in this initiative, bars to the Vietnam Medal will not be awarded to recognise multiple tours of duty. Likewise, the current prohibition which prevents a person who qualifies for the Vietnam Medal also receiving the Vietnam Logistic and Support Medal will be retained.	Australia	1,998
Veterans' Affairs Mr Bruce Scott —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) Yes. Personnel awarded these Medals with Minesweeping or Bomb and Mine Clearance Clasp are assumed to have incurred danger and thus automatically satisfy the criteria for qualifying service for service pension purposes. (2) This information is not available. My Department's client data base does not break down the information sufficiently to determine whether or not qualifying service has been granted in the particular circumstances in part (1). (3) The Naval General Service Medal with relevant clasp was awarded for six months' service in the disposal of bombs and mines. The clasp "Bomb and Mine Clearance 1945-53" was awarded for service ashore in the British Solomon Islands between 3 September 1945 and 28 April 1953, and the clasp "Minesweeping" was awarded for service afloat in the British Solomon Islands between 3 September 1945 and 16 August 1948. Members of the 2nd Bomb Disposal Group who met these criteria were awarded the medals. (4) Those personnel who served in the British Solomon Islands during World War II have operational service status. Those who served from 1945 on and who have the Naval General Service Medal have operational service and qualifying service. No other service in the British Solomon Islands has been declared as operational or warlike by the Department of Defence. (5) No. Service in the British Solomon Islands was not considered by the Department of Defence's Review of Service Entitlement Anomalies as no anomaly was considered to exist. (6) The Government has no intention of making such a change in the foreseeable future. However, you should be aware that those who served in the area are covered for illnesses and injuries by Defence and Commonwealth legislation. Members of the Permanent Forces are covered by the VEA to 2 January 1949 and from then on by the Commonwealth Employees Compensation Act. Those persons who enlisted for service in World War II, and continued to serve under the terms of that enlistment, are covered by the Veterans' Entitlements Act to 20 June 1951 and then by the Commonwealth Employees Compensation Act.	Australia	1,998
Defence Industry, Science and Personnel Mrs Bishop —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) A memorandum of understanding has existed between the Commonwealth of Australia and the National Association of Testing Authorities, Australia (NATA) since 28 July 1988. Under the memorandum, the Commonwealth recognises NATA's important role in testing, standards, certification, accreditation and total quality management, and agrees to promote an appropriate infrastructure, including accreditation, which is internationally recognised in testing and measurement. The memorandum of understanding has recently been renegotiated, and is currently awaiting final consideration by the Minister for Industry, Science and Tourism and NATA. (2) (a) and (b) ADI is a separate corporate entity, which has an independent board of directors responsible for day-to-day management of the company. The shareholder is not privy to details of the Company's day-to-day commercial business. As a general rule, however, NATA accreditation would be applied by ADI when it is necessary by contract unless a waiver of the requirement is agreed by ADI and the client. (3) As agreed under the memorandum of understanding, the Commonwealth would normally specify the use of NATA accredited laboratories for testing required to demonstrate compliance with laws, technical specifications, regulations, purchasing and similar instruments. In such cases, it will incorporate use of NATA accredited laboratories and encourage State governments and other government bodies to do likewise. The Department of Defence reflects these requirements in contractual terms and conditions, and in its policies for the conduct of Test and Evaluation, Calibration and Quality Assurance.	Australia	1,998
Defence Mr McLachlan —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 The following list details the engagements undertaken by the RAAF Roulettes between 1 January and 1 December 1997: DateLocationEventType of Display23 JanGold CoastThe Johnny Walker Golf ClassicBuilt-up Area Display26 JanBrisbaneAustralia Day CelebrationsBuilt-up Area DisplayMelbourneAust Day—Flag Raising CeremonyFlypastKilcundaLobster FestivalFlypastTraralgonLatrobe Community Youth FestivalFlypastMorwellLatrobe Community Youth FestivalFlypastMoeLatrobe Community Youth FestivalFlypast9 FebHanging RockMacedon Ranges & District Motor ClubFull DisplayBendigoAviation Open DayFull Display14-16 FebLauncestonSkyraceFull Display16 FebGeelongKiwanis All Ford DayBuilt-up Area DisplaySandownHolland International FestivalBuilt-up Area Display20-23 FebAvalonAirshow Downunder 97Full Display23 FebHastingsWestern Port FestivalFull Display7-9 MarMelbourneFormula One Grand PrixFull Display15 MarBairnsdaleBairnsdale Riviera FestivalFlypastWerribeeWeerama FestivalFlypast22 MarRAAF WilliamsBeat the RetreatFlypastPort GermeinFestival of the CrabFull DisplayCowellCowell Fly InFull Display23 MarPhillip IslandSuperbike World ChampionshipFull Display29 MarWoomeraBack to Woomera—50th BirthdayFull Display30 MarMangaloreS.A.A.A. Mangalore AirshowFull DisplayPaynesvillePower Boat Race MeetingFlypast4-6 AprSurfers ParadiseIndycar Grand PrixFull Display26 AprMudgeeWings, Wheels and Wine EventFull DisplayCowraCowra Fly InFull Display4 MayLatrobe ValleyWings & Wheels ExpoFull Display18 MayBairnsdaleAustralasian Street Grand PrixFlypast24 Jul Falls CreekVarious Ski RacesAbbreviated Display 1 Aug Falls CreekAge Corporate Ski RacesAbbreviated displayMt BullerWorld Free Style Aerial CompAbbreviated display22 AugCunnamullaFestival of OpalsFull Display23 AugHamilton IslandHamilton Island Race WeekFull Display24 AugCabooltureCaboolture Air SpectacularFull Display5 SepBirdsvilleBirdsville RacesBuilt-up Area Display6-7 SepMaroochydoreAmphibia and Sea SpectacularFull Display15 SepCanberraBattle of Britain FlypastFlypast20 SepMoreeMoree AirshowFull Display21 SepWollongongCity of Wollongong 50th BirthdayFull Display26 SepEmeraldCountry Music SpectacularFlypastWintonOutback FestivalFull Display27-28 SepMareebaMareeba AirshowFull display4 OctSydneyNSW Rugby Union Grand FinalBuilt-up Area Display5 OctPhillip IslandWorld 500cc Motor Cycle Grand PrixFull Display18 OctInverellSapphire City Floral FestivalFull Display22 OctLakes EntranceRemote and Isolated Schools Emergency Services DayFull Display26 OctWhyalla15 Flight SA ATC 25th AnniversaryFull DisplayJamestownJamestown AirshowFull Display2 NovNarromineFestival of LightFull DisplayWaggaWagga AirshowFull Display16 NovWallington Bellarine FestivalFull Display29 NovOrangeOrange Lions Club AirshowFull Display Definitions: 1. Full Display—Normal 13 minute Roulette display. 2. Built-up Area Display—A modification of the normal display. Some manoeuvres are curtailed and aircraft heights raised. 3. Abbreviated Display—Normally the first one-third of the full display. 4. Flypast—Without formation aerobatics.	Australia	1,998
Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs; Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service Dr Kemp —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) The 1996-97 Budget amended the regime of employer incentives to achieve a number of objectives including a common set of incentives for apprentices and trainees based on the level of outcome achieved rather than on time served. As part of the above decision, apprenticeship incentives (including for group training companies) were reduced from $4000 to $2500. As incentives form only one part of the Government's strategy for expansion of entry level training, the 1996-97 budget also introduced the New Apprenticeship reforms to deliver major systemic and structural changes which had been sought by employers. (2) State and Territory Governments via their Training Authorities have responsibility for monitoring trainees and apprentices who are under Contracts of Training. The Commonwealth Government does, however, have an active monitoring regime which may identify any cases of excessive turn over of trainees/apprentices. Some employers have been excluded from receipt of incentives where excessive turnover has been identified. The introduction of Entry Level Training Support Service (ELTSS) providers from 1 May 1998, as part of the new Employment Services Market, will enhance these monitoring arrangements with payment of service fees linked to an agreed level of monitoring and support for employers, trainees and apprentices. As a further measure to encourage retention, the waiting period for payment of incentives for Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) levels 3 and 4 trainees and apprentices and all part time arrangements has been set at 3 months. (3) The unfair dismissal provisions of the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Cth) do not apply to trainees. Some State unfair dismissal legislation may apply to trainees. In addition, the common law and the relevant award or agreement may provide some trainees with limited protection against unfair dismissal. At present there is no legal obligation upon private sector employers to provide an employee with reasons for their dismissal. (4) Inner Northern Group Training Ltd did not lose $30,000 in funding support from the Australian National Training Authority. Inner Northern Group Training Ltd is provided operational support funds under the Commonwealth/ State Joint Policy for Group Training by the Victorian Office of Training and Further Education (OTFE). In 1996/97 Inner North Group Training Ltd received from OTFE $123,500 and in 1997/98 it will receive a further $121,600. Funding under the Joint Policy for group training companies in Victoria is based on $400 for each apprentice and trainee in training as at 30 June. In the case of Inner Northern Group Training Ltd there were 304 apprentices and trainees on that date. All Victorian group training companies were informed by OTFE of the 1997 funding arrangements at a conference held by Group Training Australia-Victoria (GTAV). The Manager of Inner Northern Group Training Ltd, as a member of the Management Committee of GTAV, was also involved in discussions with OTFE regarding the 1997/98 funding arrangements. Inner Northern Group Training Ltd was formally advised of its funding on 25 August 1997 and willingly signed a contract with OTFE on 17 October 1997 for their operational support funds for 1997/98.	Australia	1,998
Mr Laurie Ferguson asked the Minister for Defence Industry, Science and Personnel, upon notice, on 4 December 1997: (1) What are the precise activities in which naval vessels must have engaged to meet the requirements of patrolling off the coast of Malaya in support of operations against terrorists with respect to eligibility for the Naval General Service Medal (NGSM) `Malaya' clasp. (2) Is she able to say how many Royal Navy and Royal New Zealand Navy vessels met the requirement referred to in part (1) between 1948 and 1960. (3) Did the Committee of Inquiry into Defence and Defence Related Awards recommend that the Government continue to pursue with the British Government the eligibility of RAN vessels serving with the Far Eastern Strategic Reserve for the medal; if so, what (a) action has the Government taken and (b) supporting information did it supply to the UK Ministry of Defence. (4) Has her senior adviser written to a number of veterans claiming that authoritative advice has been received from the Royal Navy that no Australian ships rendered qualifying service for the NGSM; if so, (a) on what date was this advice received from the UK and (b) what are the full details of its contents. (5) Do adequate records exist in Australian and UK military archives to verify the exact nature of all service rendered by ships serving with the Far Eastern Strategic Reserve; if so, what is the nature of the records. (6) What action will she take to ensure that thousands of Australian naval Far Eastern Strategic Reserve veterans receive proper recognition for their service.	Australia	1,998
Defence Industry, Science and Personnel Mrs Bishop —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) The NGSM with Clasp `Malaya' is awarded for 28 days service from 28 June 1948 to 31 July 1960 inclusive on ships or craft patrolling off the coast of Malaya in support of operations against bandits. Naval personnel are also eligible for this medal if they were attached, for one day or more, to land-based units in the Federation of Malaya or if they made one journey in a small craft up a river or creek in the Federation of Malaya after 16 June 1948. (2) No; not without further inquiries to the British and New Zealand Governments. (3) Yes; (a) shortly after election to Government, I arranged for Vice Admiral Sir Richard Peek to make representations to an Interdepartmental Committee on Defence Honours and Awards on the eligibility of those Australian service personnel who served on Royal Australian Navy vessels for the NGSM with Clasp `Malaya'. After this meeting the Committee requested that appropriate representations to the Royal Navy be made with a view to expedite the issue; (b) no supporting information was provided as all previous documentation provided in approaches to the British Government by both the Committee of Inquiry into Defence and Defence Related Awards in 1993/94, and the RAN in 1995, was considered adequate. (4) Yes; (a) 11 October 1996; (b) the contents of the First Sea Lord's letter are quote: "Dear Rod Further to my letter of 2 August 1996, my staff have now had time to look into the matter raised by yours of 26 June. I very much regret that we will be unable to let you have the definitive advice you are seeking. As you know, both our Naval Historical Branches looked into the matter in 1995 and neither could find any evidence to substantiate the view that RAN vessels completed the necessary 28 days' service to qualify for the NGSM (Malaya). That said, the Naval Historical Branch here in Whitehall were asked again to dig a little deeper to see if anything further could be unearthed. At the same time, the RN Medal Office in Gosport were asked to consider your question about RN personnel who have received the NGSM (Malaya). I am sorry to say that even after these further efforts the picture is not a lot clearer. The details of servicemen who have been awarded the medal are not held on computer but are contained on personal files, in alphabetical order for officers and by service number for ratings. To obtain the information you have asked for would require a search of every file, and as there are around one million of them you will appreciate that such a search is impracticable. In addition, the Naval Historical Branch have advised that to establish the specific movements of HM Ships ST BRIDE'S BAY, CARDIGAN BAY and WHITESAND BAY over the period in question would involve looking at some 6500 pages of deck logs. Again, the Naval Historical Branch, with only a very small staff, are not in a position to conduct the necessary research. I can confirm, however, that Australian Servicemen were awarded campaign medals under the Imperial Honours and Awards system and would, like everyone else who was awarded the NGSM (Malaya), have had to carry out periods of service under the conditions laid down in Command Paper 7907. This required seagoing personnel to give 28 days' service from 16 June 1948 in ships patrolling off the Malayan coast in support of operations against bandits. I am further advised that records held in the RN Medal Office (as distinct from Naval Historical Branch) indicate that no RN ships entered the qualifying area for a sufficient length of time to qualify for the NGSM (Malaya) between June 1955 and June 1960. It may, therefore, not be unreasonable to conclude that the Commander-in Chief Far East Station did not advise the RAN of the qualification of individual ships because none ever met the criteria. This could well have been because the ships involved in such operations were seldom in action for more than one or two days at a time as part of a patrol that generally lasted for no more than 15-20 ship days per year. To provide absolute proof of this hypothesis would, however, require further lengthy research through the records mentioned above. Clearly, if the RAN were in a position to fund the required work, we would be delighted to assist and provide the necessary support. I am sorry that I cannot be more helpful. With Best Wishes Yours ever Jock" unquote. (5) In Australia, yes; in the UK, not known. Australian records are in the form of ships Records of Proceedings, ships logs, details of ships movements, departmental and Government decision papers, individual personnel records and other relevant archival documents. (6) The Labor Government for 13 years did nothing to acknowledge RAN service in FESR. This Government, in recognising the service of Royal Australian Navy personnel with the Far East Strategic Review, has established the Australian Service Medal 1945-75 with Clasp `FESR' for service between 2 July 1955 and 30 October 1971. To date, some 5,600 awards of the Australian Service Medal with Clasp `FESR' have been issued to RAN personnel who served with the Far East Strategic Reserve. Also, as announced in the May 1997 Budget statement, for the purposes of the Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986, Naval service with the FESR between June 1955 and May 1963 is now classified as operational (not warlike, but rendered in a prescribed area of operations) The effect of this classification is that veterans who incurred an injury or illness that was sustained during, or aggravated by service with the Far East Strategic Reserve, can claim compensation in the form of a disability pension, and treatment of the injury or illness. Additionally, eligibility for the Defence Service Home loans has been extended. The Government considers this package provides tangible recognition for that service.	Australia	1,998
Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs; Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service Dr Kemp —The answer to the honourable members question is as follows: 0 (1) The result of the ballots for the election of staff representatives to the New DEETYA Staff Negotiating Team and the Network Staff Negotiating Team were announced on Wednesday 19 November 1997. The election was conducted by the Australian Electoral Commission through a secret postal ballot. A Senior Officer from the Department was in attendance at the counting of votes with other nominated scrutineers. (2) The Secretary through an All Staff Circular in July 1997 advised staff that each of the Department's certified agreements would be developed directly with staff. Arrangements for staff representation were settled by the Secretary after consideration of the views put by staff during focus groups and other discussions. (3) The Australian Electoral Commission quoted a price of $8238 to conduct the ballot process. This price did not include the cost of return postage at 47 cents per returned envelope. The Department is still to receive a final invoice from the Australian Electoral Commission. (4) The Team members who were selected as staff representatives for the Network Staff Negotiating Team are: . Vivienne Colmer . Heather Merritt . June Whittington . Mike Ward . Mark Lively . Denis Goodwin . Jacqui Carlin . Patrick Shaw The staff representatives selected for the New DEETYA Staff Negotiating Team are: . Kate Le Strange . Vivienne Colmer . Michael Glasson . Jenness Gardner . Evan Hall . Frank Mines . Carole Minney . Bob Bunnett (5) This is irrelevant to the Department. An answer such as this is a matter more appropriately raised with the successful candidates themselves.	Australia	1,998
Mr Martyn Evans asked the Minister for Industry, Science and Tourism, upon notice, on 4 December 1997: (1) Has he, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Resource Management, the Plant Industries Committee or a subcommittee of those committees been advised on the possible risks associated with the use of virus-resistant transgenic plants; if so, (a) what advice was given, (b) by whom and (c) what are their qualifications. (2) Has his attention been drawn to concerns about virus-resistant transgenic plants that were raised at the meeting "Commercialisation of Transgenic Crops: Risk, Benefit and Trade Considerations" held in Canberra in March 1997 and attended by scientists from the CSIRO and members of the Genetic Manipulation Advisory Committee (GMAC). (3) Has his attention also been drawn to the fact that at the meeting referred to in part (2), in sessions held to discuss those concerns, Australian scientists and experts from overseas concluded that the development of virus-resistant transgenic plants had advanced ahead of the research on the possible risks, including risks involving recombinant viruses; if so, when was the Minister made aware. (4) Were guidelines for minimising the risks of using virus-resistant transgenic plants developed at the meeting; if so, has the development of virus-resistant transgenic plants in Commonwealth funded research conformed to the guidelines; if not, on what basis have the possible risks posed by the use of virus-resistant transgenic plants been assessed by the Commonwealth. (5) Has the GMAC considered the possible risks posed by recombinant viruses arising from interactions with transgenic crops above the natural risk posed by recombinant viruses arising in non-transgenic plants; if so, (a) when, (b) what was their conclusion and (c) is the conclusion consistent with the views of the scientists at the meeting referred to in part (2); if not, on what basis was the contrary view taken. (6) Does the GMAC include a practising plant virologist or a scientist expert in plant virus recombination; if not, what external advice was sought in relation to the issues referred to in the preceding parts. (7) Has the GMAC approved the release of virus-resistant transgenic plants that do not conform to the guidelines proposed at the meeting referred to in part (2); if so, (a) what are the details of each approval and (b) are adequate mechanisms in place to accurately assess the risks posed by the virus-resistant transgenic plants for which approval has been granted; if so, what are the mechanisms. (8) Does the GMAC ensure that no member of the committee takes part in discussions or decisions about matters in which they have a research interest either directly or indirectly as an employee; if so, how. (9) Has a member of the GMAC present at committee discussions concerning virus-resistant transgenic plants also been involved in developing a kind of pest-resistant transgenic plant; if so, (a) what kinds of transgenic plants carrying what kinds of transgenes. (10) During the development of new regulations or legislation relating to gene technology, have there been discussions of risks posed by specific kinds of transgenic organisms; if so, (a) what kinds of transgenic organisms and (b) what risks were considered. (11) Did the GMAC or a GMAC member have a role in the discussions and in the development of proposed regulations or legislation referred to in part (10). (12) Were publicly funded organisations or private companies involved with developing genetically modified organisms also involved in the proceedings referred to in part (10); if so, (a) which organisations or companies and (b) what kinds of transgenic organisms are they developing.	Australia	1,998
Industry, Science and Technology Mr Moore —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) The Plant Industries Committee of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Resource Management (SCARM) was advised on the issue of virus-resistant transgenic plants following the meeting `Commercialisation of Transgenic Crops: Risk, Benefit and Trade Considerations' in March 1997. (a) The advice given was that further work appeared to be needed to clarify the potential for a new virus to emerge as a result of the use of virus-resistant transgenic plants, and a recommendation was made that the Cooperative Research Centre for Plant Science prepare an issues paper on the need for such research. (b) The report to the Plant Industries Committee was prepared by an ad hoc Working Group established to report to SCARM on the outcomes of the meeting. (c) The Working Group consisted of representatives from the Bureau of Resource Sciences, CSIRO, the GMAC Secretariat, the Australia New Zealand Food Authority, the Queensland Department of Primary Industries, and Agriculture Victoria. Members of the Working Group had qualifications in fields including agriculture, virology and plant sciences. (2)See answer to (1). (3) No, because this was not concluded at the meeting. (4) No. Possible risks associated with the use of virus-resistant transgenic plants are assessed by GMAC on a case-by-case basis. (5) Yes. (a) On an ongoing basis (during assessment of proposals involving virus-resistant transgenic plants), and specifically at the GMAC Scientific Subcommittee meeting on 1 August 1997. (b) The conclusions of the Scientific Subcommittee on 1 August 1997 were that the use of transgenic plants containing viral genes would not necessarily introduce any risks that were not already present during natural viral infection of plants; that all proposals would be considered on a case-by-case basis; and that any new information on this issue would be taken into account as it became available. (c) See answer to (3). (6) Yes. (7) See answers to (3) and (4). (8) Yes. GMAC members undertake to inform the Chair immediately if they become aware of any possible conflict of interest between their responsibilities as a member and their personal, business or financial interests. GMAC members sign a declaration to this effect on their appointment to the GMAC. (9) Yes. A member of GMAC is involved in work to develop transgenic cotton carrying insect-resistance genes. Another member of GMAC has in the past been involved in work to develop tobacco carrying an insect-resistance gene and white clover with a virus-resistance gene, and is currently involved in work that may lead to development of an aphid-resistant grapevine. No member of GMAC has been present at committee discussions concerning virus-resistant transgenic plants where the member had a conflict of interest. (10) Discussions with the State and Territory Governments on the proposed development of new regulatory arrangements relating to gene technology have recently recommenced; however, they have not yet involved detailed examination of risks posed by specific transgenic organisms. (11) GMAC and other stakeholders have been consulted in the development of proposals for legislation and will be consulted in the development of the legislation and regulations. (12) See answers to (10) and (11).	Australia	1,998
Prime Minister Mr Howard —The answer to the honourable member's question is as follows: 0 (1) The information on State and Territory revenue from gambling in 1995-96 and 1996-97 is shown in the attached tables and is available in the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) publication Taxation Revenue, Australia, 1996-97 (cat no.5506.0). Information on gambling revenue in the current financial year is not available. (2) The Commonwealth Government derived $10 million in taxation revenue from gambling in 1995-96 and the preliminary estimate for 1996-97 is $3 million (ABS cat no. 5506.0), most of which is derived from the licensing of the Christmas Island casino. (3) As I have stated previously, I share the community's concern about the impact of gambling on those who cannot afford to gamble. However, it is the responsibility of the State and Territory governments to determine the extent to which gambling is permitted and promoted in their respective jurisdictions. In doing so, I am sure that the community expects the State and Territory governments to take any adverse impact of gambling and community concerns into account. The Commonwealth Government has no intention of taking specific action. (4) The response to (3) applies equally in respect of the impact on families. ATTACHMENT STATE AND TERRITORY GOVERNMENT REVENUE FROM TAXES ON GAMBLING ($million) 1995-96 NSWVICQLDSAWATASNTACTGovernment lotteries259-1897179-114Private lotteries12298---21-8Gambling machines449509164109---26Casino taxes631107718652158Race betting3261229034451276Not classified7012---1--TOTAL11781051520232189552352 1996-97 (Preliminary Estimates) NSWVICQLDSAWATASNTACTGovernment lotteries245-1867276-105Private lotteries15274---19-7Gambling machines5346261861331--26Casino taxes8612883185931104Race betting3281219251341177Not classified28---1--TOTAL12091157547274170622849 * Total revenue estimates may not be the exact sum of the listed components due to rounding.	Australia	1,998
Yesterday, after question time, the honourable member for Wills (Mr Kelvin Thomson) addressed a question to me about a matter of which I was not aware. I now respond. Yesterday, as I explained, the honourable member for Wills addressed a question concerning a decision by the Presiding Officers in relation to a request for approval for a demonstration to be held by a group of people linking hands around Parliament House, especially in the light of the fact that approval was given last year for a similar demonstration. I have had inquiries made into the matter which related to decisions made by the President of the Senate and by my predecessor, Speaker Halverson. I am advised that last year a request was approved for a group to make a peaceful demonstration by linking hands around the House, on the basis that it was a one-off occasion. In the event, there were insufficient numbers of the group to achieve their aim and they concentrated on the entry points to the building. I understand that, when the request was repeated this week, the group was informed that the appropriate place for demonstrations was in the location set aside for this purpose at the front of the building. I believe that the decision was based on the fact that it would not be possible for a group to link in a circle around Parliament House without the size of the group being such that it would hinder seriously the access of senators and members to the building. The personal safety of demonstrators in the light of heavy vehicular traffic would also be a consideration. I believe that the group agreed to go to the demonstration area and to leave in small numbers in order to walk around the building. While I was not a party to the original decision, it has my endorsement.	Australia	1,998
I move: That the bill be now read a second time. The Public Service Bill 1997 provides a legal framework for Australian Public Service employment which achieves an optimum balance between improved accountability and devolved responsibility so as to maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of the Australian Public Service needed for the 21st century. When the government came to power in 1996 it realised that many of the inefficiencies of the Public Service were not the fault of individual public servants but a systemic failure which has its primary, but not sole, cause in the legal framework and the employment arrangements governing the public service. It was evident that the government needed to change the legislative framework if high performing organisations were to be achieved. We acted quickly to develop new legislation in three areas crucial to the competitiveness of the APS: financial management, workplace relations and the Public Service Bill. We have been successful in implementing two of these, but the third, the Public Service Bill, has been blocked by the Senate. The government will not be deterred from completing its reform of the APS by the short-sighted obstruction of the opposition and minor parties in the Senate. The effect of this obstruction is simply to frustrate the very many people in the Public Service who are keen to press ahead with a reform agenda in the development of which they have had an important role and which they see clearly is essential for building morale and opportunities for the future. This is the same as the bill that was passed by the House of Representatives on 30 October 1997. It had been introduced into the House of Representatives on 26 June 1997 and immediately referred to the Joint Committee of Public Accounts for consideration. The JCPA handed down its report on 29 September 1997. In the report the JCPA supported the need for the 1922 act to be replaced, and favoured the simplification, modernisation and the accessible format of the bill. The committee made twenty recommendations all of which the government accepted either in full or in part. The opposition were, of course, well represented on the JCPA.The legislation was also referred to the Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee which reported to the Senate in early October. The committee largely endorsed many of the JCPA report recommendations, while acknowledging the very brief period in which the committee had to consider the report. The Democrats, however, who did not take up representation on the JCPA, submitted a dissenting report recommending that the bill be withdrawn and rewritten. The government accepted all 20 of the JCPA's recommendations. The government accepted the recommendations in a spirit of compromise, in the belief that all parties, members and senators shared a common goal for a public service that would deliver the best value from public funds to serve the government and the community for the 21st century. Amendments to the bill, in response to the JCPA recommendations, were made to:. strengthen the APS values;. strengthen the references in the bill to merit as a fundamental principle of APS employment by including a definition of merit in relation to the engagement and promotion of APS employees; and. enhance the level of scrutiny and reporting of agency workplace diversity programs. The government amendments were accepted without dissent by the House of Representatives. The legislation was introduced into the Senate on 11 November where the opposition moved 74 amendments to the bill during some 17 hours of debate on 17, 18 and 19 November 1997.The opposition amendments do not recognise the increasing need for APS agencies to be freed from central controls and to adopt employment arrangements which meet their particular needs. This bill provides that flexibility. The pressures for public service reforms have not slackened. The government is determined to bring Public Service employment arrangements into line with community standards to enable the public service to meet market competition and to promote a stronger performance culture. We have already introduced administrative reforms that will come into effect on 15 March 1998. Under these reforms:. departmental secretaries will have greater authority and flexibility to effectively manage their staff;. new Public Service values and a code of conduct for staff will be established through the new regulations;. public accountability will be increased and strengthened; and. protection for whistleblowers raising allegations of code of conduct breaches will be strengthened. The government will also press ahead with reforms and improvements to Public Service workplace relations through the Workplace Relations Act. This is not to suggest that legislative reform is unnecessary. A new bill is essential because there are a number of key areas in the current legislation that are not amenable to simplification by administrative action. For example:. giving employment powers direct to agency heads;. ensuring a secure parliament-endorsed legislative framework for APS values, the new code of conduct and protection of whistleblowers;. removing complex appeals arrangements;. removing inflexible employment categories; and. removal of compulsory age 65 retirement; Therefore, it will be impossible to build a fully coherent, reformed, management structure without legislative change. Cultural change is also necessary. The extent to which the reforms are acknowledged as real changes and embraced by staff and middle management will be an important determinant of the success of the reform process. The existence of a new Public Service Act will be the major contributor to the perception among public servants of real and significant change. The current Public Service Act is over 75 years old and has been amended 100 times. It is complex, prescriptive and out of date. The new bill removes that prescription, is easy to understand and is only 40 pages long. Although there will be some fundamental employment relationships that we cannot change without the new Public Service bill, the government will continue, in the meantime, to use the Workplace Relations Act to make a significant impact on the performance of the APS. As I have stated on a number of occasions, Australia needs a Public Service that can:. position Australia in a global environment to ensure that we are future focused and seeking out the changes that will guarantee our national future;. benchmark itself against all sectors to determine what it does best, what it can improve, and what is more effectively delivered by the market;. provide frank and fearless—and innovative—advice to government; and. access the best service delivery skills, quality and cost, wherever they might reside. Along with reforming workplace relations generally, and the waterfront in particular, achieving a more relevant, efficient and innovative, world class Australian Public Service is a key objective of the government. The government is determined to build on the strengths of—and make even more effective—one of the key institutions supporting Australia's democratic system. The Public Service Bill is therefore an essential part of our reform agenda. I turn now to the terms of the bill itself. The Public Service Bill is a very exciting piece of legislation, aiming to put in place a framework for a high performance Public Service. Alan Kohler, writing in the Melbourne Age, commented on 11 July 1997 that the bill is:. . . the most uncompromising deregulation of the Public Service anywhere in the world. The bill lays down standards for ethical behaviour and impartiality, establishes the first code of conduct for public servants, sets up a process for accountability and scrutiny, and then lets departmental heads run things as if they were corporate chief executives.[It] is one of the great pieces of government employee legislation—simple, clear and powerful. It not only removes prescription and central control but also enhances the accountability framework which the parliament and the community expect of the Public Service. It will enable the Public Service to meet market competition, to benchmark itself more effectively against other sectors and to promote a stronger performance culture. The bill is all about making the Public Service more efficient and effective and delivering better service to both the government and to the public. It gives a message about the expectations of citizens in a democratic system of governance appropriate for the 21st century. What holds the APS together, what creates a unified service, is the shared values and ethos of the Public Service. These are reinforced in the bill by setting out, for the first time, the APS values and a code of conduct for all public servants. This legislative framework of values, conduct and scrutiny provide, for the first time, a coherent statement of the public interest. The community also expects that its Public Service will be subject to the same workplace arrangements as apply to the rest of the work force. The Public Service Bill seeks to achieve this by giving agency heads the same rights, duties and powers as an ordinary employer, thus allowing employment arrangements that will meet the particular needs of each individual workplace. Accordingly, the bill devolves employment powers from the central agencies to agency heads. It does not prescribe process but instead ensures that agency heads are held accountable for their actions. I believe that the bill will be welcomed by those innovative and creative public servants who are actively seeking a higher standard of performance and who are frustrated by the constraints under which they operate. For example, the 1995 Australian workplace industrial relations survey indicated that employees in the Public Service felt disempowered by the highly protected and regulated environment. While formal consultative processes were twice as likely to be in place than in the private sector, public servants did not feel able to make decisions for themselves at the workplace level. They did not have a high level of workplace autonomy. The survey showed that more than twice as many private sector employees recorded high levels of workplace autonomy. Under the Public Service Act 1922 public servants have been working under a piece of legislation more than 75 years old. It is outdated, overly prescriptive and unnecessarily centralist. Workplace flexibility and accountability is limited. Personnel decisions are slow, paper driven and labour intensive. The government is reintroducing this bill unchanged, not because we want an election over it but because we believe this bill as it stands provides the type of Public Service that the government and the Australian community have a right to expect. I commend the bill to the House and present the explanatory memorandum to the bill.	Australia	1,998
I move: That the bill be now read a second time. The Public Employment (Consequential and Transitional) Amendment Bill 1997 deals with the consequential and transitional matters arising from the proposed repeal of the Public Service Act 1922 and its replacement by the legislation set out in the Public Service Bill 1997. This is the same bill that was passed by the House of Representatives on 30 October 1997.In November 1997, the opposition parties in the Senate passed amendments to this bill and the Public Service Bill 1997. The government rejects outright those amendments and is reintroducing this bill to progress the reforms which will allow for a dynamic and flexible public service. Both this bill and the Public Service Bill underwent extensive scrutiny by the Joint Committee of Public Accounts. I am pleased that the committee supported the need for the present act to be replaced and favoured the simplification, modernisation and more accessible format of the new bill. The government adopted, in whole or in part, the twenty recommendations made by the Joint Committee of Public Accounts. The government also gave close consideration to the substantive comments contained in the report but which were not expressed formally as recommendations. Despite the government accepting the recommendations of the committee, the opposition in the Senate went on to dismantle the bill. The opposition amendments did not recognise the increasing need for APS agencies to be freed from central controls and adopt employment arrangements which meet their particular needs while retaining the best characteristics of the APS: integrity, professionalism and accountability. This bill, together with the Public Service Bill 1997, provides that flexibility. I turn now to the terms of the bill itself. The bill sets out certain transitional provisions that are necessary with the introduction of the Public Service Bill. There is a need for provision of transitional arrangements from the old to the new employment framework and a need to validate actions and decisions taken under the old legislation where that action has not been completed. There is also a need to make consequential amendments to the extensive range of legislation which incorporates references to the Public Service Act 1922.The transitional provisions fall into three broad areas. First, it is necessary to set in place conversion arrangements for those who work in the APS. With the removal of the concept of office for APS staff and the creation of a single employment category, officers and employees covered by the existing act are converted to employees in their corresponding agencies with their corresponding classifications. Fixed-term secretaries to departments under the old act will become secretaries of their corresponding departments under the new act. Similarly, the person holding office as the Public Service Commissioner under the existing act will become the Public Service Commissioner under the new act as if she had been appointed under the new act. Second, as the Public Service Bill 1997 is primarily principles based, there are some conditions covered by the Public Service Act 1922 that require transitional arrangements because they will no longer be regulated in the same way. The most important of these are the arrangements governing the rights of return of staff who have left the APS to take up non-APS public employment under the complex legislative provisions of the old act. These staff will be able to return to the APS under the transitional arrangements and, in future, APS employees will be able to move in and out of APS employment, where it is in the interest of the APS, under a simpler model of unpaid leave. Third, there is a need to provide for the continuation of processes already set in train. Action may have commenced under the Public Service Act 1922 or the Merit Protection (Australian Government Employees) Act 1984 that will not be completed by the time the new Public Service Act is proclaimed. I refer to matters such as appointments, promotions, suspensions, transfers and advancements, as well as to appeals, grievances and other reviews of employment decisions. To enable action to be completed, regulations will be made to ensure the continuation of those processes after the new act is proclaimed. The validation of actions and decisions taken under the former legislation will be largely dealt with in regulations. With respect to the consequential amendments, the acts specified in schedule 1 to this bill will be amended or repealed as set out in that schedule. The amendments can be divided into the following categories:. changes in the current provisions relating to staffing to reflect the new employment framework;. removal of obsolete references to the Public Service Board;. consequential amendments to the superannuation legislation, but without any changes in the operation of the schemes;. changes to the role of the Remuneration Tribunal in relation to the remuneration and allowances for secretaries;. removal of cross-references to reciprocal mobility which will now be dealt with by directions of the Public Service Commissioner;. removal of references to the old mobility arrangements set out in part IV of the Public Service Act 1922;. standard translations for common terms in the old act; and. other miscellaneous amendments to ensure appropriate links to the new APS employment framework. The bill also deals with the consequences of devolving the arrangements for setting the salaries of the Senior Executive Service. The link of the remuneration of members of parliament with the SES band 2 minimum salary will be replaced by a link to the classification structure created by the Remuneration Tribunal for certain statutory offices. It is not intended to increase the level of remuneration. Subject to any special requirements in relation to particular consequential amendments, this bill will commence on the same day as the Public Service Act 1997. The proposed amendments have no financial impact. Collectively, the arrangements proposed in this bill will provide the necessary certainty and continuity of administrative and management arrangements for the Australian Public Service. They will enable an orderly devolution of employment powers in the APS and a transition to a less regulated workplace. I commend the bill to the House, and present the explanatory memorandum.	Australia	1,998

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