Tuesday, 1 May 1984 Mr SPEAKER (Hon. Harry Jenkins) took the chair at 2 p.m., and read prayers. Mr HAWKE(Wills-Prime Minister) —I move: That this House expresses its deep regret at the death on 15 April 1984 of Henry Jefferson Percival Bate, a former member of this House for the division of Macarthur from 1949 to 1972 and a former member for Wollondilly in the Parliament of New South Wales from 1938 to 1949, places on record its appreciation of his long and meritorious public service and tenders its profound sympathy to his family in their bereavement. Jeff Bate, who was born in 1906, spent the greater part of his life in politics. His local government service dated from 1927, when he was elected as a councillor for the Eurobodalla Shire. He became a member for the seat of Wollondilly in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1938 and held that seat until he was elected to the House of Representatives for the seat of Macarthur in 1949. While a member of the New South Wales House he saw war service as a member of the 2nd Australian Imperial Force in the Middle East in the early 1940s. During his 23 years as a member of this House he was a member of the Joint Committee on the Broadcasting of Parliamentary Proceedings and participated in an Australian parliamentary mission to Europe in 1968. The dry details of his membership of parliamentary committees and delegations do not reflect the fact that he was a great character, one of those unique specimens occasionally produced by this institution. I understand that his clashes with Sir Robert Menzies in the 1950s and 1960s became the stuff of legend. It is an indication of the rapid turnover of members of this House over the last decade that, on my calculations, only about 20 members now remain here who served in this place with Jeff Bate before 1972. On behalf of the Government I place on record an appreciation of his services and extend our sympathy to his family. Mr PEACOCK(Kooyong-Leader of the Opposition) —We support the motion of condolence moved by the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke). I thank him for his kind words and for his reference to Jeff Bate as a unique individual, which he was. Jeff Bate's active involvement in Australian government spanned four and a half decades. It was interrupted only by leave of absence due to extended military service in the Middle East and New Britain during the Second World War. Over that long period he served in all three levels of government, beginning in 1927 as a shire councillor in the New South Wales countryside which he represented so faithfully. As the Prime Minister said, he was elected as the member for Wollondilly in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1938 and entered the Federal Parliament in 1949 as, I believe, the first member for Macarthur. Many honourable members, past and present, will recall that Jeff Bate brought a keen mind and a unique sense of humour to the Parliament. Above all, he was individualistic and proud of it. His electors will always recall that he ably represented the widely varied interests of the Macarthur region, as did his father before him in the New South Wales Parliament. The longevity of service in the State and Federal parliaments by the Bate family rivals that of Doug and Larry Anthony at the Federal level. On behalf of the Liberal Party I extend condolences to the family of Jeff Bate. Mr SINCLAIR(New England-Leader of the National Party of Australia) —On behalf of the National Party of Australia I would like to be associated with this motion of condolence in memory of the late Jeff Bate. As the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) and the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Peacock) have remarked, he was a character. He served this nation effectively and well at the three levels of government and he served it, of course, in the Army in time of war. He was a character in many ways. Those of us who knew and worked with him perhaps remember best two instances of his parliamentary career. One was the extent to which each year he would marshal people, not only from within the Parliament but also from outside it, and take them around the remote and isolated areas of Australia, particularly the then only just developing new mining areas of the north-west of Western Australia. It was through those initially DC3 and later Fokker Friendship flights that I am sure many members of this place and, indeed, many other Australians first came to know of the great resources that lie in the outback areas of Australia and something of the difficulties of developing them. The second occasion I remember is the all-night sitting when this House first considered the new trade practices legislation back in the 1960s. I remember that Jeff Bate, Bill Wentworth and, if I remember rightly, Jim Killen, who were all back benchers, spoke at length on almost every clause of the Bill. It was only after very protracted consideration that the legislation came into being. Jeff then, as on all other occasions in the Parliament, showed a remarkable measure of persistence and dedication to the cause in which he believed. He was a very proud dairy farmer from that beautiful area of the south coast known as Tilba Tilba. He was a distinguished citizen and one whose memory those of us who knew him will always cherish. To his widow, Dame Zara, and to his children, Margaret Snashall and John Bate and their families, I extend my Party's and my own deepest sympathy. Mr KERIN(Werriwa-Minister for Primary Industry) —I would also like to place on the record my condolence at the passing of Jeff Bate. I spent seven years at least of my life fighting Jeff Bate politically. I grew up in an area where 83 per cent of the electors voted Liberal. With Jeff Bate as Federal member, and Tom Lewis as State member, I thought that was sufficient reason to join the Australian Labor Party. I had the greatest admiration for Jeff Bate, as did my colleague who was the member for Eden-Monaro from 1972 to 1975. When Jeff lost his place in this Parliament he became a friend to both of us, particularly in respect of the people on the south coast. I would also like to reflect on Jeff's great character and his great irreverence. I do not think he would resent my telling a few jokes about him. Stories abound about Jeff Bate and his great sense of publicity. The nation remembers him for these things. I first met Jeff Bate as a boy in 1947 on the family farm. He was trying to get hold of some wheat for my father because after the war it was pretty hard to get wheat for the poultry farm. Jeff Bate, as the local member, helped. He became the member for Macarthur in 1949. I joined the Labor Party in 1965 and that began my period of fighting with him even if only in terms of letters to the editor in local newspapers. In 1969 I became campaign director when Bob Whan ran for the seat of Macarthur. Honourable members will understand my surprise when Jeff Bate married Dame Zara during that period. That certainly made life very difficult for me as a campaign director but we achieved a swing of about 11.9 per cent against Jeff in that election. That sealed his doom with the Liberal Party. As we know, Jeff Bate ran as an Independent in the 1972 Federal election when I became the member for Macarthur. Jeff was never ruined by university education. He was a great individual. He did not have grey or qualified views. He really did understand people. Many of the things he stood for, I stood perfectly against. But in terms of representing the people in Macarthur, I think he probably drove more Ministers mad than most back bench members ever do. The first time I met Jeff when I was a candidate was when I attended a meeting on education in Campbelltown. This is one of the great Bate stories. Jeff came in late-he was usually late for meetings-and sat down beside me, and after a while he asked who I was. I said: 'I am the Labor Party candidate'. He sort of sat back a bit for a while. I saw this thing crawling down his shirt sleeve and on to his thumb. I said: 'Oh, look, Jeff, you have a money spider'. He looked at it with a fair sort of gaze and said: 'Oh, no, that's a tick'. He crushed it and said: 'I think I have another one here. I have been rounding up cows all day'. I was thinking of telling the chairman that the honourable member was tick-ridden but I knew that if I did it would only give more publicity to Jeff because he had a great flair for publicity. My best Bate story, which I remember well, goes to the way he represented his electorate. There is a little post office at Beaumont at one end of the Kangaroo Valley. It was proposed that the telephone exchange at the post office be closed down but Jeff just did not think that this was on. The telephone exchange had about 21 subscribers. However, Jeff was determined that this telephone exchange was going to remain. He got down to, I think, Eber Lane, the Director of Posts and Telegraphs in about 1971. There was a great meeting at which all the people involved turned up. Jeff really put the Director of Posts and Telegraphs on the spot. I think that Mr Lucock, the former member for Lyne, attended that meeting as well. Phil and Jeff had a longstanding friendship. After the meeting was over we went to a beautiful place overlooking the Shoalhaven floodplain. It was a very beautiful house and we were entertained by a charming hostess. After we had had morning tea Mr Lane said to Jeff: 'Where is the toilet?' Jeff turned to our hostess and asked the same question. She said: 'It is just down here'. Mr Lane turned to Jeff and said: 'Are you coming with me Jeff?' Jeff said: 'Ah, no. Look mate, I just love peeing in the bush'. Mr HOLLIS(Macarthur) —As the current member for Macarthur I rise to support the motion of condolence moved by the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke). I never personally met Mr Bate, the former member for Macarthur, but I was aware of his colourful personality. The electorate of Macarthur has changed somewhat from what it was when Mr Bate was the member from 1949 to 1972. Indeed, his family area of Tilba Tilba is now in the electorate of Eden-Monaro. However, a substantial proportion of the electorate along the southern highlands remains the same. Mr Bate is remembered with affection in this area and, indeed, in the Nowra area. Although politically we would be far apart, I recognise that he represented the electorate with affection and devotion and, indeed, hard work. I join with other speakers and the House in expressing on my own behalf and on behalf of the electors of Macarthur condolences to his widow and family. Mr TUCKEY(O'Connor) —I would like to add some thoughts on Jeff Bate because, as the Leader of the National Party of Australia (Mr Sinclair) has informed the House, he was a man who took a lot of his parliamentary colleagues into the remote areas of Western Australia at a time when publicity wise it did not receive the attention that it receives today. He did this to acquaint them with what was going to happen in those areas. Consequently, I came into contact with him many years ago, prior to the iron ore boom in the area of Carnarvon in the north-west where I then resided. Jeff Bate, on his first visit, did not come in a DC3 or an F27 aircraft. He came in a fabric Proctor aircraft flown by Mr Rick New. Jeff had made contact somewhere with Mr New. They had discussed the north west and he had elected to take a flight in what was a fairly unsafe type of aircraft, a Second World War model, in order to come and have a look at the area himself. That was no problem to this man. He wanted to see this area. Because of my local government position at the time, I was there to meet him and to show him some of our town. The town had a one mile jetty from which it was common to catch very large fish. I was showing him the fishing potential of our district. Because I knew there was a run of mulloway, or jewfish as we have named them, I suggested he go out to see how easy it was to catch a fish in the north-west. During our walk on that jetty some 70 fish weighing in excess of 30 pounds, not kilograms, were caught. Jeff was somewhat amazed, but he was less amazed when I bought some of them from the kids on the way up at the going price of 1s 6d a pound and asked him to carry two back the mile length of the jetty. But Jeff was in it and laughed all the way. After that, time and again he brought people to the north-west. As I said, this was before things started to happen and when they began to happen. He was prepared to show the great potential of Australia to his colleagues who resided in less remote areas. I was very grateful for what he did for the north-west and for Western Australia. For that reason, I rose to my feet in his memory. He was a great Australian and we liked both his humorous and serious sides. Question resolved in the affirmative, honourable members standing in their places. Mr SPEAKER —I thank the House. Mr HAWKE(Wills-Prime Minister) —I inform the House that the Treasurer (Mr Keating) left Australia on 23 April to attend the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Amsterdam. Following the Asian Development bank meeting, the Treasurer will visit Paris for ministerial discussions and a meeting with the Secretary-General to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The Minister for Housing and Construction (Mr Hurford) is Acting Treasurer until Mr Keating returns on 5 May. I also inform the House that the Minister for Social Security (Senator Grimes) left Australia on 15 April to visit the United Kingdom, Greece and Italy for negotiations on reciprocal social security arrangements. The Minister for Health (Dr Blewett) is Acting Minister for Social Security until Senator Grimes returns on 5 May. Mr SINCLAIR(New England-Leader of the National Party of Australia) —Before giving my notice of motion, I declare my particular interests in the subject matter of my notice as my home is within the area now about to be investigated by the consultants on behalf of the Army in the New England area. I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: That this House- (1) notes with concern the serious public disquiet in wide areas of New South Wales caused by disclosure of the Government's plans to acquire (a) a 2 million hectare manoeuvre area in the Cobar region, and (b) a 160,000 hectare artillery range and infantry training centre in one of the Uralla-Bundarra, Bathurst- Orange or Dubbo regions; (2) condemns the failure of the Government and specifically the Minister for Defence to adequately inform the people in these affected regions of his Department's plans before commissioning consultants to conduct an environmental impact study on each proposal; (3) calls on the Minister to terminate further consideration of the Bathurst- Orange and Uralla-Bundarra areas and to freeze the current environmental impact study into the Dubbo and Cobar regions until local residents are fully informed by public meetings and otherwise of the Government's plans and given an adequate opportunity to consider and question them; (4) requests the Government to identify further areas which meet defence requirements including areas within the approximate 7 million hectares of forestry reserve and national parks now Crown land in New South Wales; (5) calls on the Minister to make a statement to the House as soon as possible detailing all aspects of the Government's plans; (6) requires the Government to ensure that when an area is finally determined as suitable, full and adequate compensation shall be provided to landholders and other persons affected within 12 months of decision that the area is to acquired ; and (7) expresses its outright opposition to land acquisition which would disrupt vital agricultural industries, destroy the social fabric of long-settled regions and threaten the economic future of thousands of Australian families. The motion will be seconded by my colleague the honourable member for Gwydir (Mr Hunt). Dr THEOPHANOUS(Burke) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: That this House- (1) notes with regret the new policy of the Federal Opposition to sell-off the Australian Industry Development Corporation; (2) reaffirms its support for the positive role of the AIDC in providing public funds for investment in industry; (3) congratulates the AIDC and its staff for their excellent recent performance ; and (4) rejects the Opposition's ill-conceived and dogmatic policy on the AIDC. Mr BRAITHWAITE(Dawson) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: That this House- (1) notes the decision of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to close its television stations at Rockhampton and Townsville, Queensland, thereby depriving north Queensland residents of factual and informative news and current affairs bulletins; (2) notes that each of the stations served a regional population in excess of that served by Canberra's ABC; (3) believes in the importance of localism in both ABC and commercial television programming and feels that such a decision is prejudicing the current inquiry into localism by the Department of Communications; (4) sees this decision as a victory for centralism over local interest; (5) regrets the director's decision as reflecting the Prime Minister's recent unprecedented outburst against the ABC and the bureaucrats' avowed intention over many years to economise by closing down regional services, and (6) calls on the Government to take necessary action to ensure that regional television programs for Rockhamption and Townsville are preserved. Mr RONALD EDWARDS(Stirling) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: That this House- (1) notes that the Western Australian Labor Government is to conduct Australia' s first clinically-controlled trial of the Tronado hyperthermia cancer treatment ; (2) notes that this trial will take 2 years to conduct and will involve 100 patients; (3) notes that this form of treatment has long been advocated by the Honourable John Tonkin, a former Labor Premier of Western Australia; (4) recognises that Tronado hyperthermia treatment has for some time been a matter of controversy with respect to the treatment of cancer, and (5) congratulates the Burke Labor Government for its willingness to clarify uncertainties surrounding Tronado treatment of cancer patients. Mr RUDDOCK(Dundas) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move : That this House- (1) notes that the opening of the new and Permanent Parliament House in January of 1988 is the most significant and important celebration planned for Australia' s Bicentennary celebrations; (2) notes that the ongoing industrial dispute at the Parliament House site, now 11 weeks old, puts at risk the completion of the building on schedule, and there is a prospect that the site may have to be closed; (3) is alarmed at the prospective claims for compensation for time and equipment cost losses as a result of the industrial dispute, and (4) condemns the Government for its failure to use its special relationship with the trade union movement or to take other action available to it to bring to an end this disgraceful situation. Mr SHIPTON(Higgins) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: That this House- (1) notes that- (a) the Government has informed the travel and tourism industry that the uniform regulation of travel agents is a high priority; (b) a working group has been set up following the meeting of Consumer Affairs Ministers in March 1984 to draw up model licencing legislation for the States, and (c) the Minister has made no statement in this House concerning the matter, and (2) accordingly, calls on the Minister for Sport, Recreation and Tourism to give to the House a complete statement concerning the Government's intentions regarding the uniform regulation of travel agents. Mr WELLS(Petrie) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move. That this House- (1) notes that- (a) in 1975, which was the last year of the Whitlam Labor Government, Commonwealth spending on universities and colleges of advanced education was $2, 017m in 1983 values, (b) Commonwealth funding declined during the years of the Liberal-National Party Government, reaching an all-time low for the period of $1,908m in 1982, and (c) since the election of the Hawke Labor Government, funding for the 2 sectors has been increased by $30m to $1,938m and (2) condemns the neglect of tertiary education by the previous Liberal-National Party Government and congratulates the Hawke Labor Government on its moves towards restoration of funding and on its moves to provide 3,000 new places in universities and colleges of advanced education in 1984. Mr CADMAN(Mitchell) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: That this House- (a) condemns the Prime Minister for his- (a) inability to honestly face the promises he made at the last election; (b) tax cuts avoidance; (c) failure to grant reduced petrol prices; (d) deceit regarding sales of Australian beef; and (e) gross exaggeration of prospects for the Australian steel industry; and (b) judges the Prime Minister's word as being unfit to be relied upon in matters of national importance. Mr HODGMAN(Denison) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: That this House deplores the presidential-style assumed by the Prime Minister and, in particular, condemns the Prime Minister for the autocratic and arrogant manner in which he decreed that Australia would now have a new national anthem. Mr ANDREW(Wakefield) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move, and the honourable member for Riverina (Mr Hicks) will second: That this House notes with concern the continued neglect of Australia's water resources by the Minister for Resources and Energy, exemplified by the reduction of the appropriation of $500,000 in Division 520.8.02 for water research in 1983 -84 by 26 per cent to $370,000. Mr SPEAKER —With regard to notices of motion, I remind members of the House that there are general guidelines for putting a substantive motion before the House. There is a restriction on the information and argument that can be contained in such a notice. I have allowed some latitude today because we have been away for three weeks and honourable members perhaps have forgotten the general guidelines for notices of motion. I will observe them more strictly tomorrow. Mr PEACOCK —My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade. At what stage did the Minister first learn of the allegedly major steel trade program put by the Prime Minister to the Chinese Government? Mr LIONEL BOWEN —When Chinese Premier Zhao was here I discussed with him the question of trade potential. One aspect then mentioned was the opportunity for China to improve its capacity and technology in regard to steel, as well as its interest in what we might call our basic resources. So the matter goes back as far as that. When the Prime Minister when to China he was able to build on the visit of Premier Zhao in specific terms. The honourable gentleman will be delighted to know that the Minister of Metallurgical Industry, Minister Li, will be here on the tenth of this month to deal in specific terms with improving opportunities for increased trade, particularly in steel, between our two countries. He will be visiting a number of areas, not the least of which is Western Australia. It is also significant that China is anxious to double its steel production. That impression was given to a meeting with our officials held recently in China. My Department participated in that meeting. Those preliminary meetings clearly indicate that there are excellent prospects for improving substantially trade between our two countries, not only in steel but also in a number of other areas. The Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd is not the only company interested. Conzinc Riotinto of Australia Ltd is also expressing significant interest. One matter of interest to us in the whole area of trade is that China is a very large market and is about to increase substantially its importatation of technology. In that sense there are significant opportunities for our own experts in steel modernisation also to visit China to have discussions about whether the Chinese steel plants can be modernised with our expertise. So it covers a wide range of matters not only related to the question of iron ore or to the visits of the Chinese Premier, not only related to the fact that the Chinese Minister of Metallurgical Industry will be here in a few days time, but also to the fact that there will be a very important meeting of Australian businessmen and Chinese officials in Beijing on 10 June. Mr SIMMONS —My question is directed to the Minister for Defence. In view of the outrageous and inflammatory remarks made at the weekend by the Leader of the National Party of Australia, will the Minister please explain to the House the Australian Army's proposals for the acquisition of large tracts of land in New South Wales, the time scale for acquisition of this land and the steps that will be taken to safeguard the rights of the property owners involved? Mr SCHOLES —The Leader of the National Party is up to his old tricks. He says different things in different places. I have no doubt that, based on his most recent remarks, he is again making late entries in his diary. The facts are that during the period when this matter was under consideration great pains were taken by the present Opposition to ensure that the public was not informed of what it was up to. The need for new training areas for the Army in New South Wales is well known. Such areas are crucial to the capability of the Australian Army to carry out its training functions. The Leader of the National Party is now denying knowledge of this process until the last days in which he was in office. It may be that during the period when he was Minister for Defence he did not show any interest in his Department and therefore did not seek information even when it affected his own electorate. But I doubt that and I doubt that the Army, when it gave him his initial briefing as Minister, omitted to tell him of matters which related to his electorate and the vital future needs of the Army for training areas in New South Wales. It should be understood in this House that this morning the Leader of the National Party said that he was told, in a briefing by the Army, shortly before the change of government, of the proposed areas for the artillery range. If that was when he was told, he should talk to his former colleague, the then Minister for Defence, who was not so coy about the Cobar area because a confidential briefing on that was given to the member for that area in January 1982; but no announcements were made. I would be very surprised if similar courtesies were not given to the right honourable member for New England in respect of his electorate, especially as he was shortly to become the Minister for Defence; that was being canvassed fairly widely at the time. The Army has been seeking for some considerable time new areas to provide adequate accommodation for training. In fact its initial studies started in 1971 . They were completed and a proposition was put to the New South Wales Government which was rejected in 1977. Subsequently, a joint New South Wales- Army team was established and later a committee was established to examine possible areas for an appropriate area where artillery training could take place , where adequate safety provisions would be available and the range of new artillery, now entering the Australian Army, could be catered for. In February 1982 the then Minister for Defence and the then Minister assisting the Minister for Defence, the honourable member for Bass, met the New South Wales Premier and discussed the project and joint studies were undertaken to find suitable locations, the criteria having been established by the Commonwealth prior to that and the New South Wales Government having indicated earlier that it was prepared to co-operate in finding suitable accommodation. In 1979 the Commonwealth and New South Wales governments agreed to vacate the School of Artillery at North Head as soon as another suitable site became available. That, coupled with the need for a new artillery range arising from the totally unsafe situation which had developed in the Holsworthy area due to lack of a range, the danger to aircraft from ricocheting shells and the urban encroachment, made it unsuitable both for training and artillery firings. The former Government was fully aware of and was informed at all times about developments. In fact, it proposed the re-siting of that range, and it was a proper decision in the defence interests of this country, which it talks about but which, when it gets down to tin tacks, it does not want to know about. I think we ought to deal with the proposition that the right honourable gentleman did not know about this proposal until just before the change of government. The change of government took place in March 1983. The Premier of New South Wales wrote to the Minister detailing the conclusions of the joint study and proposing a joint Press release. I would be very surprised if his own Department had not appraised him of the details of that joint study prior to his receiving a letter from the Premier of New South Wales, and I would be very surprised if he had not shown an interest in this matter prior to receiving that letter. That letter was received in November 1982. He did absolutely nothing about it. He did not release a Press statement or do anything else that is on the record. He certainly kept it a secret. I note his comment this morning, that he was concerned that public knowledge of the proposal might arouse public uncertainty and it should be delayed until after the election. It was delayed until after the election for the simple reason that he did not want it known, nor did the then Government want it known, because they would then have to answer for what was a perfectly justifiable proposal but a proposal that the National Party could not front up to. The Australian Army has a real need for training areas. It has a real need for a major training area in New South Wales. The areas which are currently under discussion and consideration were areas determined in the period in office of the former Government but which the former Government refused to announce or discuss in public. Certainly neither of the areas was rejected and certainly the honourable member for Bass and the former Minister for Defence were involved in the discussions leading up to the examination and recommendations, and they presented to the New South Wales Government the requirements of the Australian Army and the Australian Government in respect of the sites to be considered and the types of sites which would be acceptable. I think I should make one other point. The right honourable gentleman is talking about lack of information. Certainly between February 1982 and the change of government the public was not told anything. On 24 March, which was two weeks after I took office, the Premier of New South Wales and I made a public statement on this matter and indicated the areas which were to be examined. That was over a year ago and it is only now that the right honourable member for New England has found that this matter is something on which he might be able to cash in politically. Briefings were given to the Bathurst/Orange Development Corporation in May 1983, the Mayor and the Town Clerk of Tamworth in June 1983, and the Dubbo and Cobar Councils in November 1983. We did enter into discussions. We did not seek to keep the matter under wraps, like the previous Government. If honourable gentlemen opposite have any consideration for the defence of this country and the needs of the defence forces of this country, they should stop shedding crocodile tears over bar gossip and start telling the truth. Mr SINCLAIR —I ask the Minister for Defence: What areas did he ask to be investigated, other than those now designated, before the release of the public statement made by him and the Premier of New South Wales on 24 March 1983? Why has he refused either to be available himself or to have representatives of his Department available for public exposure of the proposals at the meetings now being held in various areas around Australia? Mr SCHOLES —One would have thought that the shadow Minister for Defence would have at least known that last weekend I was not in Australia and it would have been very difficult for me to accept invitations. Mr Sinclair —Your representatives? Mr SCHOLES —The Australian Army provided representatives, at the request of the honourable member for Gwydir, for public meetings in the Cobar area. I have already said that briefings were given to the relevant local government bodies. Mr Sinclair —When was that? Mr SCHOLES —Over a period of six months following the announcement. The current situation is that consultants are seeking to identify possible sites. Mr Sinclair —Why consultants? Are you not responsible? Mr SCHOLES —Really, the crux of the right honourable gentleman's question is that in office he let the matter go ahead, but in opposition he thinks he can score a few cheap political points. That is his normal practice. He hid the matter during the election campaign because he would have lost his seat if he had not, and his present performance would suggest that he is scared stiff he will lose his seat now. Mr BEDDALL —Will the Prime Minister give an assurance that the Government will reject calls to forgo income tax reductions in this year's Budget in favour of an even lower Budget deficit? MR HAWKE —The Government will aim to bring about significant reductions in personal income tax in the next Budget in the context of a lower Budget deficit. We regard both of those objectives as important. We will seek to strike the right balance between them. I ask the House to contrast what this Government will do in regard to tax reductions with the announcement by the Opposition. I ask the House particularly to note what the Deputy Leader of the Opposition had to say on 19 March on the AM program. He said: I think if the Government is faced with a choice between giving a tax cut of, say, $1 billion and having a deficit that is one billion lower than it might otherwise be, I think it ought to choose the latter. On 27 March the Deputy Leader of the Opposition had this to say: If the Government cannot find room for tax cuts by reducing Government spending then greater priority should be given to a reduction in the Budget deficit than to taxation cuts. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition repeated the statement at the launching of the coalition's economic policy on 12 April. It is quite clear that if the Deputy Leader of the Opposition had his way there would be no income tax cuts in this year's Budget. The Opposition clearly stands for higher taxation. It is opposed to tax cuts. I say it is opposed to tax cuts, but there is one exception we must make when we say that the Opposition is opposed to tax cuts. That is, of course, in respect of tax avoiders because the Opposition is all for tax cuts for tax avoiders. By blocking the bottom of the harbour legislation in the Senate the Opposition has already given the tax cheats of Australia a golden handshake of half a billion dollars. In this area, it should also be understood that the Opposition's policy is to reduce real wages, to depress the living standards of all Australians, because it is opposed to indexation. It is very interesting to note in this context that the Opposition, so it is reported, will have a retreat at Thredbo this coming weekend. Mr Oakes, writing in the Sunday Telegraph on 22 April, reported that, according to senior Liberal sources, all Liberals were to be invited to Thredbo, and they were to pay $400 a couple. According to the senior Liberal sources quoted by Mr Oakes, this retreat at Thredbo is to explain to the Liberals and the National Party of Australia just what the Opposition's policies mean and to try to get the members of the Opposition to support the policies that have been announced. It strains the imagination how the Leader of the Opposition will get all the Liberals behind him to support the virtues of a policy of no tax cuts except for tax avoiders and a policy of reducing wages for the people of Australia. Those are the policies the Leader of the Opposition will try to explain to Liberal members at Thredbo. If it is going to take two days for the Opposition to explain its policies to its own members and to try to get its members to adopt and give support to policies such as that, I ask honourable members to imagine just how long it will take to get the people of Australia to cop that sort of nonsense. Honourable members opposite will be threadbare at Thredbo, and most of them will be thrown out at the next election. Mr HOWARD —My question is addressed to the Minister for Finance and is supplementary to the question just asked of the Prime Minister. I refer the Minister for Finance to his statement to a meeting of accountants in Sydney of 16 April this year that tax avoidance was no longer an issue in Australia. Mr Tuckey —That is his personal dream. Mr HOWARD —Except, of course, the Dawkins tax avoidance scheme. His statement, as reported twice on Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio, was that tax avoidance was 'no longer an issue in Australia' and that the Government and the accountancy profession had put the question of tax avoidance behind them. Does the Minister rest that claim on some legislation passed by the present Government? If so, would he mind identifying the legislation? Lastly, how does the Minister reconcile that declaration with the statement just made by the Prime Minister that tax avoidance would be a major issue in the next election campaign. Mr DAWKINS —I would have thought that tax avoidance was not an issue which the discredited former Treasurer would want to address our attention to or, indeed, the attention of the Australian people. What I pointed out to a meeting of accountants in Sydney and what I have pointed out on earlier occasions is that our tax system relies on a great degree of voluntary compliance. The tax system in this country fell into such dreadful disrepute because of the neglect of the former Treasurer and his colleagues in refusing to respond to the increasingly shrill pleas from the Commissioner of Taxation to act in relation to identified and greatly expanding tax avoidance schemes. It was because the former Treasurer and his colleagues refused to take that action that the accounting and legal professions realised that they might as well, seeing the Government was not doing anything about them, employ the schemes which were being smiled on by the Government. As a result of some legislation which was belatedly introduced into the Parliament by the former Treasurer, a number of those schemes are no longer operative. In a statement which I made on behalf of the Government early in our term, I indicated that whenever a blatantly artificial tax avoidance scheme was identified we would legislate retrospectively to close off that scheme from the date of its first known operation. We knew, and we continue to recognise, that the only real device we have to discourage tax avoidance and to indicate that the game is up, that tax avoidance is over, is to indicate a preparedness to legislate retrospectively to the time when blatantly artificial schemes are first used. The reason why that policy has not been capable of full implementation is that the Liberal Party in the Senate continues time and again to protect the tax dodgers. Members of that Party have refused to pass the legislation which we have put up on a number of occasions in order to ensure that these tax avoidance schemes are ended and that no new schemes will grow up in the future. What I was saying on that occasion was that notwithstanding the attitude of the Liberal Party and the National Party in the Senate and their gutlessness in the face of the tax avoidance industry, the professions now recognise that the game is up. However, we are faced with a dreadful legacy as a result of the neglect of the former Government. As the Auditor-General has revealed, something like $3 billion is outstanding as a result of the dreadful experience of tax avoidance in this country. We will pursue this matter. Not only will the Taxation Commissioner continue to pursue the matter but also will we take whatever action we can to ensure that taxes that should have been paid years ago and were not paid because of the neglect of the discredited former Treasurer are collected. That is why the Prime Minister is absolutely right when he says this will remain an issue until such time as those gutless Liberal senators agree to pass on legislation. Mr MORRISON —My question is directed to the Prime Minister. Is it important to Australia's international standing and effectiveness that Australia be seen as united in its rejection of racism, particularly the abomination of apartheid? Are there any recent developments which may damage Australia's credibility in this regard? Mr HAWKE —Mr Speaker, I thank the honourable member for St George for his question. I think it would be agreed that the emergence of Australia as an independent credible force in international relations over the last two decades is very closely connected with the rejection of domestic racism against Aboriginals, as reflected in the overwhelming referendum result in this country in 1967 and with our principled rejection and condemnation of racism internationally, particularly the evil system of apartheid operated by the South African Government. I am sure that that rejection of racism, both domestically and internationally, as I say, is important in the emergence of Australia as a credible and independent force in international relations. It is very important that the people of Australia understand that this has been a bipartisan achievement of the major Australian political parties. I would like on this occasion, as I have on many occasions before, to pay regard and tribute to my two predecessors as Prime Minister, Mr Gough Whitlam and Mr Malcolm Fraser . No more eloquent expression of the reasons why successive Australian governments have condemned and rejected apartheid has been given than that given by Malcolm Fraser as Prime Minister in this House on 25 March 1982. I would like to quote to the House what Malcolm Fraser said in this place on 25 March 1982. The Prime Minister of honourable members opposite said- Opposition members interjecting- Mr HAWKE —I know that honourable members opposite do not want to hear it-it will embarrass them no end because they have repudiated it. This is what Malcolm Fraser said in this place on 25 March 1982: We believe that maximum pressure should be exerted against South Africa, to seek to break down the system of apartheid. I think we all know that there is a degree of racial intolerance amongst all countries, that most countries around the world, by law, practice or custom, seek to diminish and eradicate racial intolerance. That is certainly the approach of the States and the Commonwealth of Australia. It is certainly the approach of the overwhelming majority of Australian citizens of all political complexions. The difference in South Africa is simply that racial intolerance, bigotry and discrimination are enshrined in the law in a multitude of ways. People cannot move without a police pass. People of the wrong colour cannot live in certain areas. People of the wrong colour might be allowed to get a job in an area, but their wives and families have to stay 300 miles behind, in the hills. The Opposition, in its major policy statement on foreign policy issued yesterday , failed to condemn apartheid. This is unprecedented in Australian politics since the end of the Menzies era. This failure of the Opposition to condemn apartheid will shock decent Australians just as much as it will give comfort to the South African regime. I accept that the Leader of the Opposition and the more enlightened members of the Liberal Party have long opposed apartheid and racism. It is therefore particularly unfortunate that the coalition parties have now retreated from one of the worthwhile legacies of the Fraser era under pressure from their more reactionary colleagues. They have done this by reference to the shame and the deceptive changes in South Africa which have been overwhelmingly rejected by the majority of non-whites in that country. I seriously call upon the Leader of the Opposition to act on his better instincts and on his better principles and to start to exert some leadership on this matter and so restore bipartisanship on a major issue of principle in the interests of Australia's international reputation. I conclude by saying that even if the Leader of the Opposition will not act on his better instincts-I know that he has them; it is a great tragedy that he has been led aside on this issue-this Government will not shrink from its responsibilities. It will continue to do what the overwhelming majority of the Australian electorate wants it to do; that is, condemn the anti-human and evil system of apartheid. Mr HUNT —Is the Minister for Trade aware that the current waterfront dispute is crippling Australia's export and import trade? What action has the Minister taken to overcome the situation? Is the Minister aware that a significant consignment of beef destined for Japan is strike-bound? Does he recognise that this could further jeopardise talks resuming next week on our beef trade with Japan? Will the Minister ask the Minister for Industrial Relations to intervene to end the dispute as a matter of urgency? Mr LIONEL BOWEN —Although I am aware of the matter, no representations have been made to me about it in that sense. I understand that the matter is in the control of my colleague the Minister for Industrial Relations. Mr Tuckey —What about the meat? Mr LIONEL BOWEN —The question is the issue of industrial relations. I am making the point that no representations have been made to me about the export of the beef. I will certainly look at it immediately after Question Time and discuss it with my colleague. Mr SAUNDERSON —My question is directed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. What is the Government's view of recent constitutional changes in South Africa? Do these constitutional changes represent, as described yesterday by the Opposition 's spokesman on foreign affairs, a 'step forward towards the acknowledgment that all races must have equal opportunity to participate in the high policy making process' and a 'new phase' in South African affairs? Mr Tuckey —I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Is the honourable member's question asking for an opinion or a statement of fact? Mr SPEAKER —If the honourable member had listened to the question he would have known that it was a question of Government's attitude, not of the Minister's opinion? Mr HAYDEN —The honourable member incites me to make some passing comment, at least, about the policy statement presented yesterday by the honourable member for Warringah, produced with the literary flair of a parliamentary Barbara Cartland-lots of heavy breathing but not much real action. I draw honourable member's attention to the document or, should I say, series of documents produced yesterday. Four positions were taken within the space of an hour, which was a reasonable performance for the honourable member for Warringah in his early middle age. Four documents were produced in the space of less than an hour . The first document is the considered one which represents the distilled essence , the critical mass of creative policy thought on the part of the Opposition. All the matters of great principle are laboured there and truly laboured. One goes through it and discovers no reference at all to the great issue of apartheid. A mere oversight? There is an attachment that says that after all the Opposition supports what is going on in South Africa today. That is the first major position. In the course of question and answer time, we found the honourable member for Warringah stumbling about like a drunken sailor on shore leave trying to answer questions on this subject and declaring that nothing has changed; the Opposition has not moved. Then, to try to rescue the situation, a statement was drafted by an Opposition member or a member of the Opposition staff pointing out that the situation in South Africa is not perhaps as bad as it seems. There are four positions that have been adopted in the space of less than an hour. Let us see how much progress is being made towards equal opportunity for the black people of South Africa. They represent about 70 per cent of the population . They have absolutely no representatives in the parliamentary system. On the other hand, the whites represent 14 per cent of the population. They have 57 per cent of the representatives in the parliamentary system. There are 20 million people in South Africa. They have 13 per cent of the land area under the odious home lands arrangement which the Government of that country has introduced. The whites, five million people, have 87 per cent of the land. Is this the sort of equal opportunity to participate that the honourable member for Warringah is enshrining in his rather unsteady declarations of yesterday? I quote some statistics: 169 people were prosecuted in 1983 under Section 16 of the Immorality Act, which prohibits sexual relations between members of different racial groups; During 1983, 142,067 blacks were convicted of 'pass law' offences relating to reference books and influx control in the nine main urban centres of South Africa; In 1983, 10,855 black people were prosecuted under the curfew regulations; In the field of education, in 1982-83 the State spent R1,385 on each white school child . . . and R192 for black school children. I have a report by Mr Justice G.G. Hoexter of the Commission of Inquiry into the Structure and Functioning of the Courts in South Africa which was produced late last year. He said: Another material factor in regard to the overcrowding of our prisons is that hordes of Blacks land in prison as a result of influx control. Judged by civilised norms, these people are not real malefactors. They are the needy victims of a social system that controls the influx of people from the rural to the urban areas by penal sanction. The reason for this virtually unstemmable influx is poverty. That is what the Opposition now embraces as its policy. That explains why Malcolm Fraser was able to attract headlines such as the one which appeared in the Age of 18 September 1981-'Fraser unwavering on South Africa'. The honourable member for Warringah and his leader, who sold out the principles which he once espoused to the pressure of the National Party, attracted headlines such as: ' Coalition's softer line on South Africa'. The position is summed up more than adequately in the editorials of this morning's newspapers. The Sydney Morning Herald states: In its search for a foreign policy, the Opposition has found the worst-and missed the best-of Malcolm Fraser. Perhaps the conservative Australian Financial Review has the best summary. It says: The Liberal Party policy on foreign affairs, announced yesterday, is a pathetic and shabby effort. It shows all the evidence of being ill thought out, incompetent, inconsistent and pusillanimous. Mr Tuckey —What did they say about you in that? Mr HAYDEN —I suppose the defence of the Opposition, in the immortal words of the Leader of the National Party on the program 60 Minutes on Sunday night, is: 'We cannot all be pure, can we?'. He is rutting around the place like a musk moose in season. The editorial in the Australian Financial Review concludes: This latest effort is shabby and inadequate which can do Mr Peacock's reputation no good, and the Liberal Party positive harm. Malcolm Fraser was a better man, and the Party was better under him. I concur. It is pathetic, it is shabby, and I urge the Leader of the Opposition to get back to principle, to get back to the things he really believes in, and not to sell his hide and soul to the cheap standards of the National Party. Mr MacKELLAR —I ask a question of the Prime Minister and acting Minister for Foreign Affairs. Is it a fact that at the launch of the Opposition's foreign policy yesterday, both the Leader of the Opposition and myself, on every occasion when asked, condemned in forthright terms the practice of apartheid? What monitoring is being undertaken by the Australian Government of recent developments in communications between Angola and South Africa and Mozambique and South Africa? What contribution is Australia making to the lessening of tension in southern Africa following those discussions? Mr HAYDEN —The honourable member raised a couple of points. First of all, he drew once again the attention of the House to the policy statement, so described by him, released by the Opposition yesterday. 'Around the World in 80 Platitudes' might be a more appropriate description, or the great tour de farce of the parliamentary system. To the extent that we have been able to obtain some transcript of the question and answer exchange at the Press conference-it is extraordinarily hard to obtain a question and answer transcript; I can only speculate as to why the Opposition is rather modest on this as it is not usual, in the Gucci style of the Leader of the Opposition, for him to be modest on these sorts of matters-I can only repeat that the honourable member for Warringah stumbled about like a drunken sailor on weekend leave. He was unable to address himself to the issues raised. The Leader of the Opposition came to his aid like a good seeing-eye dog. Given the sort of direction in which the Leader of the Opposition has taken the Opposition in recent times, I could not imagine a more disastrous course to follow than the one he was setting down. The honourable member for Warringah also asked me about the monitoring that the Government is conducting in relation to exchanges between Mozambique and Angola respectively and South Africa. We are maintaining close monitoring of this matter. We receive reports from a number of sources on developments in respect of those developments. Obviously we wish to keep ourselves well informed on these matters. We will support any developments in any part of the world which lead to a peaceful resolution of issues of conflict. It has to be borne in mind that the continued occupation of Namibia by South Africa is wrong under international law. It is inflammatory and provocative within southern Africa and it is the main single cause of so much of the provocation and conflict which has taken place in that region. That, in turn, is related very much to the Angolan situation. Mrs CHILD —My question is addressed to the Acting Treasurer. Will he tell the House what is the Government's response to the March quarter consumer price index results? Mr HURFORD —I am glad indeed to have the opportunity to tell the House that the Government is absolutely delighted at the splendid consumer price index results announced today. Mr MacKellar —You took out the health costs. Mr SPEAKER —Order! Mr HURFORD —For a moment I was worried that I might not have the opportunity to say this. But, of course, the outcome is the result of the sensible policies instituted by the Hawke Labor Government. The figures for March 1984 are in marked contrast to those figures for March 1983-the legacy of the Liberal- National Party Government from which we took over. Mr MacKellar —Fiddling the figures. Mr HURFORD —The Liberal legacy was 11.5 per cent for the March quarter 1983. Let us look at the results. Of course the reduction of 0.4 per cent does take into account the health insurance charges, as does the 5.9 per cent for the year March 1984 on March 1983 quarter. But even without those health insurance changes-the honourable member for Warringah in his interjection should have understood this-the result is a magnificent one. The result for the quarter, taking out that 1.6 to 1.7 per cent effect of the levy, is 1.2 per cent, which is the lowest since the December quarter 1972. The result for the year March 1984 over March 1983, even without those health insurance changes, is the lowest for a decade. The talk of this just being a fiddle is absolutely incorrect. They are the best results for a decade. What is more, the results of the CPI that have been announced today will be the start of a further campaign to reduce inflation in this country. The reason for that is a tribute to the Prime Minister, the Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations and everybody else who has been responsible for the introduction of the prices and incomes accord. I also pay tribute to Bill Kelty, Cliff Dolan and others of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. The introduction of the prices and incomes accord will mean that this is only the start in this fight against inflation. Opposition members interjecting- Mr SPEAKER —Order! Mr HURFORD —Mr Speaker, it is no wonder that Opposition members are trying to make a mockery of this result. They are discredited; their policies, as indicated in their economic policies just announced, are nothing but a return to the confrontation of earlier years. The fact is that the policies of consensus and accord that we have introduced are themselves one of the reasons for this excellent result and why this country can expect economic recovery to be sustained. It is the best Mayday news we have had for years. Mr WILLIS(Gellibrand-Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations) —For the information of honourable members I present a corrigenda to the Australian Trade Union Training Authority annual report for 1982-83. MR BARRY JONES(Lalor-Minister for Science and Technology) —For the information of honourable members I present the Australian Industrial Research and Development Incentives Board annual report for 1982-83. Mr HOLDING(Melbourne Ports-Minister for Aboriginal Affairs) —For the information of honourable members I present the Central Land Council annual report for 1982- 83. Mr HOLDING(Melbourne Ports-Minister for Aboriginal Affairs) —In accordance with paragraph 34 (c) (6) of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901, I wish to advise that in January this year an extension of time was granted in which the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies might provide me with its 1982-83 annual report, pursuant to section 30 (1) of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies Act 1964. The Institute had sought an extension pending receipt of the financial statement from the Auditor-General as required by section 30 (2) of the AIAS Act . I have now been provided with the completed report, which I present for the benefit of honourable members. Motion (by Mr Young) proposed: That the House take note of the papers. Debate (on motion by Mr Porter) adjourned. Mr HOLDING(Melbourne Ports-Minister for Aboriginal Affairs) —For the information of honourable members, I present a precis of an evaluation of departmental public information programs by W.D. Scott for the Department of Veterans' Affairs. Copies of the full report are available on request from the Bills and Papers Office. Mr DAWKINS(Fremantle-Minister for Finance) —For the information of the House I table 'Budget Reform', a paper on reforming the Australian Government's financial administration. Copies were provided to honourable members and senators in the last couple of weeks. Mr Sinclair —Mr Speaker, as a matter concerning the Standing Orders, I question whether this is a matter that more appropriately should have been handled by way of a statement rather than by tabling in this form. Mr SPEAKER —I take it that it is a paper. Mr Sinclair —Was it prepared by others outside the Parliament? It is not the Minister's statement, is it? Mr DAWKINS —It is a paper issued by me, yes. Mr SPEAKER —Is the Minister advising the House that the paper tabled by him was prepared by him? Mr DAWKINS —I tabled the paper for the information of honourable members. Mr Sinclair —Mr Speaker, I make the point that that sort of paper normally should be handled by way of making a statement to the House rather than by tabling the paper. I do not think our Standing Orders provide for its presentation in this form. In the circumstances, I ask a Minister to move that the House take note of the paper. Motion (by Mr Young) proposed: That the House take note of the paper. Debate (on motion by Mr Howard) adjourned. Mr SINCLAIR(New England-Leader of the National Party of Australia) —Mr Speaker, I claim to have been misrepresented by the Minister for Defence (Mr Scholes) in an answer to the House. Mr SPEAKER —The Leader of the National Party may make a personal explanation about any such misrepresentation. Mr SINCLAIR —The Minister for Defence has misrepresented me in a number of areas . He has claimed that during my term in the Ministry I was at great pains to ensure that people in the areas affected by the proposals now being investigated with respect to the four designated areas known publicly did not know what those areas were or what they were about, and that I have claimed that I was denied knowledge of those proposals until the last days of the Ministry. The point is that there were investigatory proposals which have now been ratified in the designation of the areas by the commissioning of consultants and the acceptance of that statement made by the Premier of New South Wales and the Minister for Defence on 24 March 1983. There has been an investigation over a significant period of time, identified by the Minister, of a number of regions. Those regions were not accepted by me and it was for that reason and no other that no announcement was made, nor consultants appointed, nor an environmental impact statement made or commenced prior to the election. The then Government had not endorsed the regions. They were endorsed for the purpose of EIS procedure after the change of government and by the Minister, as he acknowledged , without consideration of any other sites. Secondly, the Minister alleged at the opening of his remarks that I had made some late entries in my diary. He might be interested to know that the diary concerned was in the custody of my staff from 1979 until the day after the police inspector questioned me in Parliament House in 1984. I had not seen that diary from that day until my staff told me of the entry, and the entries were certainly not made other than at the time in 1979 after that lunch of which there has been some mention in this House on a number of occasions. Mr SCHOLES(Corio-Minister for Defence) —Mr Speaker, I claim to have been misrepresented. Mr SPEAKER —Does the Minister for Defence seek to make a personal explanation? Mr SCHOLES —Yes. The facts are as I stated them. The Premier of New South Wales wrote to the right honourable member for New England (Mr Sinclair) in November 1983 proposing specific procedures. Mr SPEAKER —Order! The Minister for Defence should proceed to where he has been misrepresented. Mr SCHOLES —I have been misrepresented by the right honourable Leader of the National Party in that he said that I made an incorrect statement when I said that he had full knowledge of the proposals. The honourable gentleman had full knowledge of the proposals. They were sent to him by letter, with a proposed Press release, by the Premier of New South Wales, which the honourable gentleman pushed under the carpet. He now seeks to tell his electorate that he did not receive them and they were not rejected by him. Consideration was deferred, and it was deferred until the right honourable gentleman went out of office, because he was scared stiff of his electorate. Next time he has the guts to front up he will be thrown out for his dishonesty. Mr SPEAKER —I call the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. I take it that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition seeks leave to make a personal explanation on the ground that he was misrepresented. Mr HOWARD —Yes, Mr Speaker. Mr SPEAKER —The honourable member may proceed. Mr HOWARD(Bennelong) —The Prime Minister has again misrepresented some comments I have made about the possibility of taxation cuts in the forthcoming Budget. I have never expressed total opposition to taxation cuts in the forthcoming Budget . I have said on a number of occasions that if the Government wishes to cut taxation in the next Budget it should cut into its expenditures to find the money. I said that in the interview on the AM program from which the Prime Minister quoted today at Question Time. The Prime Minister deceitfully quoted half of what I said and simply omitted the bit referring to cutting into expenditures, which is a measure of the honesty of this Prime Minister when it comes to questions of representing what other people have said. I stand by what I have said, that faced with a choice between a reduction in the deficit and a reduction in taxation, from an economic point of view a reduction in the deficit is needed, but if the Government wants to reduce taxation it should find the room from its bloated expenditures to do so. For the second time in the space of a month the Prime Minister of this country has lied to this House about what I said. Mr HUNT(Gwyder) —Mr Speaker, I claim to have been misrepresented. Mr SPEAKER —The honourable member may make a personal explanation. Mr HUNT —I claim to have been misrepresented by the Minister for Defence (Mr Scholes), who claimed that I had a firm briefing from the Defence Department on proposals to proceed with securing land for defence purposes in the Dubbo and Cobar areas. The facts are these: Early in 1982 an officer of the Department of Defence gave me a briefing, as the honourable member for Gwyder, on a confidential basis of several areas that were under preliminary investigation for defence training purposes. These areas included areas adjacent to Dubbo and Cobar. However, it was my understanding that the Department had made no firm decisions as to any further progress that may be made in advancing these specific areas for further investigation. It was also made clear that the briefing was on a confidential basis because the Department did not want to develop any undue expectations in the areas concerned because of the preliminary nature of the investigation. Mr LUSHER(Hume) —Mr Speaker, I seek leave to make a personal explanation. Mr SPEAKER —Does the honourable member claim to be misrepresented? Mr LUSHER —I do. Mr SPEAKER —The honourable member may proceed. Mr LUSHER(Hume) —Mr Speaker, on 27 March at Question Time in this House the Special Minister of State (Mr Young) said: A quick check of the records will show that over the last four years in this Parliament the honourable member for Hume has never spoken about or asked a question on unemployment. Therefore, his seriousness about this subject can be called into question. I wish to draw the Minister's attention to speeches I made on 3 May last year, 11 May last year, 19 May last year, and 25 August last year. Those are only four speeches I have made since the change of government which I turned up quickly in a check. Mr Young —What were the debates about? Mr LUSHER —The first was on wages policy, the second was on Appropriation Bill ( No. 5), the third was on the Governor-General's Address-in-Reply, and the fourth was on Appropriation Bill (No. 1). Mr ANDREW(Wakefield)(3.31) —Mr Speaker, I seek leave to make a personal explanation. Mr SPEAKER —Does the honourable member claim to have been misrepresented? Mr ANDREW —I certainly do. Mr SPEAKER —The honourable member may proceed. Mr ANDREW —On Thursday 5 April 1984, following my contribution to the debate on the Australian Citizenship Amendment Bill-I refer to page 1514 of Hansard-the honourable member for Grayndler (Mr Leo McLeay) said: The honourable member for Wakefield, for the first time that I have heard in this Parliament, raised the sectarian issue. He went on with more deceptive allegations. I have been both misquoted and misrepresented by the honourable member for Grayndler and he knows it. What I said, and I quote from page 1513 of Hansard, was this: The honourable member for Moreton . . . clearly and irrevocably said that the Pope also lives outside Australia but those who are of the Roman Catholic faith find no problem in pledging their allegiance. Mr Speaker, you will note that I was referring to an analogy used by the honourable member for Moreton (Mr Donald Cameron) just three days before on 2 April 1984. On page 1205 of Hansard the honourable member for Moreton said: We do not have the Pope living in Australia and we do not have the Queen living in Australia. Are we going to ban catholicism in the future as well as any love of the monarchy? Only the honourable member for Grayndler could have construed that to be a sectarian statement. In conclusion may I say that at the time of the honourable member's false allegation that I was raising sectarian issues, I rose to a point of order but Madam Deputy Speaker ruled that there was no point of order. Mr Speaker, as this is the first opportunity I have had since then to raise this matter I ask that you require the honourable member for Grayndler to withdraw his inaccurate and insulting remarks and to apoligise to the House for making them. Mr SPEAKER —I feel I should respond to the honourable member for Wakefield. In seeking to make a correction during a debate an honourable member does not raise it as a point of order. He should rise at the first opportunity to correct where he has been misrepresented and misunderstood. If that fails during the debate he has resort to the method the honourable member for Wakefield has used today. The Clerk —Petitions have been lodged for presentation as follows and copies will be referred to the appropriate Ministers: To the Honourable the Speaker and members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled: That the Sex Discrimination Bill 1983 contains provisions inconsistent with principles of justice and equality which could be use to: Undermine civil liberties and religious freedom; Entrench abortion funding and render liable to action Hospitals, Doctors and Nurses, who conscientiously refuse to become involved in morally objectionable operations; Deny to parents their rights to insist that the school ''community'' provide an environment condusive to the development, including moral development of their children; Deny to parents their rights to have their children enjoy single-sex sporting activities e.g., boys cricket team, boys football team, etc. Your petitioners humbly pray that the Parliament assembled: Should amend the Bill so as to prevent the possibility of its use in the manner stated above and urge, because of the importance to society of all principles involved, that a conscience vote on the Bill be permitted to all Members of Parliament. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mr John Brown,Mr Robert Brown,Mr Connolly,Mr Dobie,Dr Harry Edwards,Mr Fife,Mr Free,Mr Kerin,Mr Leo McLeay,Mr Maher,Mr Allan Morris,Mr Ian Robinson,Mr Ruddock,Mr Simmons and Mr Spender. To the Honourable the Speaker and members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled: The humble petition of certain citizens of Australia shows - That, with the exception of the Australian Captial Territory and the Northern Territory, all State Parliaments have enacted chiropractic legislation. That chiropractors provide a safe, effective and economical health care service that is complementary to medicine. That the introduction of a Federally funded heath care system restricted to the services provided almost exclusively by the medical profession restricts the freedom to select the health care practitioner of one's choice and does nothing to reduce the high cost of health care in Australia. That a financial disadvantage will be incurred by those citizens utilising chiropractic care, many of whom find that their health complaints do not respond satisfactorily to traditional approaches. Your petitioners therefore pray that the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled ensures that chiropractic services are included in Medicare when it is introduced. by Mr Cadman,Mr Cross,Mr Drummond,Mr Groom,Mr Hayden and Mr Rocher. To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth: That we, the loyal citizens of Australia firmly express our strong opposition to any proposals to remove or undermine the importance of the place of God and/ or the Queen in our national life, and democratic institutions. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray: That the Parliament assembled reaffirm our nation's total dependence on God the Creator in accordance with our Australian Constitution, which commences with the words ''Humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God'', and the Standing Orders of both the Senate and the House of Representatives which prescribe that parliament each day shall open with a special prayer to Almighty God and the Lord's Prayer. We also call on the Parliament assembled to re-affirm our genuine loyalty to our Head of State, the Queen of Australia, Elizabeth II-'God save the Queen'. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mr Connolly,Mr Fife,Mr Free,Mr Gorman,Mr Lusher and Mr Ian Robinson. To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth: We, as members of a school Parent Club, object to legislation that calls for the payment of the Bank Debit Tax by a voluntary organisation working for the benefit of children in government schools. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that exemption from the payment of Bank Debit Tax will be granted to School Parents' Clubs in government schools. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mr Andrew and Mr O'Neil. To the Honourable Speaker and members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned respectfully showeth: we urge the Government to declare a moratorium on uranium mining and treament in Australia; we urge the Government to repudiate any commitment of a non-labor Government to the mining, processing or export of Australia's uranium; we urge the Government to not permit the mining, processing or export of uranium pursuant to agreements entered into contrary to ALP Policy; and we urge the government to discontinue the Roxby Uranium Mine Development. by Mr Blanchard. to the Honourable Speaker and members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled: The humble petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth: 1. That an airport in the north-western region (commonly called Scheyville) imposes disastrous economic, environmental and social costs on our community. 2. An airport would destroy 2,000 households and impose upheaval, noise and pollution on one million people presently unaffected. 3. The cost of an airport in the north-western region is greater than the alternatives, whilst fog and close proximity to R.A.A.F. Base Richmond would make operations impractical. 4. It would destroy the historic village of Pitt Town, environmentally important wetlands and their unique adherent wildlife. 5. Your petitioners reject these proposals and call for endorsement of the MANS Committee findings. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mr Cadman. to the Honourable the Speaker and members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The petition of certain Citizens of Australia shows-that at present, certain infertility treatments including; Hormonal Drugs, Procedures and Laboratory Services, are not covered by any Health Insurance due to Non-itemisation on the Commonwealth Rebate List. The psychological and emotional stress of infertility is therefore increased by the added financial stress. Your Petitioners therefore pray, that the Parliament will view our plight to create life with sympathy, by recognising our needs, and taking action to include the abovementioned items on the Commonwealth Rebate List. by Mr Ronald Edwards. To The Honourable Speaker and members to the House of Representatives in Parliament Assembled. We the undersigned citizens of the Commonwealth do humbly pray that the Commonwealth government 1. Unhold the principle that the seeds and cuttings of plants are a public resource and a common heritage to all and that accordingly seeds should be freely available to all, freely multipliable, able to be sold, exchanged, exported and imported by anyone who wishes. This is seen as a matter of national food security. 2. Recognize that plant breeding is a highly co-operative venture often involving private enterprise at the very last stages after basic seed collection , storage, and research has been publicly funded. 3. In view of the aforementioned paragraphs, recognize that any system giving ' property' or ownership rights over seeds to individuals, organisations or enterprises is inappropriate and unjust. 4. Recognize that legislation establishing plant patenting schemes overseas has had serious adverse effects namely: (i) a slowing-down of scientific information exchange and exchanges in basic plant breeding materials, that is, germ plasm, (ii) subordination and/or curtailment of public breeding programs, (iii) farmer unrest at seed prices, (iv) monopoly control of seed production and sales has passed into the hands of giant petrochemical and drug corporations also marketing crop chemicals, (v) increased uniformity of crop varieties leading to a vulnerability to pest and disease attack. 5. Reject any proposal to legislate for any system such as the drafted Plant Variety Rights Act, which gives exclusive ownership rights over seeds to individuals, organisations or enterprises. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mr Gayler. To the Honourable the Speaker and members of the House of Representatives in Parliament Assembled: The petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully shows that: Whereas Australians have made and continue to make significant contributions to the field of medical research for the benefit of all mankind; The opportunity now exists for Australia to participate in such research in the forefront of the modern science of space medicine and with the potential to contribute valuable insights into the understanding of neuro-muscular and blood- related disorders. Dr Joseph Hoh and Dr Leopold Dintenfass, both of the University of Sydney, have designed separate experiments which have been accepted by NASA and scheduled to fly on Spacelabs 3 and 4, which will be carried on Space Shuttle flights late this year (1984) and early next year (1985). Dr Hoh's experiment in 'slow muscle' weightless studies is among only 25 chosen from 800 applicants from throughout the international scientific community to participate in the historic flight of Spacelab 4, the first to be dedicated exclusively to the Life Sciences. Australia is one of only three countries aside from the United States to be so honoured. The other two are Britain and Switzerland. Dr Hoh's work promises to contribute greatly to the understanding of the long-term effects of weightlessness on the human body, and also to the study of neuro-muscular disorders such as Muscular Dystrophy, Multiple Sclerosis , Myasthenia Gravis, etc. Dr Dintenfass is a world authority on the study of blood. His experiments are planned to investigate the changes that occur to blood in zero gravity, in particular the differences in the clumping or aggregation of red blood cells and the viscosity of blood-a major indicator of the early stages of many diseases, including cancer. Similar experiments will be carried out on the ground and the differences monitored. The observations will include the difference between the reaction to weightlessness of blood from healthy people, compared with that of patients suffering from various disorders: blood diseases, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc. His studies have the potential to assist diagnosis and treatment of many of these disorders. Although Dr Dintenfass was given a grant to assist his project this year, neither he nor Dr Hoh have the funds necessary to take them, their staff and their equipment to America, where they must go by the end of April to confirm their plans with NASA and ensure their continued participation on these projects . They also lack funds to finalize construction of their experiments. If sufficient funds are not found to construct these experiments, it is likely that they will be built in the United States and run by American scientists, and our connection with these experiments of Australian design will be lost. Your petitioners therefore pray that you will allocate funds immediately to get Dr's Hoh and Dintenfass to NASA, which is their current need, and in the long term to ensure that their projects are completed and Australia's contribution acknowledged. by Mr Holding. To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia showeth that the Defence Forces should adopt the following housing policies as a matter of urgency because of the growing housing crisis: 1. That all housing stock surplus to requirements or that has been empty for 3 months should be transferred to the State Housing Authorities for use as public rental housing. 2. That the Defence Forces should cease their current policy of evicting spouses and children of service personnel where the marriage has irretrievably broken down and the Defence Services member has left the house Security of Tenure should be granted to these families, because of the lack of alternative low-cost accommodation. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mr Barry Jones. To the Honourable Speaker and Members of the Commonwealth Parliament. The petition of members of the NSW Nurses' Association and citizens respectfully showeth: We, the undersigned, wish to protest strongly at the Federal Government's proposed increases in taxation on superannuation lump sums. It is our belief that this proposed tax is misplaced and that it should not be implemented. We believe this tax will discourage employees saving for their retirement. If the Federal Government wishes to prevent 'double dipping', this could be achieved by the introduction of a National Superannuation Scheme, but the Federal Government should not interfere with all employees rights to retirement benefits, for which they have worked all their lives, whilst making no attempt to impose a capital gains tax or attack the tax avoidance industry, as promised in pre-election statements. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that Parliament reject legislation imposing this increased tax on lump sum superannuation, and allow the situation prior to this proposal being introduced to prevail, your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray. by Mr Keating. To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The Petition of the undersigned respectfully showeth: 1. That the National Capital Development Commission proposes to develop Block 8 and part Block 11 of Section 24 Stirling for 72 standard residential houses. 2. that the only access into and out of this development is on a minor suburban street (Fremantle Drive) within 30 metres of an adjoining access road to a licenced club, a house between these two roads blocking vision; 3. that Fremantle Drive already carries considerable motor and pedestrian traffic to Stirling College and to Chapman Primary School and Pre school and such an extra load constitutes a danger to both traffic and school children; 4. that all traffic from this development travelling in the direction of Chapman Shops/Rivett, must travel past Chapman Primary School; 5. that twelve of the proposed houses have driveways onto Streeton Drive directly in front of the Primary and Pre schools, which constitutes a danger to children from cars backing across pathways, and from drivers whose vision is impaired around the been from Rivett immediately before the school crossing; 6. that seven of the proposed houses have driveways onto Fremantle Drive where children from Stirling cross without the aid of crossings. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that the Government direct the NCDC to alter the design of the proposed development to create a through road to the Rivett side of Streeton Drive to bypass the schools and to reduce the amount of traffic on Fremantle Drive. And to create a 'green belt' along the length of the development in Streeton and Fremantle Drives to remove all driveways into these streets. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mrs Kelly. To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in the Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia submits: 1. That the current Australian flag does not effectively represent Australia as a sovereign State; 2. That the current Australian flag does not reflect the diversity of Australia : its people, its cultures, or its flora and fauna. Your petitioners therefore pray: 1. That the Australian government give an undertaking to hold a design competition for a new Australian flag; 2. That a selection of the submitted designs be put to the Australian people to decide from by ballot; 3. That a design selection and ballot be completed so that a more suitable Australian flag can be adopted before the proposed bi-centennial in 1988. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mrs Kelly. To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives assembled. The humble petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth that. 1. Omega by sending low frequency signals, penetrating sea water enables hunter -killer submarines to establish their position and to launch a ''first strike'' attack. Omega is also used by AWACs, the flying radar stations, and for other military purposes. 2. Omega is an important U.S. military base and a potential nuclear target. A nuclear attack on Omega would have a disastrous effect on Victoria and Melbourne . 3. Omega and other U.S. bases in Australia endanger, rather than protect us. They add a new unnecessary menace to a nuclear arms race that must be stopped, if we are to survive. Your petitioners pray that Members and the House assembled will close Omega. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mr Kent. To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The petition of certain citizens respectfully showeth: That we women of Australia feel the threat of the nuclear arms race to our world, our children and our future. That the threat of nuclear war in Australia is greatly increased by the presence of foreign bases. That we affirm Pine Gap near Alice Springs is one such key foreign communication base. Is a crucial link in the arms race, used for locating targets and therefore a prime target in the event of nuclear war. That we support the national womens' action to oppose the presence of Pine Gap and call for the removal of all foreign bases in Australia. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mr Allan Morris. To the Right Honourable the Speaker and the Honourable Members of the House of Representatives in the Parliament assembled. The humble petition of the undersigned electors of the Commonwealth of Australia respectfully showeth that: 1. We are completely satisfied with the design of the existing Australian national flag. 2. We are aware it properly reflects the immutable characteristics of Australia , namely: The Union Jack-itself the creation of 3 Christian crosses-represents the nation 's historical origin, and the source of its language and law. The Southern Cross on an azure blue background signifying its place in space. The large star depicting the advent of Federation in 1901. 3. We know the flag has been a source of inspiration to generations of Australians in peace and war. 4. We recall that millions of native-born Australians and newcomers to these shores from other parts of the worlds have become united under its proud symbolism. 5. We are certain that any change to the flag will produce division in the Australian community. Your petitioners therefore pray that your Honourable House will: Propose and pass a motion that ''the existing Australian national flag remains sacrosanct from change''. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mr Rocher. To the Honourable Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives assembled. The humble petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth: That in November 1978 more than sixty two per cent of the voters of the Australian Capital Territory in a Referendum rejected the introduction of Territorial Government or Local Government in the Australian Capital Territory. That until the finances of the Commonwealth Grants Commission Inquiry into Australian Capital Territory finances have been made public and there has been a Referendum of the voters of the Australian Capital Territory as to their attitude to Territorial or Local Government. Your petitioners most humbly pray that the Government take no action nor legislate in respect of Territorial or Local Government in the Australian Capital Territory. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mr Ruddock. To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned citizens respectfully showeth that: 1. the Hawke Labor Government's retirement income policies are piecemeal, inconsistent and make no provision to encourage people to save towards their retirements, and; 2. the Government's proposed assets test legislation, presently under re- examination, is iniquitous and if enacted, its effects would be discriminatory. Your petitioners humbly pray that the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled urge the Government to: 1. totally abandon its proposed assets test legislation; 2. either institute a broad enquiry into Australia's retirement income and taxation systems or await the outcome of the Senate Standing Committee on Social Welfare's work on this matter, and; 3. following the report of such a wide enquiry, institute a retirement income policy which is fair and equitable, that encourages self-provision and which will be non-discriminatory. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mr Ruddock. To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of we, the undersigned citizens of Australia, respectfully showeth: That the introduction of Medicare has not resulted in a cheaper, fairer system of health care as promised by the Federal Government. Rather, it is an expensive, bureaucratic scheme, depersonalising medical services and conducive to medical mediocrity. While recognising the responsibility which exists to assist those in need, we humbly request the Government to review this system which moves towards the nationalisation of Australian medicine. by Mr Ruddock. To the Honourable Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled the petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth: That the majority of Australian pensioners are denied the human right to share fully in one of the foremost scientific advancement in communication of our time , namely, telephone communication. For 20 years the telephone rental percentage rebate has remained frozen. Successive Governments have exhibited a 'deaf ear' and/or a 'stoney-heart' to all appeals that this resource be more readily available at a time when it is most needed to maintain health and well-being. It is regrettable that the Government in announcing the pending increased charges in telephone rental and installation has not shown humane understanding in absolving pensioners from such increases, as indeed in giving attention in maintaining the service as a vital necessity for daily living-for many, their only contact with the outside world. These facts of life impel your petitioners to call on the Federal Government as a matter of urgency to: Absolve pensioners from increased telephone charges. Adopt a policy that pensioners enjoy the benefits of scientific advancement, only calls be a charge. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mr Scholes. To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled. The petition of certain citizens of Australia shows their concern for the present unresolved economic, social, biological, genetic, environmental and technical problems associated with the mining of uranium, the development of nuclear power and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Your petitioners therefore pray that your Honourable House will: 1. prohibit the establishment in Australia of nuclear power plants and all other stages of the nuclear fuel cycle. 2. declare a moratorium on all mining and treatment of Uranium in Australia. 3. prohibit the export of Australian uranium. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mr Staples. To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled: The petition of certain elected representatives and officers of Local Governments in Australia shows that General Revenue Grants to Local Government under Personal Income tax Sharing entitlements have increased by 8.2 per cent in 1983-84 over 1982-83, The inflation rate over the same period was 11.2 per cent, The increase in grants to State Governments over the same period was 11.8 per cent, Increased demands are being made on Local Government Authorities to participate in Federal Government programs e.g. Community Employment Program, The Labor Party made a pre-election commitment to allocate not less than the real value of the previous year's allocation in General Revenue Grants to Local Government. Your petitioners therefore pray that the Government will amend the Local Government (Personal Income Tax Sharing) Act of 1976, to provide a real term minimum guarantee to Local Government general revenue sharing arrangements in 1983-84, and in future years. by Mr Steele Hall and Mr Katter. The Honourable, the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Australia in Parliament assembled: The petition from parents representing the government schools in New South Wales respectfully showeth that: 1. They call on the Federal Government to re-affirm publicly that its primary obligation is to government schools. 2. They support the Federal Government's policy decision which have reduced funding to wealthy private schools and which have broken the nexus between government and non-government school costs. 3. They endorse the Federal Government's opposition to the provision of a 'base grant' to all non-government schools. 4. They ask that the Federal Government create a general recurrent resource base which is adequate for government schools through the provision of increased recurrent funding. 5. They call upon the Federal Government to negotiate agreements with State/ Territory Governments which will ensure a planned programme of improvements in government schools throughout the coming decade. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mrs Kelly and Mr Ian Robinson. To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in Parliament assembled: The humble petition of certain citizens of Queensland, Australia, respectfully showeth that we are totally opposed to any change in the Australian National Flag as declared in the Flags Act (1953). Your petitioners humbly pray that Parliament in its wisdom will take no action to change the Australian National Flag. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mr Cross. To the Honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives in parliament assembled: The petition of concerned people of the Electorate of Hume respectfully show their desire to stop the spread of Patersons Curse. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that Your Honourable House (the Government) act to implement the biological control of Patersons Curse. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Mr Lusher. Petitions received. The following Bills were returned from the Senate without amendment or requests : Torres Strait Treaty (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 1984 Torres Strait Fisheries Bill 1984 Bass Strait Freight Adjustment Trust Fund Bill 1984 Bass Strait Freight Adjustment Levy Bill 1984 Bass Strait Freight Adjustment Levy Collection Bill 1984 Assent to the following Bills reported: Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment Bill 1984 Judiciary Amendment Bill 1984 Automatic Data Processing Equipment Bounty Amendment Bill 1984 Wool Industry Amendment Bill 1984 Australian Government Solicitor (Consequential Amendments) Bill 1984 Federal Court of Australia Amendment Bill 1984 Judiciary Amendment (No. 2) Bill 1984 Companies and Securities (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill (No. 1) 1984 Income Tax Assessment Amendment Bill 1984 Health Insurance Amendment Bill 1984 Shipping Registration Amendment Bill 1984 Protection of the Sea (Shipping Levy) Amendment Bill 1984 Satellite Communications (Consequential Amendments) Bill 1984 Quarantine Amendment Bill 1984 Advance Australia Logo Protection Bill 1984 Satellite Communications Bill 1984 Torres Strait Treaty (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 1984 Torres Strait Fisheries Bill 1984 Bass Strait Freight Adjustment Trust Fund Bill 1984 Bass Strait Freight Adjustment Levy Bill 1984 Bass Strait Freight Adjustment Levy Collection Bill 1984 Mr SPEAKER —I have received advice from the National Party Whip that he has nominated Mr Ian Robinson to be a member of the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Reform in place of Mr Hunt, Deputy Leader of the National Party. Mr SPEAKER —I present the following report of the Joint Standing Committee on the New Parliament House-Report relating to proposed works in the Parliamentary zone: Construction of two standard bus shelters and one additional street light in King George Terrace and relocation of police guard boxes in Queen Victoria Terrace. Ordered that the report be printed. Mr SPEAKER —I have received a letter from the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Peacock) proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely: The deception of the Australian community by the Prime Minister on the prospects he had secured for Australia's steel and beef industries on his recent Asian visit. I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places. More than the number of members required by the Standing Orders having risen in their places- Mr PEACOCK(Kooyong-Leader of the Opposition)(3.39) —Today there is grave concern and confusion over the future of overseas markets for our beef and steel industries. This concern is a direct result of the ill-advised actions and statements of the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) on these matters, both overseas and at home. There is a question mark over his motives and certainly over his handling of what are now commonly referred to as his February beef and steel gaffs. At the outset I make the obvious point that the Opposition sees considerable potential in closer relations with the Pacific community. Our record substantiates this but the greatest care must be exercised in developing sound relationships with our Pacific neighbours for a great deal is at stake. We have witnessed an inept and self-seeking performance by the Prime Minister both during and after his visit to north Asia which has unquestionably put the future development of these markets in grave jeopardy. By rushing in and attempting to big note himself this Prime Minister has done damage to the orderly development and, indeed, the maintenance of our north Asian markets. The repercussions of his grotesque self-congratulatory meanderings will be felt for years to come and the results to date indicate that what was billed by the Prime Minister as a triumph turns out to be a continuing source of personal embarrassment and irritation in the short term and, more importantly, a serious national problem in the longer term. Today our export beef producers are facing substantial cutbacks of their share of the Japanese market. It is being lost to other nations and the future of a $2 ,200m beef industry is now on the line. It is under threat in both Japan and Korea, nations which the Prime Minister visited and in which he had, according to his own statements, extensive discussions and negotiations. I refer to his explicit statements in Japan. At a Press conference at the Japan Press Club on 2 February he was asked about the beef market. He said of these discussions: We interpret that to mean that Australia will maintain its share of the Japanese beef market. Even more explicit, he said: I am confident that any increase in American beef sales would be accompanied by an increase in Australian sales. But what is the reality? Almost overnight that declaration of confidence was shown to be unfounded. The Opposition warned the Government of the reality of the situation. We raised the matter repeatedly in this House throughout March. Yet there was no recognition of the seriousness of the situation through February and March. When the Minister for Primary Industry (Mr Kerin) eventually went to Japan the results certainly were not promising but at least he did not issue a categoric statement of confidence about the security of Australia's market share. The fact is that this Government has not looked after the best interests of an important primary industry which is a major overseas currency earner and it did not tell the truth. Are we to believe that the Prime Minister misunderstood what Japanese leaders said? Was the joint Press statement of Mr Hawke and Mr Nakasone not the firm declaration of security for Australian exporters that the Prime Minister claimed it was? All Australians are awaiting an explanation. The Prime Minister could make a start at answering those questions by belatedly reporting to this Parliament, to this House, on his tour. He has to take urgent steps to protect our export beef markets. Even before the wheels fell off his claims on the security of the Japanese beef market the Prime Minister was busy widening his credibility gap in China. In just a couple of days Australians were told that the prospects were huge. Yet the record shows this to be no more than a grotesque beat up of a possibility, not a probability, let alone a certainty. There is a suggestion being bandied about, of course, that the Prime Minister was victim of his overzealous backgrounding of the media by his advisers. If that is the case the Prime Minister was a very willing victim. From one day to the next he stretched the claims. He went from pig iron to coal and then refined steel in just three days. It was all a bit vague but the thrust of his claims was clear. Each day the story got just that little bit better. We all know that this Prime Minister likes a good story, especially if it is about him. He has a proven track record on claims of breakthroughs and great leaps forward. His years at the Australian Council of Trade Unions set the pattern. Bourke's store, ACTU-Solo Enterprises Pty Limited and New World Travel got off the ground. It all happened with a great fanfare and we all know what transpired. Others which did not get off the ground included a housing finance company and a consumer credit company. But for those that saw the light of day after the fanfare and the promise the pattern was the same. In each case the now Prime Minister was prepared to stand in the spotlight with a great announcement and make claims which raised expectations quite unduly about those businesses. He subsequently did nothing to realise those expectations. The hard job of making a go in the commercial world always got the big miss from this Prime Minister. The Prime Minister was not around to face the music when the commercial dabblings faltered and failed. The evidence of the last few weeks strongly suggests that he has not learned from those experiences. But this time the difference is that the national interest is at stake. It is not some glorified move by the ACTU into a form of commercialism that goes broke. This is the national interest and it is the beef exporters, the steel industry and the people losing jobs in those industries who will lose their finance. This will not be just an overinflated promotion of an ACTU project. This is the national interest that is at stake and, as the beef and steel fiascos show, the Prime Minister is still prepared to engage in the razzamataz of self-promotion through nothing but half-baked claims. Half-baked is the operative word when it comes to sorting out what the position is on the iron and steel industry and China. The records of what was said by the Prime Minister in China are a window on a mind unclear of the position. They are the ramblings of uncertainty, but uncertainty did not deter the Prime Minister from building an enormous sand castle. He talked of both the short term and long term advantages for Australian industry. He talked and he talked and he talked. That is all it has amounted to. He talked of re-opening blast furnaces such as the Kwinana operation even though consultation with Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Limited on Kwinana had taken the extraordinary form of a five-minute telephone conversation between one of the Prime Minister's advisers and a senior BHP executive. That phone call took place while the Prime Minister was already in China whipping up expectations. It ought to go into the Guinness Book of Records as the briefest example of retrospective consultation in history. Let us look at some of the hard facts which existed both before and after the February flight of fancy. This was a scheme concocted on the plane. We all know that there was no consultation with industry beforehand. No blueprint or schedule was taken away. After the criticism of the nonsense of the Japanese tour the Prime Minister, denigrated by the ACTU, by members of his own Party and by the Opposition for statements that he made in Japan, which should have been made in Australia, then sought to rescue them by the razzamataz and promotion and by going back to the old Bourke's ACTU days. But the national interest was fraught with danger on this occasion. Let us, as I say, look at some of the hard facts which did exist both before and after the flight of fancy. Currently, the world steel industry is running at 60 per cent capacity and demand is, and is likely to remain, flat. New capacity is being installed in Korea and Taiwan and some of this is being directed at the export market. The Prime Minister raised the possibility of the reopening of Kwinana to supply China. Yet the price of pig iron necessary to earn a commercial return on capital ex Kwinana is around $140 a tonne. The current world price is around $120 a tonne. Would the Hawke Government be considering subsidising exports from Kwinana? With such world overcapacity and the long term forecast for continued overcapacity, is it credible for the Prime Minister to suggest that BHP or any other Australian firm will actually begin building new pig iron and steel facilities? It is understandable that industry experts have been less than enthusiastic, to put it mildly, than the Prime Minister about both the short and long term prospects. Does the Prime Minister- as I have said, this veteran of Bourke's store and ACTU-Solo-know something that perhaps BHP does not? With such basic economic facts in clear view and with the vagueness of the Prime Minister's assertions, it is little wonder that there is so much scepticism about his claims, not just from the Opposition but also from the media and particularly from business itself. The stridency of the Prime Minister's reaction to the continued scepticism has served only to exacerbate his credibility problem on this matter. The latest effort took the form of an extraordinarily rambling statement, 3 1/2 pages long, conceived on the back of a game fishing yacht at Cairns on 23 April. The statement does nothing to verify the Prime Minister's China claims. It is notable only for its ramblings, for its half truths and for its shrillness-the hallmarks of this man, the current occupant of the Prime Ministership, when put under pressure. For example, there is reference to 'a number of substantial proposals' at one stage. Not one is mentioned. From the advantage of hindsight and the inability to deliver, he now talks 'of tentative comments' made in China in his Cairns statement. Why has the bottom fallen out of the confident backgrounding that went on in China? He implies that his talks in China had something to do with subsequent ones between Sir Roderick Carnegie of Conzinc Riotinto of Australia Ltd and Chinese officials. Little matter that that visit had been arranged well before the visit of the Prime Minister to China. So Roderick Carnegie was going to China before the Prime Minister even left this country. Finally, the statement refers to the progress made by the joint study group of trade officials which recently met in China. He claims that concrete possibilities were identified and discussed but he fails to list any. There is a strong sense of deja vu about it all. Now that the heat is on, the Prime Minister is rapidly distancing himself from the detail. Mr Hunt —Not even to the House. Mr PEACOCK —Not even to the House, on any occasion. It is being flick passed to the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Lionel Bowen). Will he be able to pick up the pieces? I doubt it. If, as the Prime Minister repeatedly claims in his Cairns statement, substantial progress has been made by the joint study group, why not table its report here in this House and let the public know the results of their recent discussions in China? The time for media grandstanding via satellite is over. We challenge the Prime Minister to put up or shut up because his credibility and Australia's trade prospects are on the line. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mrs Child) —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. Mr KERIN(Werriwa-Minister for Primary Industry)(3.55) —Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish to address my remarks to three elements of the Opposition's baseless matter of public importance this afternoon. What we have seen in this country over the last few weeks have been statements by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Peacock) , the Leader of the National Party of Australia (Mr Sinclair) and his Deputy, the honourable member for Gwydir (Mr Hunt), which are calculated to damage Australia and Australia's trade and to undercut the negotiating positions of Ministers and officials. If one ever wants to see un-Australian acts, if one ever wants to see acts against the interests of the cattle industry and the interests of Australia, one should just observe what the Opposition has been doing over the last few weeks on this question. I want to talk about three things-the hypocrisy of the Opposition, the dispicable behaviour of the Opposition-- Mr MacKellar —Oh, come on! Mr KERIN —You keep quiet, apartheid-and the fact that negotiations are still taking place. The public posturing of the Opposition on the question of additional Australian access to the Japanese beef market is extraordinarily hypocritical, even by the Opposition's own terms. The fundamental objective of the Labor Government in its negotiations with the Japanese authorities has been to maximise Australia's access to that market. Our public position, our negotiating stance, has reflected that concern. This has been put by the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke), the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Lionel Bowen), the Foreign Minister (Mr Hayden) and me. This stance will be maintained when negotiations between offiicials recommence in Tokyo on 10 May. I will be furthering negotiations at a ministerial level when I return to Tokyo on 15 May. Our negotiating stance is well understood by the Australian cattle industry with which the Government has been in regular contact and industry and government are working closely together. The Deputy Prime Minister and I met with industry prior to the 7 April negotiations in Tokyo. Mr Binstead, the President of the Cattle Council of Australia, has recently been in Japan to acquire a first-hand appreciation of the situation. The officials who have been involved in the negotiations are currently attending the annual general meeting of the Cattle Council of Australia. Next week I will again be meeting with industry leaders to discuss the Government's negotiating position. The Opposition, for its part, has made every effort to weaken and undermine Australia's negotiating stance and to work against our national interests. The Opposition, over the past week, has exhibited every symptom of its desperate, cowardly, hypocritical and unAustralian attitudes to our beef trade. It believes that if one makes a lot of noise, that if one insults trading partners as Peter Nixon did when he called the European Economic Community 'Ned Kelly', that if one goes to Japan and puts a headlock on the relevant Minister, one will somehow get results. The Opposition is creating all this noise for domestic consumption to score petty political points. On no occasion has the Opposition supported the Government, the producers, the processors or the workers in this important industry. Not a constructive word has been said. The Opposition is not concerned with the beef cattle industry or the people in it. It has followed a policy of trying to undercut every move by responsible Ministers and officials in the interests of scoring petty political points. It has been setting out on a path of calculated political bastardry because it believes that by distortion, deceit and lies it can damage the Prime Minister. Let me make quite clear the Australian interest in this question and the need for an opposition to act responsibly and in the national interests. It is a dingo act for an opposition deliberately to misinterpret statements made in the interests of further negotiation and additional trade. Words are bullets in such matters and any opposition which sets out to destroy a position only weakens the Government when further talks take place. The reason we did not attack the statements of Mr Fraser or Mr Anthony when they went abroad in respect of specific trade questions was that we believed that to do so would not be in Australia's overall national interests. I have dragged a few of those statements out of the Current Information Section. If one looks at them and all the claims the Opposition has made, one finds that we did not undercut Ministers of the former Government because when Ministers make statements abroad it is very important for them not to come home and have their statements shot away from underneath them. The Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister and I have been to our most important trading partner, Japan. We have all pushed hard on question of trade, and beef in particular. It has to be understood that in negotiations such as these Australia does not have economic and political leverage of a country such as the United States. The position of our beef industry has been hurt by the recent deals struck between Japan and the United States, which were discriminatory and in important respects contrary to the spirit of the open multilateral trading system. But that has not diminished this Government's commitment to bring about the best possible result for the Australian beef industry. It is important to recall to the Australian public that Australia's problems in the Japanese beef market date back to the Strauss-Ushiba agreement of 1978. The types of high quality beef specified effectively precluded Australian competition with United States suppliers. This has been disastrous for Australia ever since. This was meekly accepted, even applauded, by the then Liberal-National Party Government. The then National Party Minister for Trade said that he: . . . welcomed indications of a settlement of a number of outstanding trade issues between the United States and Japan. He said, furthermore: . . . that since the Strauss visit was concerned with ways of easing Japan's considerable balance of trade surplus, particularly with the USA, the communique should emphasise total quality beef mainly provided by the USA. As a result of those negotiations and the subsequent 1979 agreement by which the United States received a further 14,000 tonnes within hotel and general quotas, the Australian tonnages shipped to Japan fell absolutely-from 100,400 tonnes in 1979 to 92,200 tonnes in 1980, 90,900 tonnes in 1981 and 90,200 tonnes in 1982. This not only drastically reduced our market share, but also involved an absolute decline in tonnage. So much for all the nonsense the then Government carried on with and the victories it claimed. What an attitude for any Australian government to have taken in those circumstances! It welcomed the Strauss-Ushiba agreement. But there will not be a repetition of that sort of sellout under the Labor Government. This is confirmed by the substance of the joint statement issued after the Prime Minister's talks with the Japanese Prime Minister, which Mr Nakasone has since reaffirmed in writing to the Prime Minister. The key section of that communique states: The Japanese side confirms that it has no intention of dealing with the trade problems with third countries at the expense of Australia. I therefore reiterate that we are negotiating for an outcome which markedly improves the access of Australian beef producers to the Japanese market and which is satisfactory to the Australian beef industry. For some time Australia has been backing the United States, which, as I said, has the leverage, in general negotiations trying to get trade liberalisation in Japan. The United States started making this plea for trade liberalisation some five years ago. After four years it was rewarded with an additional 6,900 tonnes, but we have backed the United States all the time. During those negotiations-about a year or so ago-beef and citrus products became the focus of more specific negotiations which started well before Malcolm Fraser felt an election coming on. As honourable members know, this is an election year in the United States. The Administration there wants to hold down the protection forces. It wants to do something for its own cattlemen. It has leverage with the Japanese because of the enormous trade imbalance between the two countries. Of course, the United States shares our view on the restrictive quota policies of Japan with respect to beef. We also need to realise that trade between the United States, Japan and Australia is trilateral; that is it is very important that the United States have the capacity to absorb imports of Japanese goods. That is also in our interests. On 7 April the United States and Japan concluded negotiations on the quota. The results of those negotiations were bilateral, not multilateral. I was in Japan four days later. We need to realise that this trend towards bilateralism is something which should concern all members of this House. After I was in Japan I attended a meeting in Seoul on the broader questions of world trade. At that meeting the questions of agricultural subsidisation and further subsidisation of exports were discussed. The fact is that protection is growing and that until North America, Japan and the European Economic Community, as the three dominant power blocs or countries in this world, do something about agricultural protection and restrictive practices the rest of the world has to sit back and wait because it can do very little. It is very important that we get on to multilateral trading in the interests of open and free trade. But in this case a bilateral deal was concluded. In Japan and Korea I was with Mr Yamamura, the Japanese Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries twice, Mr Abe, the Foreign Minister, Mr Okinogi, officials of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry and Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Liberal Democratic Party Agricultural Committee, Mr Brock, the United States trade representative, Mr Smith and other United States officials. The honourable member for Darling Downs (Mr McVeigh), the Opposition's spokesman on primary industry, at one stage wanted the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister or me to go to Japan immediately when Mr Yamamura, the Minister, was not even there to see us. He was actually in the United States at the time. So much for the information available to the Opposition. I understand the Burakumin, the Livestock Industry Promotion Corporation, the LDP and its four factions, and the fact that there are 340,000 beef farmers in Japan and 100,000 dairy farmers who also rely on beef for 10 per cent to 20 per cent of their incomes. I also realise the realities of Japanese electorate boundaries and the fact that those 340,000 beef farmers have an average herd of 7 cattle. I also realise that Nokyo, the farm co-operative which has a large investment in the slaughter, processing and input supply industries, is a powerful political force in that country. When the United States gained the 6,900 tonnes there were resolutions immediately in the Diet criticising the Government. It is a National Party fantasy that somehow all that one has to do is yell and scream and the Japanese will comply. They will not. They are honourable people but having concluded that deal there was no way they would move immediately just because the National Party jumped up and down in the bush in Australia. The Prime Minister's understanding, gained in conference with Mr Nakasone, is and was of supreme importance in negotiations. As I said, we have a long, deep understanding with the Japanese. The relationship is mature and they are honourable people. That is why I welcome as a result of my visit the headline in the Mainichi Daily News of 16 April that Prime Minister Nakasone has given Minister Yamamura full powers to negotiate at these coming talks which will commence again next week. That brings me to the negotiations. The negotiations are still going on. I will not go into the details of the negotiations because the Opposition wants cheap political headlines. The negotiating process is likely to be long and complex. The outcome will need to be judged qualitatively, in terms of the types of beef, as well as quantitatively. It should be judged on the basis not only of what we may get for the year ahead, but also of what we can secure in the longer term. In this regard the need for general liberalisation of the Japanese beef import regime is obviously most important. I would like to give some examples of the way the Opposition has torn off in an irresponsible, gutless fashion trying to undercut Australia's national interests, trying to undercut the beef industry, the processing industry and the workers in it. I will not go into detail on the negotiations because every word we utter here is listened to in Japan. Let us just take the statement by the Cattlemen's Union President, Mr Ian Park, before I went to Japan. He said: It is not clear yet how much beef Australia will export to Japan in the current Japanese fiscal year. But one thing is clear-the amount of beef will be increased, even though our percentage share of the market is likely to decrease. . . . There is no suggestion that our exports will be reduced-the only question is by how much they will increase. In these terms, the results of the negotiations will have little effect on Australian cattle markets. Demand can only firm-it will not fall. The improved position of the U.S. is only to be expected. If I had more time I would go into it further. But the Opposition has nothing to claim in beef negotiations. Between 1976 and 1982 the percentage share went down from 75 per cent to 53 per cent. The increase of 35,000 tonnes only went up by a third under it. It is gutless and irresponsible. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mrs Child) —Order! The honourable Minister's time has expired. Mr HUNT(Gwydir)(4.10) —I say in sorrow rather than in anger that it is typical of the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) and the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Lionel Bowen) that they have left the Minister for Primary Industry (Mr Kerin) to try to defend what is a sorrowful record by the Hawke Labor Government in respect to its negotiations with Asian countries following the Prime Minister's most recent notorious tour of Asia and South East Asia. Clearly, they are running away from the issue. They have left it to a relatively junior Minister to carry the burden . He is in no way responsible for this disastrous state of affairs, but he is responsible for a gross inaccuracy with respect to the quantities of beef that have been exported under quota. Between 1976 and 1983 beef exports rose. In 1976 the figure was 79,000 tonnes; in 1982 it was 90,000 tonnes and, in the last Japanese fiscal year, the figure was 95,000 tonnes. To put the record straight, I seek leave to incorporate a table in Hansard. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mrs Child) — Is leave granted for the table to be incorporated? Mr Kerin —I have no objection. The table shows the decline in percentage, as I said. Leave granted. The table read as follows- JAPANESE BEEF IMPORTS UNDER QUOTA(i) (Tonnage) Australia USA Calendar year Total Tonnes Share Tonnes Share per cent per cent 1976 94,534 79,688 (82.5) 11,267 (11.9) 1977 88,195 75,288 (85.4) 7,284 (8.3) 1978 105,421 82,650 (78.4) 13,035 (12.4) 1979 135,998 106, 656 (78.4) 23,622 (17.4) 1980 125,787 96,795 (77.0) 22,473 (17.9) 1981 126,425 90,856 (71.9) 26,474 (20.9) 1982 126,445 90,238 (71.4) 31,580 (25.0) 1983 141, 810 95,244 (67.2) 37,713 (26.6) JAPANESE BEEF IMPORTS OUTSIDE OF QUOTA(ii) Australia USA Calendar year Total Tonnes Share Tonnes Share per cent per cent 1976 21,866 9,302 (42.5) 7,854 (35.9) 1977 37,953 11,042 ( 29.1) 21,203 (55.9) 1978 50,400 11,077 (22.0) 32,991 (65.5) 1979 46,084 9,772 (21.2) 30,030 (65.2) 1980 49,446 8,704 (17.6) 35,267 (71.3) 1981 52,338 7,190 (13.7) 39,686 (75.8) 1982 55,315 6,520 (11.8) 43,291 (78.3) 1983 61,324 5,715 (9.3) 50,301 (82.0) JAPANESE BEEF IMPORTS INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF QUOTA Australia USA Calendar year Total Tonnes Share Tonnes Share per cent per cent 1976 116,400 88,990 (75.0) 19,121 (16.4) 1977 126,148 86, 330 (68.4) 28,487 (22.6) 1978 155,821 93,727 (60.2) 46,026 (29.5) 1979 182,082 116,428 (63.9) 53,652 (29.5) 1980 175,253 105,499 (60.2) 57,740 (32.9) 1981 178,763 98,046 (54.8) 66,160 (37.0) 1982 181,760 96,758 (53.2) 74,871 (41.2) 1983 203,134 100,959 (49.7) 88,014 (43.3) (i) Fresh (chilled and frozen) and boiled beef (02.01-111, 119, 121, 129 and 16 .02.223); (ii) Internal organs and tongue (02.01.131) NB It should be noted that these statistics are actual imports on a calendar year basis. They vary from quotas allocated on a Japanese fiscal year basis. Mr HUNT —The heady statements and the impetuous comments by the Prime Minister during his February Asian tour have proved to be misleading and damaging to Australia's trading position. The Hawke Asian tour has become something of a bizarre disaster for Australian trade in Australia's most important trading region. We have waited three months for the Prime Minister to make a statement to this Parliament following his Asian tour, a statement outlining some of the discussions that he had with some very important international leaders. We have waited in vain. We want the Prime Minister to make a statement to this Parliament outlining the Government's policy intentions following his Osaka industry restructuring manifesto, the beef talks in Japan, the discussions with the Korean and Singaporean leaders, and the reaction of Chinese leaders to the proposed Australia-China integrated steel deal. Why the deathly silence? Why did the Prime Minister make such important policy pronouncements overseas and not in Australia? Why has he not eleborated on overseas Press reports on his far- reaching statements? Why the silence in this Parliament and in this country? I now turn to the unfortunate situation facing our cattle producers following the successful United States negotiations to obtain a greater share of the Japanese beef market. The Japanese beef market has in recent times been of vital importance to the saleyard prices for catttle in this country. The Prime Minister quite rightly raised the question of Australian beef exports to Japan in his discussions with Mr Nakasone in early February. Following those discussions he is reported to have told a news conference in Osaka on 3 February , as reported in the Age on 13 February: I have secured, I believe, in discussions with Mr Nakasone and others an understanding that provided Australia remains a competitive and reliable supplier-which we will-then the share that Australia has enjoyed in these traditional markets will be maintained. Clearly, the credibility of the Prime Minister has been damaged by the events that have followed this statement. Did the Prime Minister receive these assurances from the Japanese Prime Minister? We need to know the truth. The truth is vital to the final outcome of the further beef negotiations to take place this month. So far we have failed to maintain the traditional share of the Japanese beef market. I repeat, for the record, the Prime Minister's assurance: . . . the share that Australia has enjoyed in these traditional markets will be maintained. Let me outline a series of events which followed that statement. Just 10 days after the Prime Minister made the statement, it was widely reported in Australia that the Japanese Government had postponed talks on Australian beef exports because of concern over comments by Prime Minister Hawke. I immediately telexed the Minister for Trade (Mr Lionel Bowen), and then Acting Prime Minister, explaining to him that not only was the Prime Minister's credibility at risk but also the price structure of the Australian beef industry was under threat. I strongly urged either the Prime Minister or the Deputy Prime Minister to return to Tokyo as a matter of urgency to clarify the Japanese position prior to the finalisation of arrangements between Japan and the United States. The reaction of both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister was to sit on their hands while the United States negotiated successfully at the vice- presidential level to win 6,900 tonnes of the Japanese quota increase, not just for this year but until 1988. This was despite repeated calls by members of the Opposition that the Government was failing the beef industry during a critical period of negotiations which followed the Prime Minister's Asian tour. This Government has been content to send the relatively junior Minister for Primary Industry, who has experienced some difficulty in winning many rounds for agriculture in this country even in Canberra, in the Cabinet, to Japan to recover, in a belated endeavour, our lost ground, two months after the Prime Minister's discussions with Mr Nakasone and after the United States had won the lion's share of the additional global quota. The need for prompt and painstaking negotiations was clearly understood by the former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade, the Rt Hon. Doug Anthony, who was responsible for securing between 70 and 80 per cent of the Japanese beef import market for Australian exporters. But there is another aspect of this Goverment's incompetence and complacent attitude which until now has received little prominence. I seek leave to table copies of letters exchanged between the then Minister for Trade, Mr Anthony, and the Japanese Ambassador, Mr Okawara, detailing a firm agreement between our two nations concerning Japanese beef imports to 31 March 1983. Leave granted. Mr HUNT —In the next 12 months to 31 March 1984, Australia was offered a smaller than usual share of the market increase while a similar agreement with the United States ran out. That gave Australia a 12-month period in which to go back to the Japanese, at the highest government level, to press our case for the maintenance of our market share in Japan. This Government is culpable for the way in which it ignored such an important opportunity to consolidate one of our most important export markets. The Government was either ignorant of this opening for talks or it simply chose to ignore the beef industry, failing badly in one of the most important functions for which it was elected. The Minister for Trade has shown just how inept and lazy he is by sitting on his hands over such a crucial negotiating period. Unfortunately, the credibility of the Prime Minister's statement that Australia would maintain its market share is now in tatters. What assurances was he given? Will he explain those assurances to the Parliament? It is no use the Government suggesting that the Opposition has made its task more difficult. That just will not wash. It is a load of rubbish for the Minister for Primary Industry to come in here and try to blame the Opposition for the Government's ineptitude and the Minister's laziness for the Government's failure to get into the negotiating ring and do the best for our trade. The Government has badly bungled our beef trade with Japan in a series of amazing decisions which defy logic for any determined trade negotiator. What has happened in Korea? Since the Prime Minister's visit to Korea we have lost our tenders. Since the Prime Minister's visit to Singapore we have lost our market for beef in Singapore. What has the Prime Minister done? How has he offended these people? It does seem an incredible state of affairs. It is quite clear, after having heard the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Peacock) and his account of the steel problems with China, the steel deal and the beef issue, that the Prime Minister is not cut out for international trading negotiations. Sure he is good at presenting logies. He is good at attending sporting fixtures and putting his arm around Miss Australia. But when it comes to doing the best for the trade of this country he is an utter failure. It is the trade money that counts. The dollars that we earn from our soil and from our mines are the dollars that help sustain the standard of living of our people. It is an utter disgrace. It is a failure for this nation. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mrs Child) —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. Mr ROBERT BROWN(Hunter)(4.20) —Madam Deputy Speaker, it is extremely unfortunate that on the first day of this two-week sitting period members of the Opposition should raise this subject as a matter of public importance. I accept their responsibility to oppose and I accept their responsibility to challenge and to question. I do not accept, though, their responsibility to launch criticisms of this kind against the very significant initiatives taken by the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) during his recent trip to Asia. Two particular matters have been raised by the Opposition in connection with this matter of public importance-the beef question and the steel question. I am satisfied that the response made by the Minister for Primary Industry (Mr Kerin) more than adequately disposed of the Opposition's criticisms in regard to beef. I want to concentrate my attention on the criticism levelled by the Opposition at the Prime Minister and indirectly at the Government in relation to the very important and innovative discussions between Prime Minister Hawke and Premier Zhao in Beijing in China just recently. It has been suggested that the Prime Minister's statement in some way implied that he believed that overnight the Australian steel industry would invest another $7 billion in order to provide additional steel output for the Chinese market. No such claim was ever made. For members of the Opposition now to suggest that such a claim was made or was implied is nothing short of a gross misrepresentation of those discussions and of their importance. This matter of public importance represents a gross and deplorable act of sabotage of those bilateral negotiations and a possible serious act of political sabotage against the increased co-operation which undoubtedly will flow to Australia and China as a result of those discussions. The Leader of the Opposition (Mr Peacock) referred in his contribution to the national interest being at stake. I sincerely hope that the Leader of the Opposition, at this belated time, has finally decided that the national interest is pre-eminent, because his past actions as far as the national interest is concerned convince me that his position has been to the contrary. Let me give one example. I am sure he knows to what I will refer because it will take him many years to live down that notorious, grotesque exercise in fuelling speculation which he deliberately undertook in the few weeks prior to 5 March 1983. As a result of the fuelling of the speculative fires which he and his colleagues and leading members of the Liberal Party organisation in New South Wales undertook at that time we saw a massive outflow of capital from Australia. That brought Australia's international financial position into an extremely destabilised state. The Leader of the Opposition showed no concern for the national interest on that occasion. If his concern now is genuine I applaud it, but I retain serious personal reservations as to whether this belated concern for the national interest on the part of the Leader of the Opposition is genuine . In regard to the continuing attack which has been made on the very successful negotiations the Prime Minister undertook in China, the developments which unfold as a result of those initial discussions will indicate increasingly as time progresses the successful nature of these discussions and their great importance not only for the further consolidation of the Australian steel industry but also for the future development and expansion of that industry. As the Prime Minister indicated, it is not just one company in Australia that is involved in or concerned about steel production. There are opportunities for further very significant negotiations to be undertaken. I refer now to a statement released by the Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd as a result of some of the conjecture that surrounded the Prime Minister's initiatives. BHP indicated in its most recent statement: Since the Prime Minister's visit to China in February, BHP has been engaged in a series of discussions with government officials covering possible areas of co- operation between the Australian and Chinese steel industries. Several studies are under way, assisted by visits of two groups of BHP officers to Beijing in the last two weeks. The statement went on to identify the areas of possible interest. If Opposition members persist with the claim that those discussions were of no substance, of no significance either now or for the future, they should go back to BHP and suggest that not only in some way has the Prime Minister lied but also that BHP, in its dogged support of the Hawke Labor Government, has lied. This statement was made by BHP, not by us. Let me identify its possible areas of interest: 1. The possible re-opening of the Kwinana blast furnace, on some mutually agreed basis, to supply pig iron to China. 2. Australian investment in rehabilitation or expansion of steel plant facilities in China, leading to expanded trade in steelmaking materials or by- products. 3. Chinese investment in an iron ore mining venture in Australia. 4. Increases in the volume of trade in various steel products at competitive world prices. They are the areas of common interest identified in that statement by BHP. It was not put out by the Prime Minister or by his office. The executive of BHP was responsible for the statement. The statement went on to say, in reference to discussions the Prime Minister had with Premier Zhao: The understandings reached by the Prime Minister had been very helpful in that they have meant a significantly increased interest by the Chinese in co- operating with the Australian industry. The Prime Minister indicated at the time of those discussions with Premier Zhao, and he has subsequently repeated this correct claim, that the discussions had both short run and long run implications for possible co-operative ventures between the Chinese and Australian steel industries. The Opposition attempted to latch on to those long term considerations and to suggest that in some way the Prime Minister was claiming that they could be achieved overnight. No such implication was involved in those discussions. No such claim was made by the Prime Minister. Since those discussions there has already been a joint study group which the Prime Minister and Premier Zhao decided to establish. It has already met formally in Beijing a couple of weeks ago and concrete possibilities were identified and discussed in each of the areas on which Premier Zhao and Prime Minister Hawke agreed. It was a very significant initiative by the Prime Minister which could have long term beneficial results for Australia and particularly for the Australian steel industry. The sooner we get some evidence of support and co-operation from the Opposition, the better. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mrs Child) —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. The discussion is concluded. Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation for proposed expenditure announced. Bill presented by Mr Dawkins, and read a first time. Mr DAWKINS(Fremantle-Minister for Finance)(4.32) —I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. This Bill, together with its companion Bills, Supply Bill (No. 2) 1984-85 and Supply (Parliamentary Departments) Bill 1984-85, seeks interim appropriations for the services of the Government for the period 1 July 1984 to 30 November 1984, by which date it is expected that the equivalent appropriation Bills, which will form part of the Budget for 1984-85, will have been enacted. Supply Bill (No. 1) seeks appropriations totalling some $6,609.3m for the ordinary annual services of the Government. This is $868m, or about 15.1 per cent, greater than the equivalent amounts provided in the Supply Act (No. 1) 1983-84. A large part of the increase reflects staffing approvals and salary and other cost increases including the effects of the national wage case decision handed down on 4 April 1984. The increase also includes: $200m under the Department of Defence reflecting higher progress payments on the FA18 tactical fighter and the P3C Orion reconnaissance aircraft; and $43m under the Department of Health for the ongoing administrative costs of Medicare benefits payments. I wish to emphasise that this Bill does not anticipate decisions yet to be taken in the 1984-85 Budget context. I commend the Bill to the House. Debate (on motion by Mr Howard) adjourned. Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation for proposed expenditure announced. Bill presented by Mr Dawkins, and read a first time. Mr DAWKINS(Fremantle-Minister for Finance)(4.34) —I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. This Bill seeks interim appropriations, totalling $1,711.8m, for expenditure on capital works and services, payments to or for the States and the Northern Territory and certain other services for the period 1 July 1984 to 30 November 1984. The amount sought is $713m, or about 71.4 per cent, greater than provided in the Supply Act (No. 2) 1983-84. The main factors in this large increase are: $308m in payments to the States and the Northern Territory under agreements entered into under Medicare whereby from 1 February 1984 the Commonwealth will compensate the States and the Northern Territory for revenue losses and additional costs associated with the removal of inpatient and outpatient fees in public hospitals; $70m in payments to the States and the Northern Territory reflecting the 1983-84 Budget decision to increase funds available for housing; and $278m for the Commonwealth employment program, expenditure for which in 1983-84 was provided for under a one-time special appropriation under the Community Employment Act. Excluding these very large amounts the increase is only $57m or 5.7 per cent. Certain new provisions in respect of which Government decisions have been taken have been separately itemised in the Bill in accordance with convention. These include, in line with the Government's announced intentions, assistance to the steel regions, totalling $9.3m and $6.5m for bicentennial commemorative projects . As indicated with respect to the Supply Bill (No. 1), the provisions in this Bill do not anticipate decisions to be taken in the 1984-85 Budget context. I commend the Bill to the House. Debate (on motion by Mr Howard) adjourned. Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation for proposed expenditure announced. Bill presented by Mr Dawkins, and read a first time. Mr DAWKINS(Fremantle-Minister for Finance)(4.38) —I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. This Bill seeks interim appropriations to meet expenditure by the parliamentary departments during the period 1 July 1984 to 30 November 1984. The appropriations sought total some $17.2m which is $3.2m, or about 22.9 per cent, greater than the amount provided for the same functions in the supply period 1983-84. This reflects, in large part, increased staffing approvals and salary and other cost increases. I commend the Bill to the House. Debate (on motion by Mr Howard) ajourned. Debate resumed from 4 April, on motion by Mr Keating: That the Bill be now read a second time. (Quorum formed) Mr HOWARD(Bennelong)(4.42) —The Income Tax Assessment Amendment Bill (No. 2) 1984 is a piece of taxation legislation introduced by the Government for the purpose of collecting, at most, about $15m of taxation revenue which it claims has been the subject of a blatant artificial tax avoidance arrangement. The only issue in dispute between the Opposition and the Government on this measure is the commencement date of the legislation. The Government proposes, without any foundation, that this measure commence from 1 July 1977. The Opposition believes the measure should commence from the date of introduction of the Bill. In other words, we believe it should have an entirely prospective operation and have no element of a retrospective operation about it. It is our intention, during the Committee stage, to move an amendment seeking to alter the date from 1 July 1977 to the introduction of the original piece of legislation. The Opposition will not oppose in any way in this House or in another place the suggestion that this measure should operate prospectively, although I should say that a number of my colleagues have very genuine doubts as to whether the measures proposed by the Government will entirely avoid interfering with some quite genuine superannuation arrangements entered into by small businesses. But so far as the vote is concerned, we on this side of the House will not oppose the prospective operation of the measure. Undoubtedly the reintroduction into the House of this piece of legislation is one of the early salvos in the campaign of the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) to try to make tax avoidance a phoney issue in the course of the election that he is determined to have before the end of the year, before all the economic decisions that he has put off come back to haunt him in 1985. This is one of the very early salvos in the Government's campaign. The Prime Minister made it quite clear just before Easter that he was going to make tax avoidance an issue during the next election campaign. We will be absolutely delighted to make tax avoidance an issue and to hear a few more lectures from that bottom of the harbour socialist, the Minister for Finance (Mr Dawkins). Political argot has given us many interesting descriptions. It has given us the penthouse Left. It has given us the patio pinks. Now we have the bottom of the harbour socialist, the Minister for Finance, whose hypocrisy on the issue of tax avoidance was revealed last year for the whole of this Parliament to see. That man is prepared to vilify, to traduce and to abuse the reputations of honest, law abiding citizens under privilege of this Parliament, but when he was caught out he skulked away into a corner. He would not answer the charges made against him. He ran around trying to make himself look scarce. Then he went to the National Press Club and said: 'I have turned over a new leaf. It is a new Persil white Minister for Finance. I have found the new idealism and I would like to get back to it'. I have to say to him that he has to do a lot of expunging of his own hypocrisy and double standards on tax avoidance before that record will be expunged. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! I point out to the honourable member that previous Speakers have ruled the word 'hypocrisy' unparliamentary. I ask him to withdraw it. Mr HOWARD —Madam Deputy Speaker, in personal deference to you, I am willing to withdraw that remark, but it does not alter in any way the stricture that I make against the Minister for Finance, and it does not alter in any way the total vulnerability, the total double standards, the dishonesty and the deceit of this Government and, in particular, its Prime Minister on the issue of tax avoidance. The Fraser Government passed legislation which effectively brought the tax avoidance industry in this country to its knees. The present Government is asking this Parliament and this country to accept the proposition that in opposing the legislation the Opposition is in some way behaving as the friend of the tax avoidance industry. The fact of the matter is that we, more than anybody else in the history of this country, brought the tax avoidance industry to its knees. What did the Minister for Finance, the bottom of the harbour socialist, say in addressing a meeting of accountants in Sydney a couple of weeks ago? He was addressing a group of people who know all about the effectiveness of the former Government's legislation and who were not going to have their intelligence insulted by a whole lot of hot air and propaganda. In answer to a question he said: 'Frankly, gentlemen, tax avoidance in Australia is finished as an issue'. I repeat that: 'Tax avoidance in Australia is finished as an issue'. Mr Donald Cameron —Who said that? Mr HOWARD —The Minister for Finance, the Prime Minister's colleague. The bottom of the harbour socialist from Fremantle said that tax avoidance is finished as an issue. Yet his own Prime Minister, two days later, went to an Australian Labor Party gathering in Adelaide and said: 'We are going to make tax avoidance a big issue and you are going to hear about it from now until the election campaign'. One of them has to be wrong. Who is wrong? Is it the Prime Minister or is it the Minister for Finance? Is tax avoidance alive or dead? Perhaps we are going to hear a bit from the Government on that subject. The fact is that tax avoidance has been effectively brought to an end in this country and it was brought to an end by the legislation of the former Government. If anything demonstrates how effective the former Government's legislation was, it is the total inability of this Government, of the Hawke Labor Government, to find any examples of blatant tax avoidance arrangements that ought to be the subject of legislative action. The truth is that when this Government campaigned in the last election, when the Labor Party went to the people in March last year , it ran around the country breathing hell, fire and damnation about tax avoidance. It said: 'When we get in we will do something about it. We will stop all of these rorts. We will bring all of these abuses to an end'. Of course, when it got in it found there were not any rorts or abuses to be brought to an end. So it had to cast around and drum up some phoney areas in which to legislate, and it found two. One of them is before us today. It deals with some superannuation arrangements in the small business area. They are called in the trade the cherry picking schemes. They involve, in some cases, an undesirable tax avoidance practice. The Opposition fully supports their prospective abolition, although we do have a number of arrangements. The interesting thing, the real point at issue and the real test of the bona fides of Labor members, of how honest are their claims about tax avoidance and how honest are their claims- they are false-that we are friends of tax avoiders in this country lies in an examination of the commencement date of this legislation. Mr Hand —You are. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mrs Child) —Order! Mr HOWARD —The honourable member can go on as long as he likes. To have him opposing me is a tremendous help to our side. He can talk, he can bay and he can interject just as much as he likes. But the real point at issue is the commencement date of this legislation. The Government is saying that this tax avoidance practice is so outrageous, so wicked and so heinous that what it has to do is to take the legislation back to 1 July 1977. Let us examine the reasonableness of that approach. Let us examine whether there is any justification at all for that kind of approach. Many would argue, including honourable members on my side of the House, that under no circumstances should any taxation law have a retrospective application, and that is a thoroughly proper, defensible and correct argument. But even if some honourable members on the opposite side were to argue that on occasions we could justify the use of retrospective legislation to tackle tax avoidance arrangements, let us ask ourselves how reasonable is its use in relation to this arrangement, because the Labor Party is saying that it is fair, resonable and just that these schemes be outlawed from 1 July 1977. That means it wants to go back from May of 1984 to 1 July 1977-almost seven years. Honourable members opposite say that that is perfectly all right. It is true that when I was the Treasurer concern was expressed to me by a number of people about the potential for tax avoidance through the abuse of internal superannuation schemes and I received a number of representations on that matter. On 7 September 1979-I ask honourable members to note that date, 7 September 1979; that is more than two years after the intended commencement date of this legislation-I sent a minute to the Commissioner of Taxation in which I said: I continue to sign a lot of mail replying to people-many in the Life Insurance Industry-who complain about the level of tax avoidance in regard to superannuation schemes. We appear to have had this issue under notice for a while. What is the position? Are there any blatant practices against which action should be taken? Mr Fife's representations to me of 13 July, to which I have recently replied, are the most recent examples That is hardly the memo of a Treasurer who is sitting on his hands about tax avoidance practices. No, it is a response to the very legitimate concern of people in this area. What happened? I got my office to send a follow-up memo to the office of the Commissioner of Taxation on 20 November 1979, asking whether we could have a reply and also asking what was happening. On 8 February 1980 I got a lengthy response from the Commissioner of Taxation. I will table this correspondence and make it public. The community can make a judgment on how dinkum are the protestations of this Government about the need for retrospective legislation in relation to this tax avoidance practice. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! Is the honourable gentlemen seeking leave to table the document? Mr HOWARD —Yes. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER —Is leave granted? Mr Fife —Incorporate the document in Hansard. Mr HOWARD —I seek leave to have it incorporated. If that is refused, I will table it and make it public anyhow. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER —Is it in the form of tables? Mr HOWARD —No. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER —In that case, you will have to seek leave to have it tabled. Mr HOWARD —I seek leave to have the documents tabled. Leave granted. Mr HOWARD —I thank the House. On 8 February 1980-this is two and a half years after the proposed commencement date of this legislation-the Commissioner of Taxation wrote to me. Under the sub-heading 'possible corrective action', he said: The main problem in dealing with this matter is that the corrective measures that seem to be appropriate would also cause difficulties to the very large number of funds that must be regarded as completely genuine in every way. This will be evident from an examination of the kind of corrective actions that are indicated. At the end of a four and a half page memo the Commissioner of Taxation has this to say: Because, in revenue terms, we have larger avoidance problems in other areas and also because of the need to make certain that no avoidable difficulties are created for genuine superannuation funds, I would recommend that you await the comments of the Task Force before undertaking any corrective measures to deal with actual or potential misuse of the superannuation concessions. In other words, on 8 February 1980, in response to written inquiries from me, the Commissioner of Taxation said: 'Do not take any action'. Two and a half years after the prospective commencement date of this legislation he said: 'Do not take any action about it because if you do, before you get that task force report, you might interfere with the legitimate superannuation arrangements for purely legitimate internal superannuation funds'. I noted on that minute: Bill, I accept your advice. The matter will inevitably be raised again. Can I have a draft Press statement done, to hold in my file, drawing on appropriate points in this memo. In other words, I accepted the advice of the Commissioner of Taxation. He said in February 1980 that he believed we ought to wait before taking any action, yet this Government now says that the matter was so outrageous and so terrible that the operation of this legislation has to go back to 1 July 1977. I have not heard a weaker, more pathetic case on taxation matters from this Government since it has been the Government of this country. When this matter was debated before, the Government produced a supplementary letter from the First Assistant Commissioner of Taxation, Mr Boucher, saying that there was really nothing inconsistent with this advice and the advice the Department was now giving the Government to go ahead with the legislation. That to me was not a very convincing letter. With all due respect to a taxation officer for whom I have a very high personal regard, that was a very unconvincing letter. No material has been advanced, no evidence has been given to say that the advice given by Mr O'Reilly on 8 February 1980 was wrong. Until it is demonstrated to have been wrong, this Government has no case, no justification, and we will continue to oppose the retrospective application of this measure on the very sound grounds that it is quite wrong and quite unjust, given the circumstances that I have outlined. This Government has no mandate from the Australian people or anybody else to enact unjust taxation legislation. I wish to give notice on behalf of the Opposition that honourable members opposite need not imagine that they can use the smear of tax avoidance to justify any kind of corrupt ramshackle taxation legislation. If they imagine that they can ram it through this Parliament, and if their Prime Minister imagines that he can get away with any kind of lousy taxation legislation provision by attaching the label and the smear of tax avoidance to it, they have another thing coming, because the Australian people are not that gullible. They know a little about the practices of McCarthyism. What the Prime Minister is practising on this tax avoidance issue is nothing other than a 1984 version of McCarthyism because he is trying, dishonestly and deceitfully, to label anybody who opposes a piece of taxation legislation put forward by his Government as being a friend of the tax avoidance industry. Does that mean that if he puts forward a piece of legislation imposing a retrospective capital gains tax and we oppose it, we are the friends of the tax avoidance industry? Honourable members opposite, particularly those holding marginal seats, ought to understand that there are a lot of people whose support they might need who would not be very pleased about having to pay a retrospective capital gains tax, because that is what will be involved in the Government's bottom of the harbour legislation. Mr Robert Brown —That was four years ago. Mr HOWARD —The honourable member knows darn well that all bottom of the harbour tax has been collected. He knows what was in the Government's collection Bill and what was rejected was a retrospective capital gains tax. If the Government thinks that it can get away with that simply by using the smear and innuendo of tax avoidance-I refer particularly to people with such double standards as the bottom of the harbour socialist from Fremantle on the Government's front bench- it has another think very sadly coming to it, because the Australian people will not wear that. They will support tough legislation against the tax avoidance industry. They support-- Mr Robert Brown —Madam Deputy Speaker, I take a point of order. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mrs Darling) —Will the Deputy Leader of the Opposition please be seated? I am trying to hear a point of order from the honourable member for Hunter. Mr HOWARD —I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker, I did not hear you. Mr Robert Brown —Madam Deputy Speaker, the point that I make is that I think there is a requirement for all members of the House, even though they may be deputy leaders of the Opposition, to refer to members of the Ministry by their correct title. I believe that the honourable member should be asked to withdraw the unfortunate expression he has been using in connection with the Minister for Finance. He should refer to the Minister for Finance by his correct title. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER —I take that point, and I ask the Deputy Leader of the Opposition if he would kindly do so. Mr HOWARD —Madam Deputy Speaker, I am perfectly happy to amend the description to the bottom of the harbour socialist Minister for Finance from Fremantle. I know the description hurts. Name calling is all right if it comes from the Government side of the House, but when somebody starts to put the boot in from this side, honourable members opposite squirm around. The Prime Minister is very good at dishing it out, but when it comes to taking it he has a big glass jaw. The honourable member for Hunter (Mr Robert Brown) has demonstrated very much by his interjection that he is in exactly the same situation. I am very happy to return to this legislation. I repeat that this Government came to office and found, to its great disappointment, that there were no tax avoidance arrangements against which legislative action really needed to be taken. Having huffed and puffed and breathed hell-fire and damnation during the election campaign about tax avoidance, the Government was in the very embarrassing position when it got into office of finding that the job had really been done by the last Govenment. In the documents I have tabled during this debate honourable members will see that, as well as the memo of 8 February 1980, there is also part of a memo from the Commissioner of Taxation that was addressed to me in March 1983, only a short while before the change of government. It was in response to a minute from me to the Commissioner asking whether he believed that there were any further things that might be done in the general taxation area. In that memorandum the Commissioner said that Part IVA, the general anti-avoidance section of the taxation Act which had been passed by the Fraser Government, had been remarkably successful in bringing to an end the blatant artifical tax avoidance arrangements. It is a matter of accepted folklore now among the accountants and the lawyers of this country that the combination of the Crimes (Taxation Offences) Act 1980 and Part IVA, introduced on 27 May 1981, has effectively brought blatant artifical tax avoidance arrangements to an end in Australia. That legislation was not passed by the Hawke Government. So when the Minister for Finance, the bottom of the harbour socialist, talks about tax avoidance being finished, what he is really doing is complimenting the Fraser Government on the effectiveness of its legislation. As he demonstrates by his stumbling reply in Question Time today, he cannot point to any legislation the Hawke Government has passed that has effectively brought tax avoidance to an end. He cannot say: 'We passed this and we passed that and we passed the other piece of legislation'. If he says that tax avoidance is at an end, as he did, and he did not deny it today, then he is not only in conflict with his Prime Minister, but he is also paying a compliment to the last Government. Frankly, on this occasion I am prepared to accept the compliment from the Minister for Finance because what he was quite truthfully saying to the accountants of Sydney was: 'Look, chaps, it was pretty rough a few years ago but it has been cleaned up. We can all now work together to make sure that we have a decent taxation Act'. That is a very fine aspiration for the Minister for Finance. I applaud it and I think it is very good that he could say it. Nevertheless, we must understand and his Prime Minister must understand the implications of that statement. What he was really signalling to the world and to this House was that he, as Minister for Finance, does not believe that tax avoidance is any longer a problem and good on the Fraser Government for having effectively brought it to an end, that he cannot point to any legislation the Hawke Government has introduced that has clamped down on tax avoidance because it has not introduced any. All the effective legislation was passed by the last Government. So that was not a bad answer from the Minister for Finance to the accountants. He achieved two purposes. He put himself in direct conflict with the Prime Minister and exposed what a humbug the Prime Minister is on this issue . The other thing he did, of course, was to recognise the enormous contribution made by the former Liberal-National Party Government in stamping out tax avoidance in Australia. If the Prime Minister imagines that he can make a successful election campaign out of the tax avoidance issue then he is on very, very shaky ground. The runs are on the board for the Liberal and National parties. We brought tax avoidance to an end. None other than the Minister for Finance himself, no mean actor when it comes to understanding what tax avoidance practice is all about, understood it all, and he said we had brought it to an end. If the Prime Minister wants to have an argument on tax avoidance I, and I am sure any member of the Opposition, would be delighted to argue with him because he is on very shaky ground. The truth, as everybody increasingly knows, is that the Prime Minister's economic wheels will start falling off next year and he desperately needs to have an election before that happens. He knows that the fortuitous flow-through effects of the breaking of the drought and of the wages pause in particular have combined in part to bring about such a successful consumer price index today. He knows that those issues will be out of the system next year and he has to try to hold an election before the end of this year. He will run around trying to find any phoney issue, and one of the phoney issues he is trying to raise is that the Opposition has been soft on the tax avoidance industry. If he has a few moments I would like to show him some of the letters that people wrote to me protesting against some of the tax avoidance legislation for which I was responsible. They demonstrate pretty clearly that the tax avoidance industry did not have a particularly warm regard for me or any of the legislation I passed. The fact is that we killed the tax avoidance industry in Australia. Despite the rhetoric of the Hawke Government, tax avoidance was a dead duck when it came to power. It has been casting around ever since trying to find some justification for its phoney campaign that we are the friends of the tax avoidance industry. No government that passed the recoupment legislation we passed in 1982 could possibly be regarded as the friend of the tax avoidance industry. That legislation will recover all of the company tax illegally evaded under bottom of the harbour schemes. No further legislation is required to achieve that purpose. The legislation now before the House does not, by any stretch of the imagination, justify the use of retrospectivity. In February 1980 the Commissioner of Taxation, who is respected on both sides of the House as being a fair and fearless administrator, told me that I ought not to legislate. He told me that in February 1980. Yet this Government and this Prime Minister are now inviting the Parliament, despite that advice which they have not been able to refute or to gainsay in any way, to accept legislation that will start from 1 July 1977. Will they tell us why the Commissioner's advice of 8 February is no longer, to use that immortal Watergate word, operative? Will they explain to us why that advice was wrong? Will they tell us that Mr O'Reilly was mistaken? During this debate will they please justify to this House why, in the face of that advice and the then Government's reasonable acceptance of it, this Bill will have effect from 1 July 1977? They have no grounds to do that. It illustrates the shallowness of their case. It illustrates how dishonest and deceitful this Prime Minister and his Government will be on the issue of tax avoidance if it suits their electoral purposes. We serve notice to the Prime Minister and to the Government that we will not allow them to conduct and get away with such a disreputable, dishonest and deceitful campaign. Mr PUNCH(Barton)(5.07) —We have just heard yet another litany of ranting and raving by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition (Mr Howard) which, if it does not entitle him to the leadership of the Opposition in due time, at the behest of the right wing of the Liberal Party, certainly would land him the lead role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest if it came back to Canberra. He has an absolute paranoia about an early election. He is quite convinced that all of this is about an early election. Let me say here and now to the listening public: There will be one reason for an early election, if and when it comes about this year, and that is that he and his lanky mate threw the Houses of Parliament of this country out of kilter in March of last year. His paranoia about an early election might be well founded because an early election will probably mean a political early shower for the honourable member for Bennelong. He has an infatuation with the Minister for Finance (Mr Dawkins). He raises matters relating to the Minister for Finance at every opportunity, despite what the Minister for Finance has said repeatedly in this House. I find that quite amazing. As Treasurer of this country for a number of years, the honourable member did for the tax avoidance industry what franchising did for MacDonald's. If he had been in power for another three years we would have had a one-stop tax avoidance shop on every corner of every suburb in this country and he well knows it. Lest the listening public this afternoon should think that we are all preoccupied with the type of discussion that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has brought into this House let me move on to the provisions of the Income Tax Assessment Amendment Bill (No. 2) 1984 so that the listening public knows truly what the legislation is about. The provisions of the Bill are identical to those in clause 5 of the Income Tax Assessment Amendment Bill (No. 5) which the Senate rejected on 27 March this year. The objective of the Bill is to make fully taxable income tax benefits received by taxpayers from a section 23F fund that are deemed to be either excessive or, more importantly, not proper entitlements of those persons under fund rules and the intention of the law. This aspect of the legislation is not dictated by revenue. The revenue is of marginal importance. The estimation of revenue is only some $15m. Rather, it is the morality of what has become known as the cherry picker scheme that is important. Let me briefly describe what the scheme is all about. Basically, it is a scheme whereby some individuals or companies set up superannuation funds, almost always without the knowledge of the employees concerned, and as a result they obtain tax benefits from contributing to those superannuation funds. They proceed, before their employees become entitled to the benefits under the various State legislation, to sack those employees or force them to leave. Then the companies or individuals who set up the funds retain the tax free accumulated reserves and interest accrued on them. That is why this legislation is important. Honourable members opposite are always the first to say that there is not enough encouragement in this country for private enterprise to employ people because of the cost of workers compensation, superannuation and many other costs . It is for that purpose that all parties in this place have long supported the ideals and objectives of superannuation tax free areas for employers to benefit employees. Considerable tax free advantages accrue under section 23F. Employers' contributions are allowable deduction. Investment income of the fund is also exempt from tax. That is a very important area. It is fundamental to what we should be seeking to do and what the Government is seeking to do-that is, encourage employment. The cherry picker scheme has all the connotations and morality of the sweat shop era. It has seriously apparent elements of fraud and it represents blatant manipulation of working people's benefits that have been acquired over a number of years by legitimate industrial action and legislative advances. This Bill will discourage the benefits of tax avoidance to those companies seeking to flout the intention of the law. It will effectively outlaw the cherry picker scheme. Proposed new section 26AFA provides that instead of the present 5 per cent of the benefit under section 23F funds being taxable the entire benefit will be taxed in the case of excessive benefits. Let me run very briefly through the main provisions. First of all, the benefit must have been received on or after 1 July 1977. That is covered by proposed new section 26AFA (1) (a). Mr Hodgman —Retrospective. Mr PUNCH —That is the retrospective part of the Bill which I will deal with in detail in a moment. Secondly, the benefit is either one that the taxpayer has no right to receive from the fund or it is an excessive benefit under section 26AFA (1) (b). Thirdly, the Commissioner must be satisfied that the taxpayer received or obtained the benefit by being a member of the fund, a dependant of a member of the fund, by being associated with a member of the fund or, further still, by being associated with an employer who made deductible contributions to the fund. In other words, the legislation moves right across the spectrum where there has been very clear flouting of the intention of the law since at least 1977. I can well understand those on the other side in this place and in the Senate who are concerned about where this legislation will start and finish as it relates to legitimate circumstances and businesses that, for instance, have failed. I assure the House that such a situation is covered in proposed new section 26AFA (2) which provides that the Commissioner may consider that in the case of excessive benefit it might well be unreasonable in appropriate circumstances for the whole or part of the benefit acquired from a section 23F fund to be included in assessable income. In making that assessment the Commissioner will have regard to the nature of the fund, the circumstances surrounding the reasons for the excessive benefit and other relevant matters that he sees as warranted concerns. This provision meets the concern that was expressed by Senator Chipp, at least in the other place some time ago about a recession plagued company which is forced into retrenching employees and is caught, because of the nature of the fund, in a situation which would put it in serious straits-a situation about which many people have fears. The safeguard section, proposed new section 26AFA (2), is designed to meet that real concern. The real problem of those opposite is the issue of retrospectivity. In 1975 honourable members opposite came into government with a promise of turning on the lights in the country. They are always consistent. They have extended that concept further. Not only are they going to try to turn on the lights again by acquiring office but also they have acquired a light switch morality. When they are in office and under the public gaze the light switch and the morals are on. When they are out of office and they are trying to rejuvenate support amongst some shady operators to contribute to their funds to enable them to get back into government they turn the morality light switch off. The honourable member for Bennelong, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, had the audacity to come into this House and speak against retrospective tax avoidance legislation when he was the architect of it. I call on him to clarify what went on inside his own Party, whether he was still in favour of retrospective legislation and was rolled. Retrospectivity, therefore, as outlined by the honourable member for Bennelong, is the criterion by which honourable members opposite differ with this legislation. It has been long held in the arguments coming from the other side that certain circumstances must exist. Let me go over the need for retrospectivity in this legislation. It is true that in 1980-it is now a matter of public record-the then Treasurer, the now Deputy Leader of the Opposition, received a letter from the Commissioner of Taxation which implied that the scheme which we are discussing was not thought to be widespread and therefore was lower on the pole of priorities than it is now. Two events have made the opinion of that time further redundant. Those events basically are that the 1982-83 investigations revealed that the practice was far more widespread than was previously thought. On 6 March this year Senator Walsh, when talking on this issue in the Senate, informed the Senate that the Australian Federal Police, the Commissioner of Taxation and the Australian Taxation Office in general, because of the proposals the Government was putting up at that time, which are identical to those we are discussing today and the policy changes in the area of superannuation enacted by this Government, had found that many of these schemes were seeking to wind up. That, as was pointed out by Senator Walsh at the time, is a glowing indictment that the Government in 1980 was wrong. The scheme was shown to be far more widespread than was considered in the opinion given in 1980. I take the opportunity to deal with the issue of the letters. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition has again sought, as he did in the last debate on this issue in this House, to distract the debate with an argument about the dates and times of letters and the places from which they came. Let me just set the record straight both for the listening public and for the Hansard. I quote from a letter from Mr T. P. Boucher, the Acting Commissioner of Taxation, to the present Treasurer on 6 March this year. I will read the relevant paragraph in full. The letter explains why action such as is outlined by the Government on this occasion is needed. The letter states: In providing this advice, I am aware of the comments made by the former Treasurer in the course of the debate in the House of Representatives. As you would appreciate, there is difficulty in my providing you with comments on or explanations of advice given to the former Government by the Commissioner on the matter. It is, I hope, enough for me to say that, when the advice that Mr Howard has referred to is read in its context, it is not at variance with the advice now provided. In other words, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has come in here, selectively time quoted from one letter and has failed even to mention that letter from Mr Boucher which was tabled in the Senate on 6 March this year. The second point, of course, that arises regarding the necessity for this legislation is the Kelly versus Raymor case of 1982 in which the operatives of a blatant cherry picking scheme were able over five years to accumulate $2.7m and invest a further $800,000. One of the reasons offered by members of the Opposition earlier this year for not supporting this kind of retrospective legislation was that the avoidance was not blatant enough-that it was not as blatant or as gross as it was at the time their Government brought in retrospective legislation. Just let me quote a few of the more notable quotes from Mr Justice Wootten's judgment in the New South Wales Supreme Court in the Kelly versus Raymor case. He said: It is apparent that the problem of avoiding taxation occupied many of their waking hours, and dictated many of their actions. He was talking about the people involved. In the most critical part of his judgment he said: There can be no doubt that the Raymor superannuation fund was of this extreme tax avoidance category. Note the words 'extreme tax avoidance category'. He goes on to say that the employees were 'treated as pawns to be manipulated' and that it contained ' brazen cheating of employees disclosed in the case'. That is what the judge had to say. That is how blatant he thought it was. Let us hear from the lips of the accused themselves. Let us hear from William Kelly himself. In reply, he said that the type of fund established was 'by no means unusual' and that so-called ' tax avoidance funds' became 'quite well known'. That is an indictment of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in his period as Treasurer. It is an indictment of all the reasons that he previously offered up, although I notice they were fairly obvious by their omission today, for not supporting retrospective legislation on this issue. A number of other reasons have been offered by the Opposition as to why it does not support this legislation. One reason offered by Senator Watson in the other place on the last occasion this legislation was debated was that section 23F, as it stands, and sections 82AAA and 82AAR were of themselves sufficient to outlaw cherry picking schemes and the like. The advice from the Taxation Office-I checked with the Treasurer's office this afternoon-is a definitive no to those comments made by Senator Watson in the other place. Of course, one other argument that is always brought up against retrospective tax avoidance legislation and which was used to great effect last year when the main Bill of which this legislation was originally a part was put up was that if one recoups retrospectively tax avoidance funds and the accumulated profits that have been earned since there will be a serious effect on employment. It is, of course, quite ironic that those honourable members opposite who put so many people out of work should be concerned about that. The argument that is always attempted to be used to manipulate public opinion and to talk, cajole and even bludgeon the Government out of adopting retrospective tax legislation is that such a measure will have an effect on employment. Senator Harradine in the other place has been attempting to use this argument to great effect also. Might I say that if every State government were as progressive as the New South Wales State Labor Government, and I am sure that legislation will follow in those States that are not, they would enact something along the lines of section 14 of the New South Wales Employment Protection Act 1982 which in fact deals with circumstances very similar to the legislation before the House and offer hope to employees who have been ripped off and denied their legitimate entitlements to recoup some of the entitlements lost. Mr Hodgman —You are supporting a retrospective capital gains tax. Mr PUNCH —The honourable member for Denison interjects yet again. He is talking about something that has not even been mentioned in this debate on this side of the House. Might I just finish by quoting from an article by Max Walsh in the Sydney Morning Herald of 26 April this year in which he discusses the cherry picking issue in some depth. He said: Personally I found Mr Howard's opposition to the legislation unconvincing in its presentation. I say to those opposite that that will be the real opinion of the people of this country; that will be the reception that the people of this country will give to honourable members opposite opposing retrospectivity in respect of this blatant, immoral form of ripping off innocent employees and denying tax revenue to the Commonwealth of this country. They are defending people who have derived ill- gotten gains. They are saying that these people are entitled to keep that money and the profits that they have subsequently earned from them. That is not only immoral, it is also blatant in regard to who it is attempting to help and who it is attempting to protect. I find it is quite tasteless, to say the least, to have a party in this House that would so blatantly occupy that position in the body politic. I hope that those opposite will reconsider their attitude to retrospective tax avoidance legislation for one reason and for one reason only. It is a well acknowledged fact that the tax base of this country is much more confined than the tax base of most, if not all, comparable Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development nations. If we are going to get by without lumbering the Australian public with more and higher rates of taxes than the present taxes that are inflicted on them, the spirit and the moral intent of the law as it relates to taxation as it stands must be pursued and must be followed through to the final degree. In other words, when something is blatantly used to deny people their rights, to rip off government revenue, it has to be stopped. If this has to be done retrospectively, then let that be a warning to all those who may consider doing similar things because they can get away with it in the spirit of the law on the day. Let it be a warning to those opposite that they are digging their own political grave. They are out of step with public opinion in this country and they will remain so by opposing the legislation before the House. Mr ROCHER(Curtin)(5.28) —When this measure was included in an omnibus Bill to give effect to several amendments earlier this year it was said in the accompanying explanatory memorandum: Proposed section 26AFA is to have retrospective effect in relation to benefits received in the above mentioned circumstances on or after 1 July 1977. I include those words only to make the point that it is an admitted retrospective tax. It is a new tax and in some ways it might even be seen to be a retrospective capital gains tax. The Opposition parties believed then and maintain that belief that any retrospective laws are unacceptable. If retrospectivity ever becomes acceptable in this country it is not difficult to picture what could happen in the future. It is not hard to foresee some future government being tempted to rectify its own budgetary mistakes and difficulties by going to the taxpayers at large, maybe on the excuse that, say, the Budget deficit is too large, and passing laws that call for a levy on all earnings in the past year. That might seem a little extravagant but that could be, and it is not out of all bounds to imagine that that would be, the situation in some future year once the principle of retrospectivity is accepted. It could also apply in other areas of the law. Given the record of this Government and its rhetoric it is not altogether out of order to ponder the question. We have already seen from this Government three or four pieces of legislation intended to impose new retrospective taxes. Where will it stop? If it is moral, as the previous speaker, the honourable member for Barton (Mr Punch), the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) and the Treasurer (Mr Keating) claim, to make laws imposing a burden or obligation on the result of legal acts taken some years previously, it is possible morally to justify more of the same to offset government incompetence of any sort. Moral judgments made by this Government and by back benchers on the Government side have nothing in common with traditional perceptions of what is fair or reasonable. As I have said, the Prime Minister did not even wait until the body of his 1983 election promises was cold before he abandoned the more worthy of those promises to the scrap heap of history. It is his integrity and his morality which he seeks to stamp on retrospective legislation. At the same time he embarked on legislation for which he could claim no mandate, measures on which he was atypically silent during his election campaign. In that context I cite the means test and the proposed assets test on pensions as outstanding examples of the Government's double standards. Of course , again there are other examples that could be given. Who can accept some distorted morality of the Prime Minister or the Government as a basis for retrospective law? For example, on one hand the Government proposes a Bill of Rights; on the other hand, it does not wish to introduce it right now. It wishes to wait until after another unnecessary early election. I add that a Bill of Rights presumably will not free Australians from the prospect of penalty or obligation retrospectively applied, although the concept of such a Bill is borrowed from the United States of America where retrospective laws are expressly forbidden by that country's Constitution. It seems that a Bill of Rights is okay with the Australian Labor Party as long as it is not to include too many rights. We can bet that it would not pull on something like a Magna Carta. The firm beliefs we in the Opposition hold are the same as those against all retrospective laws. Those beliefs have been re-instituted and restated by the Leader Opposition (Mr Peacock). In this proposed amendment, therefore, we will seek to have the retrospective element rejected once again. That does not mean that despite some personal misgivings about possible unstated or even unintended consequences we oppose the entire measure; far from it. To the extent that the law is prospective from 14 November 1983, the date of the Government's announced intention to amend section 23F of the Income Tax Assessment Act, it is accepted by the Opposition that the Bill should pass through this House. Proposed section 26AFA enables the inclusion in the assessable income of a taxpayer of certain amounts received out of section 23F superannuation funds. As already said, to the extent that those proceeds are assessable prospectively, the requirement is not opposed. However, retrospectivity is another matter. The House will remember from earlier debate that for many years it was thought that the existing provisions were open to abuse. The previous Government did nothing to alter that on the advice of the Commissioner of Taxation. The present Government only took action after eight months in office. That delay is an indication of the lack of importance it attached to this amendment. In the meantime those legally benefitting from section 23F went about their business unaware of this Government's intentions and probably not believing that the rarely used heavy implement that is retrospective law could or would be necessary or that it would be used as a bludgeon as it is now intended. After all, those who established section 23F funds knew the Commissioner of Taxation already had wide powers to approve or not to approve the rules of funds. If the Commissioner judged those rules to have been beyond the scope of section 23 (2) (a) the income of the fund is and was assessable. That was and remains the case. Similarly, if the Commissioner ruled against any section 23F fund because its rules were in breach, employer and employee contributions to that fund are not allowable as deductible for employee and employer alike. Even if the Commissioner was a little tardy in adjudicating on the legitimacy of a particular fund's rules he may go back and reassess a fund as well as employer and employee contributions. In fact, under present income tax law we can go back six years. In summary, the Commissioner can, under existing law, attack the incomes of existing funds as well as employer and employee contributions. The incomes of offending funds can already be taxed and contributions to them disallowed as deductions. This Bill seeks to give hindsight and discretionary power to the Commissioner. If he has previously approved rules and now has doubts about his initial judgment, he may act against individual recipients of pay-outs made in accordance with those rules. I do not know whether the Commissioner really wants that sort of discretionary power. I would say it just involves him in a great deal more work and less than profitable work if the truth is known. It is an unnecessary string to his bow. The opportunity to tackle the funds is there to be used now; this measure necessitates waiting until the benefits are actually paid. The Commissioner may also, of course, reassess the incomes of funds, employers and employees if full and complete disclosure has not been made. That is normal and already in the Act. Not only is this amendment inequitable by reason of retrospectivity, it is unnecessary because the powers to counter malpractice already exist. The amendment as it is drafted is capable of much wider application than the Government has led interested parties to believe. Under new section 26AFA it is certain that recipients of benefits paid from funds with approved rules can be assessed at full marginal rates of tax if the Commissioner of Taxation so desires. That takes the proposal far beyond the Treasurer's announced intention retrospectively to counter superannuation funds which had 'clear elements of fraud against both the revenue and unsuspecting employees'. While it is not central to the point I have to make, the use of the word 'fraud' is nonsensical as are many of the throw-away remarks of the Treasurer, because fraud is punishable under common law; it always was and it always will be. If the Treasurer meant, as I suspect he did, that in his opinion there were practices which could not be allowed to continue, that is a different matter altogether. However, even if that sort of rationale is accepted, it is still no excuse to opt for retrospective law. The truth is that there is a great gap between the intention expressed by the Treasurer on 14 November last and what the amendment is actually capable of achieving, particularly in its consequential effects. The fact remains that any future amount paid out of or attributable to assets of a section 23F fund can be taxed at full marginal rates of tax on any amount received; that is, if the benefit is one the taxpayer has a deemed right to receive or if it is judged by the Commissioner to be an excessive benefit. Regardless of the Government's stated position, recipients from superannuation funds the rules of which have been approved will be caught in the web being woven by the Treasurer. To the extent that that result has not been spelt out-I hope that it has not been deliberately omitted-the Government owes the Parliament an explanation. Given that some rational explanation is forthcoming, there remains the principal and overriding objection to retrospectivity. Aligned with that are the emotively misleading and blatantly dishonest assertions that the Opposition parties have somehow protected tax avoiders. The Government, and particularly the Prime Minister, continue to live that lie. The then Treasurer, now the Deputy Leader of the Opposition (Mr Howard), in response to an inquiry which he initiated, received a paper dated 8 February 1980 from the Commissioner of Taxation which specifically referred to superannuation schemes and how they might be being employed to defeat the intention of tax legislation. In that paper the Commissioner, among other things, said: The main problem in dealing with this matter is that the corrective measures that seem to be appropriate would also cause difficulties to the very large number of funds that must be regarded as completely genuine in every way. This will be evident from an examination of the kind of corrective actions that are indicated. The Commissioner, in his letter to the then Treasurer, went on to list some of the proposals. He finished his letter in these terms: Because, in revenue terms, we have many larger tax avoidance problems in other areas and also because of the need to make certain that no avoidable difficulties are created for genuine superannuation funds, I would recommend that you await the comments of the Task Force before undertaking any corrective measures to deal with actual or potential misuse of the superannuation concessions. That was the advice given by the Commissioner of Taxation to the then Treasurer of the Fraser Government on 8 February 1980. There we have it. Even in connection with this measure there were thoughts in train and possible action was being considered. Apart from this amendment which, at best, will add perhaps $15m to the revenue- that is probably a once-off amount-this Government has not proposed one new law which prospectively attacks tax avoidance or tax evasion. It continues to dig in the past, diverting itself from the real issues confronting this country in relation to the economy-employment, social welfare, et cetera. Let us forget, if we can, retrospective laws. This Government has not had to do anything to curtail tax avoidance in any substantial form in the more than 12 months it has been in office. That bears testimony to the work of the previous Government in coming to grips with tax avoidance and tax evasion on a large scale. If anything gives the lie to the spurious claims of the Prime Minister about the record of the previous Government in countering tax avoidance, that simple fact should be enough. If that is not enough, the recent assertion of the Minister for Finance (Mr Dawkins) that tax avoidance is a dead issue should. I know that he recanted at Question Time today. Mr Howard —He had to. His Prime Minister was breathing down his neck. Mr ROCHER —As my friend said, that is correct. The Prime Minister was looking over his shoulder and was looking a bit grim. The Minister recanted, but that does not destroy the point he made and the belief he held. He recanted on the basis that he had embarrassed his Prime Minister because the Prime Minister had said something different. It is not very often that I will agree with the Minister for Finance, but I do in that respect. The accountancy profession, because of the actions of the previous Government, is now able to resist the misuse of tax laws. This is because of legislation passed by the previous Government. It is not because of any initiative of the Hawke Government. Any attempt to beat up-that is what it is; it is a beat-up-an election issue on tax evasion or avoidance will be seen for what it is, a dishonest attempt which is attributable to the Prime Minister alone. The truth is that this legislation has all the earmarks of the Government having to go around for something to hang its hat on because it has done nothing in the area of legislation for prospective tax avoidance and evasion. The Government has to be able to say: 'Well, we have legislated against tax avoidance or tax evasion, and this is what we have done'. It is a minor matter. Nevertheless, it is one which the Opposition will support as far as it is to be applied prospectively. We can imagine the approach that has been required of the Treasurer, and perhaps the Minister Assisting the Treasurer (Mr Hurford), having to plead with the Commissioner of Taxation to give them something on which to hang their hat. They pleaded for some measure they could take so they could say: 'We are the big fellows that we claim to be in this area of legislation'. I must say that I feel sorry for the Commissioner of Taxation for having to do this minor dirty work for the Government. I am sure that he has much more profitable and valuable work to do. I call on the Parliament to reject the Prime Minister's phony issues for the sham that they are. Similarly, I call on the Parliament to reject the retrospective elements of this legislation. Mr ROBERT BROWN(Hunter)(5.48) —I assure the honourable member for Curtin (Mr Rocher), who has just finished speaking, that there is no chance in the world that this House anyway will reject the Income Tax Assessment Amendment Bill (No. 2). I think it is very likely that the legislation will be rejected again in the Senate. I hope that proves not to be the case. It will not be the case if the Australian Democrats and the Independent senator from Tasmania decide to support the legislation. I hope that they will reconsider the position they adopted when this legislation was considered before and when they, together with the Liberal and National Party senators, voted to defeat it. The point has been made that the amount of taxation which will be recouped by way of the legislation represents only $15m. I know that in terms of the total amount of money which has been lost to the public revenue as a result of tax avoidance and tax evasion $15m may not appear to be very much. Of course, in objective terms, it is not very much. But there is an extremely important principle involved. The principle concerns the fact that $15m which should have been part of the public revenue remains in the pockets or among the assets of those people who have been able to engage in blatant artificial schemes by manipulating the legal provisions which have been established to encourage and assist the establishment of superannuation schemes by employers on behalf of their employees. People need to be perfectly aware of exactly what type of schemes we are talking about. The schemes have become generally known as cherry- picking schemes. The reason we selected the middle of 1977 as the time to backdate the legislation was that most of these schemes appear to have originated from then. The nature of these schemes was that proprietors of businesses or employers establish superannuation schemes-- Mr White —To help themselves. Mr ROBERT BROWN —Exactly; I am glad to hear that interjection. It was to help themselves. That is precisely what they wanted to do. The proprietors and employers set up these schemes supposedly to assist their employees but in fact to help themselves. Did they ever help themselves! It is incredible that some of the practices they undertook could have been adopted in the first place. Just before long-serving employees of these businesses became entitled to some sort of benefit under these supposed superannuation schemes they were sacked. Of course, one of the other devices that some of the proprietors and employers in the businesses that operated these schemes in these ways and for these purposes got up to was to introduce schemes for employees who in the normal course of the type of operation undertaken by the business would not remain in the employment of that business for a long time. So the employers, the proprietors-these pillars of respectability who are being defended by the Opposition-knew in the first place, when the schemes were first implemented, that the supposed beneficiaries would not benefit. As the honourable member for McPherson indicated by way of interjection, they set up the schemes to help themselves. I hope he votes for the legislation because he has correctly interpreted the objective of those employers. It was to help themselves. What an appalling reflection that is on some of the proprietors and employers in the Australian community. I know that the vast majority of proprietors and employers in Australia are people of respectability who take pride in the respect they have earned, but certainly there is no respectability on the part of these people whom the tax avoiders' friends in the Opposition are now trying to defend. From memory, three of the honourable members sitting on the Opposition side at present were three of the eleven who voted against the original legislation which was introduced by the former Government. I know at least two of them did. Mr White —Three out of three. Mr ROBERT BROWN —I was right; there are three of the eleven. That shows their obsession, their concern, for those people who have been ripping off the public revenue, who have been devising superannuation schemes supposedly to provide superannuation benefits for their employees. They are concerned for those people who have ripped off the system. Of the five members of the Opposition who are here at present, three were among the eleven members who showed themselves to be the great defenders, the great protectors, of the tax dodgers when their Government introduced legislation to try to pick up some of that tax that was lost as a result of the bottom of the harbour schemes. All the members of the Opposition at that time, and I then sat on the Opposition benches, came over to this side to support the Government. But what happened? Eleven members of the Government went over and occupied the Opposition front bench. They showed the world that their chief purpose in this national Parliament was to defend and protect the crooks and the tax dodgers, to make sure that the money they had ripped off the public revenue remained with them. Another of those eleven members has come into the chamber; we now have four of them. Where are the other seven? Mr White —They will be here. Mr ROBERT BROWN —I bet they will be. When the vote is taken and they are in a position to defend the tax dodgers, of course they will be here. That is the purpose of their being in this national Parliament. (Quorum formed) I thank the honourable member for Newcastle (Mr Allan Morris) for reminding me during the formation of the quorum of the reason why only four of those eleven friends and defenders of the tax dodgers are in this chamber at present. The reason is that on 5 March last year the electorate saw through the others. Many are no longer members of this chamber. After the next election the four friends and defenders of the tax dodgers who sit over there now will not be here either. Another one has just entered the chamber. They will not be here after the next election because the Australian electorate has their measure. Members of the Government who were in this Parliament before the last election well remember the particular circumstances to which I refer. The present Deputy Leader of the Opposition (Mr Howard), the former Treasurer, introduced legislation to pick up some of the money from the bottom of the harbour schemes. Mr Howard —All of the illegally evaded stuff. Mr ROBERT BROWN —Yes, it was good legislation. Mr Howard —It would have picked up all of it. Mr ROBERT BROWN —Not all of it. We were going to pick up another $570m. Mr Cunningham —Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I take a point of order. An honourable member is about to take a photograph in the House. That is against the Standing Orders. The honourable member for Maranoa has a camera which he was setting up to take a photograph of the House. He would know that that is against the Standing Orders. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mrs Darling) —I uphold the point of order. If the honourable member for Maranoa does have a camera, I ask that he remove it from the chamber. Mr Howard —I raise a point of order, Madam Acting Deputy Speaker. Under what standing order is the honourable member being invited to remove the camera from the House? Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! I have ruled according to tradition and common sense, and I ask the honourable member for Maranoa to remove the camera from the chamber. Mr ROBERT BROWN —The Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the former Treasurer, can come in here as often as he likes and try to claim, as he has done here again today, that in some way the Opposition has an enviable record in connection with tax avoidance and evasion. He knows that he can say that as often as he likes but the Australian people will simply not believe him. They will not believe him because they know that the contrary is the case. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition has sometimes taken issue with the claim that I have repeatedly made that during the main period that the Opposition was in government tax evasion and tax avoidance cost the public revenue about $7,000m every year. Of course, he has claimed that those figures cannot be substantiated. Without going into details, let me say that Professor Russell Mathews- Mr Howard —Ha, ha! Mr ROBERT BROWN —He is an authority that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition finds amusing-who has made the point, based on very effective analysis, that the reduced burden of taxation on non-pay-as-you-earn taxpayers provides an estimate of the growth of tax avoidance losses in excess of $3,000m every year. That was in connection with tax avoidance. Studies of the cash economy indicate that a loss to tax revenue of more than $3,000m every year was taking place during the period of the previous Government. If $3,000m and $3,000m does not total $6,000m , or, when the excess is taken into consideration, a figure approaching $7,000m, I do not know what does. But everyone knows that the record of the former Government, despite its protestations that it was in some way attempting to overcome tax avoidance and evasion in Australia, proves otherwise. After about two years of that Government, in 1978, Bruce Pascoe, then the President of the Taxation Institute of Australia, said: During the past year or two- that was the first part of the former Government's period in office from 1975 through to 1983- tax avoidance became big business in Australia. It became a disease which, being allowed to go unchecked, reached epidemic proportions. It is, perhaps, not going too far to say that the taxpaying community in Australia almost went mad in its rush to become party to a tax avoidance scheme. If that was too early in the term of the previous Government, let us come up to 1980 when Professor Russell Mathews, in his address to the Australian Institute of Political Science Summer School in January 1980, referred to what he called the present ad hoc system of taxation which he said made income tax a voluntary tax for the wealthy non-salary earners. If that is too far in the past, let us come up to 1982 and see what Frank Costigan had to say in his report of the Royal Commission on the Activities of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union. In that report he said: The tax avoidance industry . . . has developed in Australia, particularly over the last five years- that was over the five years of the Liberal-National Party Government- at a rate far in excess of any other industry and has brought with it profits comparable only to the heady days of the Victorian gold rush. Yet we have members of the Opposition now claiming that in some way they were effective in dealing with tax avoidance and tax evasion. Let us come right up to date and have a look at what was said in the Auditor-General's report, which was reported in the Age of 28 March 1984. The Auditor-General, Mr K. F. Brigden, is reported as saying in his report: The amount of tax outstanding has risen by $2000 million to almost $3000 million over the past six years. He indicated that most of that tax was outstanding as a result of taxpayers being involved in artificial tax avoidance schemes. Yet the previous Government and spoksmen for the previous Government have the audacity to try to claim in this House that in some way they were effective in dealing with tax avoidance and tax evasion. Before 5 March last year the present Government made it perfectly clear that if it was elected to government it would legislate retrospectively to make sure that all those tax dodgers, all the tax sharks, all those people who had been ripping off the public revenue in the past, would be called to account. This legislation is simply part of that. We intend the legislation to apply from 1 July 1977. The Opposition has indicated that it is prepared to see it operate from 7 December 1983. Why does it want it to operate from 7 December 1983? The reason is that it knows that to a very large extent since December of last year the schemes simply have not operated. There will be nothing to pick up. The $15m to which we have made reference relates to those schemes since 1 July 1977. If there is any residual conscience in the Senate when this legislation gets over there; if there is any residual concern about those pay-as-you-earn taxpayers in Australia who have to make up the discrepancy and who have to make a bigger contribution because of all those sharks and tax dodgers; if there is any residual conscience left in the Senate on the part of the Australian Democrats and the Independent senator from Tasmania, perhaps they will support it on this occasion. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mrs Child) —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. Mr LUSHER(Hume)(6.07) —This debate is about one thing and one thing only and that is whether it is appropriate, in all the circumstances surrounding the Income Tax Assessment Amendment Bill (No. 2), that the legislation should be applied retrospectively. That is the interest that I have in it and it is principally the interest that the Opposition has in it. We have agreed with the Government that if it wants to knock out this scheme from a particular date, the date that the legislation was introduced or some prospective date, there is no difficulty. But in going back to 1977 we have difficulty and that is really the concern that the Opposition has been expressing about this legislation in this place, and in another place, over the last several months with the support of the Australian Democrats and Senator Harradine. What needs to be understood is the Government's stance on retrospectivity. I wish to place clearly on the record that on 28 April 1983, shortly after the Government was elected and when the Minister for Finance (Mr Dawkins) had responsibility for the Australian Taxation Office, he said that retrospective legislation would be employed to ensure that tax avoided under blatant tax avoidance schemes would be collected irrespective of when the scheme was entered into. That is what the Minister said. What we need to do is to test whether the legislation that we are now debating is legislation that can properly be categorised as retrospective legislation against what could be described as blatant tax avoidance. The Minister made it clear that legislation would operate from the date of the first known use of the particular scheme. I think the points which have been brought to the attention of the House by the shadow Treasurer-the honourable member for Bennelong (Mr Howard)-and by the honourable member for Curtin (Mr Rocher), and which have been raised in this House and in the other chamber on earlier occasions, make it absolutely clear that the case that the Government has put in this regard is contrived. It is not the scheme that ought to be being described as contrived; it is the Government's legislation which is contrived. I want to go through some of the relevant material in relation to this matter to demonstrate beyond any doubt that this is a sham. In my view the Government needs significant justification for going retrospective to the extent of 1977 in relation to this legislation, yet no justification has been offered by the Government for so doing. The shadow Treasurer has drawn attention, and quite properly, to a letter which he received from the Commissioner of Taxation on 8 February 1980. In that letter the then Commissioner of Taxation, Mr O'Reilly, said: Because, in revenue terms, we have many larger tax avoidance problems in other areas and also because of the need to make certain that no avoidable difficulties are created for genuine superannuation funds, I would recommend that you await the comments of the Task Force before undertaking any corrective measures to deal with actual or potential misuse of the superannuation concessions. In the body of the letter he had also said: The main problem in dealing with this matter is that the corrective measures that seem to be appropriate would also cause difficulties to the very large number of funds that must be regarded as completely genuine in every way. The very clear assumption from that is that the Commissioner of Taxation, on 8 February 1980, did not regard these schemes as blatant, contrived or artificial. He simply did not believe that they were. If he had he would have advised the then Treasurer. It was the Commissioner's view that they were relatively unimportant and that they could in fact interfere with thousands of genuine superannuation schemes that were in place all across the country, particularly in small businesses. Equally, in March 1983 the Commissioner did not regard this scheme as being blatant, artificial or contrived because in March 1983 he again wrote to the then Treasurer and in that letter he said. The whole question of occupational superannuation is being reviewed by the Government. In the short term, the principal area of concern is the possibility that moneys may be removed from superannuation funds contrary to the purposes for which the funds have been established and for which concessions have been provided in the income tax law. You have already given approval to the preparation of a Cabinet Submission for amendment to the income tax law to provide that moneys withdrawn from superannuation funds in the above circumstances are taxable in full in the hands of the recipients. There is also the loan-back problem which I hope has been contained by the latest administrative arrangements. The fact of the matter is that the Commissioner of Taxation expressed the view to the former Government on two occasions-in February 1980 and in March 1983-in letters to the then Treasurer that this scheme was not regarded as one that was blatant, artificial or contrived. I do not believe that the Government has established a case that it is. Neither has it established any case that there is any major threat to revenue. I think the fact that this legislation deals with something of the order of $15m is sufficient statement to say it is not really a major threat to the revenue. The situation is one that in my view has demonstrated a degree of contrivance on the part of the Government because the Treasurer (Mr Keating), under pressure in the Committe stage of the debate in the House of Representatives on 29 February, said: The choice of 1977 for the commencement is based essentially on advice that these schemes became more prevalent from that time. The precise date is necessarily somewhat arbitrary but there can be no doubt that it is reasonable and justified. From my position as a member of this Parliament-one is required to vote on legislation of this nature-I am not satisfied that it is reasonable and justified, that 1977 is a reasonable date. The element of retrospectivity is one which, as I have indicated, needs to be justified and justified to the satisfaction of this House. It is simply not good enough for the Treasurer to come in and say as late as he did-in the Committee stage of the debate-that the choice of 1977 is essentially arbitrary but there can be no doubt that it is reasonable and justified. I reject that. The fact of the matter is that when the legislation was in another place that was questioned again. A very interesting procedure took place in the Senate because Senator Chipp moved under the Standing Orders of the Senate that the relevant documentation that was available to the Government in relation to this legislation be tabled in the Senate. Senator Chipp asked a valid question: Does the Taxation Commissioner still hold the view that he expressed to the former Treasurer, Mr Howard, in 1980? What has been called into question here is the necessity for retrospectivity. It raises questions of the problems that are created for a large number of funds that are completely genuine and that should not be put under threat by legislation which is retrospective in its operation and retrospective as far back as 1977, bearing in mind that we are in 1984. The letter that the honourable member for Bennelong made public in the debate in the House of Representatives in February 1984 was of sufficient weight to cause Senator Chipp to move the motion that he did in the Senate, asking that the advice that the Government was acting upon be made available to the Senate so it could form some views as to whether there was justification in 1984 for retrospectivity back to 1977, when the advice given to the then Treasurer in 1980 was that these schemes were unexceptionable and should not be actioned at that time. Of course, the Treasurer refused to make available the advice, but he did write to his counterpart in the Senate, Senator Walsh, on 5 March. This letter was incorporated in the Senate Hansard of 6 March 1984 at page 461. The Treasurer said, amongst other things: The former Treasurer asserted during the debate in the House of Representatives that he had received advice from the Commissioner of Taxation just before the change of Government to the effect that Part IVA had wiped out all blatant artifical and contrived tax avoidance schemes and that therefore these particular superannuation practices could not be in that category. . . . . I think, however, that what the Commissioner had in mind when giving his advice to the former Government just prior to the election was those schemes which were known as ''paper schemes'', that is those which were quite artificial and, in reality, devoid of any fiscal effect other than the attempted avoidance of tax. If that, as I suspect, was the case, then there is nothing inconsistent with the Commissioner's advice to me and to the former Government in relation to these particular superannuation tax avoidance schemes. They are not of the extremely artifical variety, nor are they of a kind at which Part IVA was directed. That does not, however, mean that they are not blatant or contrived or even artificial in terms of the application of the Government's policy on retrospective tax amendments. In the Government's view they are clearly in that category of schemes which we intended would be covered by Mr Dawkins' statement on the Government's retrospectivity policy. If that is not the beginning of the climb down, the creation of contrivance and confusion, and the entry of semantics into the debate as to just what 'blatant, artifical and contrived' might be, I fail to understand what might fit into that category. The Treasurer went on to say: The Government's retrospectivity policy was clearly not intended to operate only against purely paper schemes. I will not go on with that matter for the moment. The fact is that the Treasurer , writing to Senator Walsh on 5 March 1984, started to throw into confusion just what 'blatant, artificial and contrived' might be. He did not satisfy the Senate at all in relation to those matters. It is interesting to note that on 6 March the Treasurer received a letter from Mr Boucher, the Acting Commissioner of Taxation at that time. That letter also displays what the Treasurer was on about , because it says: You have asked that I provide you with further advice as to the nature of the practices against which clause 5 of the Bill is directed and, in particular whether they can be categorised as blatant and contrived. Here we have the Treasurer going to his Taxation Office and saying, in effect: ' Look, I am in a bit of trouble here with the Senate and the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives does not matter too much because we have the numbers there, but over in the Senate, where things are a little tricky, questions are being raised about the justification for this legislation being retrospective. Senators are saying that the Taxation Commissioner told Mr Howard back in 1980 and again in 1983 that this stuff was not blatant, contrived and artificial, yet we are now saying that it is. Can you give me some more advice about whether these practices can be categorised as blatant and contrived ?'. As would be expected, the Taxation Commissioner replied to his Treasurer and said: In terms of general usage, as I understand it, they can-as I now explain-be so described. Under what sort of pressure are we putting a Taxation Commissioner in this country in 1984 when we require him to provide advice couched in such terms? I repeat: In terms of general usage, as I understand it, they can-as I now explain-be so described. Towards the end of the letter Mr Boucher says: It is, I hope, enough for me to say that, when the advice that Mr Howard has referred to is read in its context, it is not at variance with the advice now provided. We are back again with the semantics. The Government is seeking to cloud the issue and to create a smokescreen around the question of whether this legislation is contrived, blatant and artificial and whether, because it can be so described, it is appropriate to make it retrospective to 1977. In the letter to Senator Walsh, the Treasurer said: The decision to propose that the measures in clause 5 should have a retrospective operation from 1 July 1977 was taken by the Government after full consideration of the nature of the schemes, and after noting the essentially fraudulent nature of the activities involved, both in relation to employees of the business concerned and the revenue. The overall monetary effect on the revenue was not the critical consideration, given the unsavoury nature of the practices involved. I am confident that our decision to propose that the legislation be made retrospective was the correct one in this case and the Government proposes to press ahead with the Bill in its present form in the Senate. That in my view is no justification whatsoever for seeking to make this legislation reprospective to 1977. In the House of Representatives the Treasurer gave one explanation, which I have read to the House and will not go through again. He said that it was pretty arbitrary. In the Senate another justification was given for the retrospective legislation, which I have read to the House. In my view, in the view of the Opposition and, as I understand it, in the view of the majority of the senators in the other place, the Treasurer has not put forward an acceptable argument as to why this legislation ought to be reprospective to 1977. There is certainly a great deal of confusion in the minds of everybody as a result of the semantic exercise and the deliberate confusion and contrivance in which the Government has been involved as to whether the practices were blatant, contrived or artificial. In the light of the unsatisfactory responses from the Treasurer, from whom I think this House can expect better, it is not surprising that we will continue to oppose the legislation and that, in my understanding, the Senate will continue to oppose it. The Treasurer has not been prepared to come clean with the Parliament. He came in here to deal with a miserable $15m and has produced legislation which he wants to make retrospective to 1977. He has given no satisfactory justification why it should be retrospective and he has certainly given no satisfactory explanation why the legislation is blatant, artificial and contrived and would fit under the Labor Party's definitions and concerns about such matters, regarding which, on its ground rules, the Labor Party would seek to make legislation retrospective. The reason for this action is simply that the Government has come to understand , as the Minister for Finance said in Sydney a couple of weeks ago on 16 April to the Australian Society of Accountants, that tax avoidance is finished as an issue in this country; it is over. The reason it is over and it has been freely acknowledged throughout the industry and by all commentators, is that the actions that were taken by the then Treasurer, now the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, were effective and that the two specific actions he took which were directed at the broad tax avoidance industry have effectively killed that industry. So this Government, which has come into office after ranting and raving about what it would do to the tax avoidance industry, has suddenly found there is nothing it can do. Mr Howard —The cupboard is bare. Mr LUSHER —The cupboard is bare, as the shadow Treasurer says. The Government has cast around and tried to find something that it can do to justify to its supporters, to the participants in the National Economic Summit Conference and to the participants in the accord who might think it is important that it is doing something about this horrible tax avoidance business. So the Government has focused on this 'cherry-picking scheme', as it has become known. In order to dredge up a miserable $15m, the Government has had to go back to 1977 to try to make its action look in some way reasonable. The Opposition sees this for what it is. It is absolutely transparent and contrived and the Opposition will not have a bar of it. I am confident that the Senate will not be convinced by the failure of the Treasurer to explain what he is doing, to give the justification for his action and to say why he wants to make the legislation retrospective to 1977. In the face of that failure on the part of the Treasurer, the legislation will be defeated again. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mrs Child) —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. Sitting suspended from 6.29 to 8 p.m. Mr GEAR(Tangney)(8.00) —The Income Tax Assessment Amendment Bill (No. 2) clearly shows the fundamental differences between the Government and the Opposition over morality in relation to taxation. The beneficiaries of the schemes this Bill seeks to outlaw retrospectively, in seeking to evade paying their rightful share of tax, use superannuation as a vehicle to defraud honest taxpayers. For that reason I will spend some time looking at retirement incomes before turning to the specific provisions of the Bill. If honourable members look back at the recent history of retirement incomes for the majority of Australians, the conclusion must be drawn that the age pension has been viewed by past governments as a means of gaining votes rather than looking after the needs of pensioners. To substantiate this claim it is necessary to understand the philosophy of the present scheme. Theoretically, people plan for their retirement because they have 'the freedom of choice' and they are therefore in a position to support themselves financially when they retire by choosing a private superannuation scheme. There is a recognition, however, that people on extremely low incomes may not be in a financial position to do this, and the Government therefore cares for these people by providing an age pension. Until recently, a feature of the current scheme was an assets or means test that served to direct government funds to those people in genuine need. Another feature of the present scheme is that beneficiaries are paid out of taxes collected in the same year as pensions are paid. Nothing has been saved from taxes collected in the working lives of people receiving pensions. I will illustrate the weaknesses of such a scheme if we continue with it. On the freedom of choice argument that people will arrange for their financial independence upon retirement, the current situation is that about 40 per cent of people have access to superannuation through employer-sponsored schemes. Indeed, some of those schemes are the focus of this Bill. That leaves about 60 per cent of people to exercise their freedom of choice and make investments for their retirement. In 1984 about 780,000, or 56.1 per cent, of all pensioners receive the full pension. This indicates that, given the choice, they did nothing, if indeed they had the financial capacity to do so. I turn now to a short history of the erosion of the mechanism for directing scarce government resources to those in need. I refer to the assets or means test. As I said before, this is a feature of the present system. We had an assets test from 1908 until 1976. A short history of the erosion of this measure will support my contention that votes at election times were more important than the needs of pensioners. In September 1969 the tapered means test was introduced . This resulted in 160,000 existing pensioners receiving an increased pension. Some 33,000 became newly eligible for the pension and an additional 14,000 claimed the pension who were previously entitled to it. This was just in time for the 1969 election. In September 1972 an increase in the free area increased pension entitlements to all reduced rate pensioners and brought another 30,000 persons into pension eligibility for the first time and another 20,000 persons who were entitled to a pension claimed it. Because it promised to be a close election there were also superannuation and annuity concessions in September 1972. The effect of this move was to increase the pension for 45,000 existing pensioners and to make an additional 5,000 eligible for a pension. Between 1973 and 1975 the Whitlam Government started to abolish the means test for those pensioners over 75 years of age and then for the over-70s. It is apparent to those who follow election timings that these measures were not timed to coincide with the anticipated election dates. The 1973 and 1975 concessions were both two years from elections if they were held on time. Of course, the Senate determined the election dates and not the Government. The abolition of the means test was compatible with the intent of that Government to introduce a national superannuation scheme, a feature of which was that it had no means test . The mistake of that Government was to abolish the means test before it had introduced the national superannuation scheme and not after. The events of 1975 meant that the Whitlam Government would never have that chance. The next change occurred in November 1976 and it altered the criteria from an assets test to an income only test. This was a most significant change and , as I will show later, it opened a loophole that negated the original purpose of the pension system. Some 200,000 pensioners gained from the measure while 67,000 had their incomes, which should have been reduced, protected from any fall. In November 1978 a special income test on the over-70s clawed back about $22m and affected 266,000 pensioners. This take-back measure was two years away from an election, unlike the giveaways before. This approach was again evident in November 1982, when the family Budget increased the free area and thereby increased the pensions of 420,000 people just before the last Federal election. Mr SPEAKER —Order! I know the honourable member indicated that he would make passing reference to pensions. I would like him to get back to the Bill. Mr GEAR —Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will conclude my remarks on pensions by saying that the effect of these measures was to remove the protective mechanism for the pension as we have it today. Mr Hodgman —You need two more terms before you get your pension. Mr GEAR —That will be no trouble. If the honourable member has noticed the opinion polls lately he will know that we are doing quite well. Actually, I am looking forward to the next election, unlike the honourable member for Denison. Mr SPEAKER —Order! As I previously suggested to the honourable member for Tangney, he should get on with the discussion of the Bill and not be diverted by the honourable member for Denison. Mr GEAR —Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your guidance. I turn to some of the comments made today on this Bill, and especially those made by the honourable member for Bennelong (Mr Howard). He indicated that only $15m was involved in this Bill. In the context of total outlays, I know that $15m is not very much, but the principle that underlies the Bill is the important thing and not the amount involved. The honourable member also indicated that this Government, since coming to office, had not addressed itself to any legislation that outlawed tax evasion. If he had followed closely the legislation we have introduced he would realise that the withholding tax was specifically aimed at preventing people who earn $10,000 or more on building sites from getting away with not paying tax. Indeed, that legislation has resulted in about $200m coming into the coffers that would not otherwise have come in. I would also like to look at some of the specific events that provoked the introduction of this Bill and, in particular, a judgment in the Supreme Court of New South Wales in the Kelly case. I refer to the judgment handed down by Mr Justice Wootten to show the House what kind of practice was involved in the scheme we are talking about today. The judgment in the case on 18 November 1982 of Kelly v. Raymor was handed down and it brought to light the artificial and contrived tax evasion schemes that we will be outlawing retrospectively under the Bill before us. Mr Justice Wootten, referring to the business morality of the Kellys' company as he saw it said: Despite the disagreements of the two brothers they shared one consuming passion , a desire to pay as little tax as possible. It is apparent that the problem of avoiding taxation occupied many of their waking hours, and dictated many of their actions. In 1973 their search for new forms of tax avoidance led them to consider the possibilities of a superannuation scheme for employees of the group. It is apparent from what followed that the establishment of the superannuation scheme was not motivated in the least by any desire to benefit their employees, but to obtain taxation benefits for their companies it was necessary to set up a scheme which was in terms capable of benefiting the employees and, indeed, ostensibly designed to do so. However, the real purpose of the scheme was to enable a very large part of the profit of the group to be channelled into a superannuation fund, thereby avoiding the payment of tax on the sums so channelled. Later in his judgment Mr Justice Wootten spoke about the amount: Contributions were made to the maximum amount for which an income tax deduction could be claimed for the employing companies in respect of each employee. In respect of the five financial years ending on 30 June 1973-30 June 1977 over $2, 750,000 was paid into the fund by way of contributions. By that time the fund was saturated from the point of view of gaining taxation benefits and contributions ceased and have not been resumed. What did they do with the money? Of course, they lent it back to themselves. The justice continued: The money in the fund was lent to the group at interest rates varying from 2.7 per cent to 4.4 per cent per annum . . . That is very generous on today's money markets and even on the money markets in 1977. The justice continued: But what of the ordinary employees of the group for whose benefit the scheme was supposedly set up and whose credits in the fund were the basis of the companies' enormous taxation savings? What benefits did they get? The answer is that for practical purposes they got none and were never intended to get any. Later he said: It will come as no surprise that, until after this case had started, not a single employee of the group managed to stay until retiring age. He gave a few examples: . . . in 1980 there were three employees who were within a month of reaching retiring age. And what happened to each of them is instructive. Mr Mitchell was due to reach the retiring age of 65 on 11 March 1980. His supervisor asked him if he would mind leaving on 27 February, and he said that it did not make any difference to him, and he left. In fact, unknown to him it made a difference of $48,000, the sum credited to him in the books of the fund, for which his employer had obtained taxation deductions. I could have outlined the paucity of the present pension scheme in Australia, Mr Speaker, and you would have seen that the people who took out the private insurance that was available to them did so in order to look after themselves on retirement. They were cheated out of it. The justice continued: Mrs Lowndes was due to reach retiring age on 15 July 1980. At the end of June her employment was terminated on a Friday on the pretext that staff had to be kept down, and that as a married woman she was the obvious person to go. Nevertheless she was re-employed as a casual on the following Monday and was still working when the case came on for hearing before me. By this simple manoeuvre she was deprived of $53,639 which, unknown to her, had been credited to her account in the superannuation fund in pursuit of the group's taxation advantages. Once again, this was taking advantage of people's retiring benefits to cheat the honest taxpayers of Australia out of money. The justice cited another case but I think the two examples I have given illustrate basically what the scheme was all about-at least in this case. Mr Hodgman —Why are you supporting a retrospective capital gains tax? Mr GEAR —I will come to that. In conclusion, the justice said: Although there is nothing I can do about the termination of the proceedings, I do not think I am obliged to be indifferent to the brazen cheating of employees disclosed in this case, to the considerable public cost- it was the taxpayers' money- of a hypocritical proceeding, or to the losses to the revenue resulting from the manipulation which has been revealed in this case. Tonight we are arguing about the collection of those taxes from that group. The Liberal Party and its National Party rump, if it throws this Bill out in the Senate as it has before, will actually be allowing the Kelly brothers to keep the money that they cheated their employees out of. I think the honourable member for Denison (Mr Hodgmen) should keep that in mind when he votes. The honourable member brought up retrospective legislation. It is something I am very happy to talk on. He was a member of the Government that brought in retrospective legislation. Whenever we bring in a Bill the Opposition seems to bring up retrospectivity as though it is the worst thing in the world. I have a case before me now from the Western Australian Parliament. It involves the Ashton joint venturers in 1979 under the Government of Sir Charles Court. A small independent Perth based mining exploration company, Afro-West Mining and Exploration Pty Ltd, launched a challenge in the Perth Warden's Court contending that CRA Exploration Pty Ltd, the manager of Ashton joint venturers, carried out pegging for mineral claims after its miner's rights had expired in October 1979. Afro-West subsequently over-pegged the areas and lodged counter claims. The rights to the land pegged by CRA have expired; it has not mined the land and Afro-West has pegged the claim. It is now taking CRA to court. The claims in dispute included five claims in the heart of an area known as AK1 and another four claims on the Upper Smoke Creek alluvials. The scene was set for an interesting and possibly long drawn out court case. The Warden's Court referred the matter to the Supreme Court which gave a totally different dimension to the issue, and legal opinion suggested that appeal procedures would take a year or more, thereby delaying the commencement of operations at Argyle. In response CRA deferred plans to begin commercial production of the Smoke Creek alluvials. A finding against CRA or the Ashton joint venturers may have been politically embarrassing as it would have hinged on demonstrating laxity, ineptitude, or procedural irregularities in a government department. With remarkable swiftness- I ask honourable members to listen to this-the Diamond (Ashton Joint Venture) Agreement Act was processed through the Western Australian Parliament a few days before the Supreme Court could deliberate on the Afro-West issue. The Act ratified an agreement between the joint venturers and the State of Western Australia and confirmed the basis of tenure for the relevant mining tene- ments. It also provided that all claims, that is any mining lease in respect of such land granted to the joint venturers under the agreement, were immune from legal challenge in respect of current or future legal proceedings. It extinguished the rights of all persons-honourable members should remember that proceedings were already before the court-under the Mining Act and rendered pegging, whether before or after the coming into operation of the Act, of no effect. Afro-West was before the courts. The Western Australian Government, under Sir Charles Court, retrospectively changed the law with respect to the mining agreements, thereby denying Afro-West the right to prosecute. If honourable members opposite talk about retrospective legislation they should look at the Liberal Party in Western Australia. That was not the only case. The Act to which I have referred is one of 21 different Acts passed in the Western Australian Parliament by the Liberal Party which has retrospective provisions within it. Mr Hodgman —What does that have to do with this Bill? Mr GEAR —The honourable member talks about retrospectivity. I am giving him a good example of how the Liberal Party in Western Australia went about retrospectively changing the law when people were before the court. I repeat that the Act extinguished the rights of all persons other than the joint venturers under the Mining Act and rendered pegging, whether before or after the coming into operation of the Act, of no effect. Exit Afro-West for at least a year. In December 1982 the Supreme Court found in favour of Afro-West in respect of at least one claim at Smoke Creek. The Liberal Party in Western Australia passed retrospective laws to take away the rights of a party before the court. I think that is far more serious than the measure we are considering here today. Mr Hodgman —You are still supporting socialist legislation at the moment. Mr GEAR —I would be happy to debate that with the honourable member at any other time but I know that Mr Speaker would pull me up if I did so now. Mr SPEAKER —I would pull up the honourable member for Denison too. Mr GEAR —Thank you, Mr Speaker. I was looking at superannuation in its broader context. Had I gone on I would have looked at some of the practices that were rampant under the previous Government. I have some papers from the 'Australian Pensioner' relating to the 1976 changes to the assets test, introducing an income only test. I refer to some advertisements that appeared in that publication. A large advertisement is headed 'Retirement and Investment' and it states: Maximise returns-up to 20% Minimise tax Maximise pension entitlements and benefits That advertisement was placed by a retirement planning association and just above it is a picture of Senator Chaney which I thought was rather appropriate. In another issue an advertisement was headed 'Tax on Retirement. How to minimise tax and keep the pension and concessions'. Honourable members should remember the people who were employed by the Kelly brothers. They did not get much of a go. Certainly, those people who took their superannuation entitlement as a lump sum were well looked after by the people who promoted these schemes. I also have a full page advertisement which even the honourable member for Denison could read. It states: I had to read it twice too! . . . . 'Supersaver' single premium life insurance savings plan offers the ideal tax-free investment. Under existing legislation it is also excluded from income tests applied to aged, invalid, war service or widow's pensions. It is no wonder that the person featured in the advertisement had to read it twice. What a laughing stock the laws of that day were with respect to the collection of taxes made of the government of the day. I could have rounded off that subject a little more fully. I fully support the legislation before the House today. I am sure, now Mr Peter Shack is working for the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Peacock), that if honourable members asked him he would confirm that I made a very big deal about the retrospective laws that we would bring in upon coming to government. I fought the election, certainly within Tangney, on that basis. Therefore, when I vote for the Bill tonight I will do so with a clear conscience. Before I went into the election I promised the people that I would do so and I will do so. Mr WHITE(McPherson) 8.20)-In opening my remarks on the Income Tax Assessment Amendment Bill (No. 2) 1984, I wish to refer to the speech made by the honourable member for Tangney (Mr Gear). I must say that he gave two very impressive examples of tax avoidance. But he left out one which is particularly pertinent to his own State. I refer, of course, to the well-known Dawkins scheme which he chose to gloss over. I presume that the reason he did not bother to quote the well-known Dawkins scheme is that it is so well known to everyone that there is no need to repeat it. This Bill is ostensibly about tax avoidance. The Government proposes to attack employees' superannuation funds by introducing retrospective tax legislation which will apply back to July 1977. Why this date was selected is rather obscure . However, I think this is probably largely immaterial to the argument that I propose to put forward. As far as the Opposition and I are concerned, this debate is not about tax avoidance, it is about the principle of retrospectivity. It is a principle that I opposed in 1982, and I oppose it again tonight. As far as the Government is concerned, this legislation is just a shot in the arm in the run up to the election later this year. It is going to be what the Government considers a plank in its platform for the next election and simply a vehicle for its political advantage. I am not being moralistic in saying this. All parties, of course, use whatever is to their best advantage. What I am doing , I hope, is exposing this Bill for what it is. It is not about tax avoidance at all. We are taking the view that it is about retrospectivity. One might ask: If the Government is serious about the abuse of superannuation funds why has it waited this long? Why did it not introduce a Bill sometime before the end of last year which was the first time it addressed its mind to this matter? I turn briefly to the question of retrospectivity. I acknowledge that the Government before and since the last election has been quite clear about its attitude to retrospective legislation. The Minister for Finance (Mr Dawkins) and the Treasurer (Mr Keating), but principally the Minister for Finance, have made some very clear statements on this matter of tax avoidance and retrospective legislation. Well the Minister for Finance might, because of all the members on the other side of the House he is obviously the expert in tax avoidance. It is no wonder he is put up whenever tax avoidance matters are mentioned. Mr Howard —Horses for courses. Mr WHITE —The expert. He has the practical experience. But because the Government now wishes to embrace the principle of retrospectivity and to make some very moralistic arguments in support of it that does not make it right. The Senate has already rejected this view and we reject it here tonight. As has been often said in this debate, not only the Liberals and the Nationals in the Senate but also the Australian Democrats and Senator Harradine have supported the opposition to this Bill. I suspect that if one quietly quizzed honourable members opposite in this House and many Government senators one would find that a large number would also oppose the principle of retrospectivity. The Opposition has rejected the Government's view on retrospectivity, I must say somewhat belatedly. But the fact is that it has been done. I reject this view also. What will be the cost to us when we embrace the principle of retrospectivity? What we are doing is simply engaging in gross interference in the rule and the certainty of law which are the basis and the foundations of our society. If we interfere with that very basic principle, the cost in my view is far too high. There must be certainty of the law. There must not be punishment for doing something that was not illegal at the time it was done. I would like to quote from article 15 (1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which Australia is a signatory. The Covenant states: No one shall be held guilty of any criminal offence on account of any act which did not constitute a criminal offence under national or international law at the time it was committed. That quote, of course, refers to criminal offences. However, I do not believe it was meant to be as narrow as that and, in my view, it refers to all offences. There are certainly arguments-they have been put before in this House on more than one occasion-in favour of retrospective legislation and particularly in favour of retrospective tax legislation. Many of those arguments have been put- and some have been put here tonight-with some emotion and conviction. Basically it boils down to the fact that everyone should bear his fair share of the tax burden and no one should escape. That, in itself, is an admirable objective. Therefore, the cry goes up: 'Get them at all costs'. But the cost of interfering with the rule and certainly in law is very high. That principle and that rule and certainty of the law are more important than a petty Bill such as the one now before us and particularly a Bill which is brought into this House under very suspect circumstances to disguise its real purpose. There is no reason for this retrospective legislation. If the Government were serious it would accept the Opposition's offer, that is, the amendment that was made last year to support the Bill provided it was not retrospective. The Government has chosen not to take that course. Therefore, there must be another reason for the introduction of this legislation. The purpose, as I have said, is purely political and I would put forward the view that it is a very shallow political purpose at that. I now examine the justification for this Bill in other terms. The Bill seeks to recoup some $15m-a not insignificant amount-but not the $300m, $400m and $500m that speakers on the Government side have been citing during this debate. I want to refer to the view put by the Commissioner of Taxation in a letter which he wrote on 8 February 1980 to the then Treasurer, the pesent Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the honourable member for Bennelong (Mr Howard), after inquiries by the then Treasurer to the Tax Commissioner as to what was the extent of abuse of the superannuation funds. The Commissioner of Taxation, in his reply, wrote in part: . . . the operation of the great majority of the internal funds is above reproach. The Commissioner went on to advise that no action be taken at that stage. So it is very difficult for honourable members opposite to put forward the view that at that time there was a real problem in this area. That was certainly not the Tax Commissioner's view in his advice to the Treasurer. So have things changed since then? Certainly it would appear from some evidence that there are some abuses in this area. The honourable member for Barton (Mr Punch) said that things had changed dramatically since 1980 but he offered no evidence. He quoted Senator Walsh as merely saying that things had got worse. But how much worse and how many cases were involved? No evidence was offered. The honourable member for Barton also said that Mr Boucher, then the Acting Commissioner, in a letter of 6 March this year to the Treasurer, wrote that the previous advice, that is, O'Reilly's advice, had to be read in context. Mr O' Reilly's letter was tabled by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in this debate tonight. So people are free to go and read it in the proper context because the whole letter has been tabled in this House. It is quite specific. There was no need at that time to take action and there has been no demonstrable evidence that things have deteriorated since that time. If there is evidence that abuse of superannuation funds has increased we will encourage the Government to go to it and stop that abuse by bringing in this legislation at once. We will support it provided that it does not introduce the retrospectivity which is abhorrent to the Opposition. The Government should not try to go back seven years when the weight of the evidence is against such retrospectivity. We should take note of another matter. The Commissioner of Taxation, in his letter to the Treasurer on 8 February 1980, said: . . . the corrective measures that seem to be appropriate would also cause difficulties to the very large number of funds that must be regarded as completely genuine in every way. I believe we need to be very careful in this area and make sure that we do not penalise those honest employers and prospective beneficiaries of these schemes by ensuring that any legislation that is brought in does not penalise those people. I would not think that any member of this House wants to make life more difficult for the smaller private businesses in this country. Parliamentarians, public servants and employees of large companies have generous superannuation schemes. The honourable member for Tangney (Mr Gear) said that 40 per cent of the working population has access to those schemes; that means that 60 per cent are outside them. Those who do have access to those very generous schemes sometimes find it very difficult to understand that the great mass of Australian people, employers and employees, are battling to make a living. They have no protection against sickness, injury or even retirement. The employers and employees of smaller private companies have no such advantages. Therefore we should encourage such companies to make use of these schemes in an honest and legitimate way; we should not make life more difficult for them. We should encourage them to look after their employees and to accumulate some capital which they can use in the expansion of their businesses so that they can employ more people. We should not put obstacles in the way of people who use these funds in a legitimate way. Superannuation is an area of significant disadvantage to small businesses and their employees. I do not wish to see any more stringent regulations placed on honest men running honest schemes. The Government in this Bill seeks an excuse to pin a tax avoidance tag on the Opposition, but its attempt will not work. When in government we on this side of the House did everything to eliminate tax avoidance. I pay tribute to the then Treasurer, who is now in the House, for his efforts which were to the largest possible extent successful. The Minister for Finance, as has already been quoted in this House, some weeks ago told a large gathering of accountants in Sydney that tax avoidance was dead. By that he meant that tax avoidance had been killed by the previous Government because there has been no substantial legislation brought into this House in the last 12 months by the present Government. Mr Howard —In a flash of honesty. Mr WHITE —In a flash of honesty during the dinner, perhaps feeling in easy company, the Minister for Finance said: 'Tax avoidance is dead'. The Minister for Finance made that statement three weeks ago, yet a week or so ago in Adelaide the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) said: 'We are going to make tax avoidance the big issue in the next election'. Today in this House the Minister for Finance was put on the spot and in a rather rambling, mumbling answer he virtually retracted what he had said three weeks ago. He decided that for the good of his own scalp and his political future he had better agree with what the Prime Minister said a week or so ago. But the fact is, of course, that he did say: 'Tax avoidance is dead'. It is on the record; he was heard to say it by a considerable number of people. The abolition of tax avoidance was achieved not by this Government, but by the previous Government. The fact is that this Bill is a thin and flimsy political excuse. I will not have a bar of retrospective legislation. I have not in the past; I will not now and I do not intend to in the future. That is in line with my attitude in 1982 and is entirely consistent. The Opposition has also made it quite clear that it will not support this Bill in its current form. It will support the Bill as long as it is not retrospective in any way. I say to the Government that if there are abuses we should hear the extent of them. The Government can then go to it to eliminate the abuses as long as the legislation does not have a retrospective element. The Government should not ask us to support the alien principle of retrospectivity. In conclusion I quote a letter raised during the 1982 debate on retrospective legislation. It is a letter from R. A. Bauman of the Department of History of the University of Sydney. In his letter Mr Bauman quoted an extract from Plutarch's Life of Cato the Younger. He said: When Pompey proposed a law inflicting heavy penalties on those who had already bribed the people Cato urged him to ignore the past and concentrate on the future. It would not be easy, he said, to fix the point at which the investigation of past offences would stop and if penalties were fixed subsequent to crimes, it would be grossly unfair to those who were punished in terms of the law which they had not contravened when they committed their crime. I have heard nothing from the Government tonight during this debate that would cause me to change my opinion of the wisdom of those words. Mr ALLAN MORRIS(Newcastle)(8.38) —The attempt by the Opposition to suggest that there is some conflict between the comments of the Minister for Finance (Mr Dawkins) in recent days and the Government's position on the Income Tax Assessment Amendment Bill (No. 2) is as fraudulent as the rest of its arguments. When the Treasurer (Mr Keating) brought the previous Bill back to the House in the last week of the session he indicated to the House that there would be separate legislation on this one aspect. We accepted the amendment from the Senate but indicated very clearly that it would come back as a separate Bill to allow it to be debated fully. There was a clear indication four weeks ago that this debate would be on and that it would be an important debate to us. The development in Australia in recent years of an excessively legalistic interpretation of law will lead to the death of this country and to the disillusionment of our taxpayers, most of whom in numerical terms are pay as you earn taxpayers. Since 1975 there has been the development of an industry which has attempted to find drafting loopholes, legal windows, that allow Acts to be used in ways that were never intended. That is what the Government is talking about. That is what the Opposition is talking about also because, taken in context, the letter of the Commission of Taxation, Mr O'Reilly, in 1980 very clearly says that for five years the Commissioner had been telling the then Government: 'Look, we are bleeding to death. We have loopholes'. The Commissioner had been advising the Treasurer of scheme after scheme all of which sat in the then Attorney-General's drawer waiting to be acted upon. The Commissioner could not get movement on major schemes involving billions of dollars. This was very small beer in comparison. That was very clearly the context of that letter. The then Government was not prepared to move on tax avoidance, full stop. The law was there. The law had loopholes which allowed fraud and blatant maninpulation of tax revenues. While that was the case, why bother about the cherry-pickers because they were very small cherries compared with the real bananas going off the tree. It was very clear in 1981-82 that the Government had come unstuck because what was happening had become public. It became clear what the then Government had been condoning. Eventually it was forced to act. But, the warning signals were out to its own supporters for at least two to three years before action was taken. Those people were able to move. I can recall the poignant letters from real estate agents saying: 'If you get back the money from the bottom of the harbour the real estate industry will fall over'. In other words, they were saying that if a bank robber bought a block of flats with the proceeds of his crime he should not be arrested because the industry would suffer. That argument put forward then was put forward again last year. It is a fascinating concept. It seems to me that those people who supported the conclusions must, in some way , have supported the arguments. In the last 12 months a number of attempts have been made to suggest that the Opposition has some God given right on the morality of law. What it has done, very clearly, is develop to an art form the concept of leaving enough loopholes so its friends can get through, and to hell with the consequences. Retrospectivity is fundamental to this legislation. It is fundamental to the whole tax avoidance industry. It was not the previous Government's actions which killed the tax avoidance industry. It was this Government's statement which essentially said: 'Look, fellas, go ferreting with the microscope; go looking for your legal niceties, legal loopholes; ignore the morality of the law, the spirit of the law. But once we find the loophole we will make sure that the spirit of the law prevails. Ignore the spirit of the law at your own risk'. That is what stopped the tax avoidance industry. No one is game to explore the legal loop holes if that contravenes the spirit of the law. My suggestion to the Government is that there should be a double dissolution and a joint sitting of the Parliament. Whilst ever this legislation and similar legislation in terms of bottom of the harbour schemes do not go through both Houses of the Parliament, no government in this country can stand before its people and say: 'We act fairly and treat all taxpayers equally. We are attempting to apply the spirit of financial responsibility to all people in the country on an equitable basis'. Whilst ever we say that those who rob the bank can stay free but we will make sure that no one else can rob it in the future, we wil not solve the problem. Every day taxpayers say: 'If I break the law what will happen to me? I cannot engage a barrister to find the loopholes in the laws which I might get caught breaking. Why should I be forced to pay additional taxes because somebody can afford to generate an industry of this nature?' Such a taxpayer said to me last year: 'I have been working for a firm for a number of years. After I left the employment of the firm I discovered that I was a member of the superannuation fund. I did not know beforehand. It seems that my previous employer is now telling everbody how he received $1.5m tax free'. I thought: 'That is fascinating. It cannot be possible. John Howard fixed all that, did he not?' In any event, that is what we keep hearing. I made many inquiries and wrote a long letter to the Treasurer about it last year. The real irony and the part which really hurt was when the then Treasurer said: The Commissioner of Taxation, whose comments I sought, pointed out that the secrecy provisions of the income tax law prohibited him from discussing the affairs of another taxpayer, in this case the superannuation fund--- Such an employer is doubly protected. He is protected by the law and its loopholes and also by the secrecy provisions. We cannot find out what really took place. To my mind, that law is there to protect honest people. It seems to me that many of our laws protect the dishonest more often than the honest. It is fascinating to read the trust document between Carnaby Sales Pty Ltd, a company incorporated in New South Wales, and Grecam Pty Ltd in deciding to establish a superannuation fund known as Carnaby Sales Pty Ltd pension fund. The Corporate Affairs Commission does not keep records of pension funds so I cannot ascertain how much money is involved. What I do know is that at least 10 employees were extremely aggrieved because those employees, whose employer was deducting taxation from them each payday-they were paying tax every week- discovered afterwards, to the best of their investigations, that all the profits the company made were being put into a superannuation fund under their names. Then they discovered that if they were no longer employees they had no right to the money their names were used to accumulate. If the company were to terminate its activities only the employer received that money on which he paid taxation at the rate of 5 per cent. This scheme has been investigated by the Commissioner of Taxation. I have a copy of a letter that was sent out to some of the employees seeking details of the commencement of their employment, termination, details of duties, whether they were in a superannuation fund; and if so, when they found out about it, and so on. I gather that the Federal Police also made inquiries. The simple fact of the matter is that, to the best of my investigations, the Commissioner of Taxation will find it very difficult to prove that the scheme was fraudulent. He will find it very difficult to prove, within the letter of the law, that it did not operate as a bona fide scheme, despite the statements and declarations by ex -employees that they were not formally advised of the scheme. They were not aware of it. They were not aware of their rights. They were not aware of it when their employment was terminated. Some of those people were employed for a reasonably long duration. Their previous employer told them that he had received the money tax free and they could go to hell-they would not get it back despite the fact that their names were used it was none of their business. People have been unwittingly and unknowingly involved, to my mind, in a fraudulent action without awareness and knowledge. Those people will always wear , to some degree, a taint that they must have known about it. That will be the implication concerning those innocent people for a long time to come. I suggest that the Commissioner and the Federal Police will not be able to finalise a case on that scheme. They will not be able to extract a fair and reasonable taxation payment from the profits of that operation. The Opposition is saying that that is just tough luck; it is just bad luck. The Opposition believes it is more important not to act retrospectivly than to recoup the money involved in such a scheme. Members of the Opposition should ask the taxpayers about that. I can assure them that the case to which I referred does not wash with the ex-employees of the company. They do not accept that it was okay for them to pay taxation but it was not okay for somebody else to pay. It is not okay for the Opposition to say that the Australian people will not wear retrospectivity. In effect, the Opposition is saying: 'Bank robbery is fine so long as you do not get caught'. That is what it is about. The notion of law is a notion of morality; it is notion of principle. In recent years we have seen a massive transference to a notion of letters. That transference bodes very badly for this country and its people, particularly those who cannot afford to engage the prominent barristers. One ex-employee of the company to which I referred went to a barrister. He sought advice as to whether he could mount a case for compensation from the superannuation fund. The barrister's advice was that he had very little chance of doing so. Whilst morally he has a very strong argument , legally the trust deeds, et cetera, exclude him from having any reasonable say . Let us look at what the Opposition has said about retrospectivity. On 29 February 1984 the honourable member for Higgins (Mr Shipton) said: I am not talking about tax rorts or tax rip-offs; What has been so difficult to comprehend in this debate has been the fact that the Opposition has said consistently that it does not support tax evasion, tax rorts, fraudulence and blatant manipulation. Yet the only way it shows its non- support of those activities is by saying that those who have taken part in them must be made to pay back the benefits they have received. To my mind, it is not a question of exhorting a massive fine from people. It is a question of people having to repay that which they have received by manipulation of the letter of the law. The tax avoidance industry will re-establish and redevelop in Australia whilst ever those who see benefit in it are heartened by an Opposition argument that the loopholes, when they are closed, will not be closed from the time they started. That is what has been happening in the past and it will happen in the future unless we stand up and say that this Parliament will uphold the spirit and the morality of the law. Without that morality the taxation system becomes a heinous burden. People will pay their share of taxes if they believe that others are doing the same; but when we have anarchy at the upper levels of our society, as we clearly have tonight in this place, anarchy which says that we should ignore morality, which is what this whole debate is about, then people at other levels will also become anarchal. Then we will blame them and say: 'Hey, how about law and order?' Law and order to those people does not mean legalistic interpretations; it means what the law basically aims to do. Using for tax minimisation purposes a superannuation or pension fund scheme purportedly set up for the benefit of employees when there was never any intention in the employer's mind that it should benefit them is clearly immoral. There is no argument about that. I would like the Opposition to tell the House and the people of Australia how moral that use is and how moral it is for people not to pay their fair share. If members of the Opposition can justify the morality of that, perhaps they can justify their stance. Interpreting law as words on a page is not the point of the argument. The people of Australia do not see law as words; they see them as things to be obeyed, to have meaning, to have relevance to them a individuals. The debate tonight has been largely a repeat of parts of the debate in late February, when the Government clearly foreshadowed its commitment to this piece of legislation, enclosed as it was in the Income Tax Assessment Amendment Bill ( No. 5) of 1983. The fact is that the Government is committed to retrieving for the Australian people that which they unfairly lost, because that is what the legislation is about. If we do not persist with that I do not think any of us on either side of the House have the right to say that we fairly represent the people of Australia. Mr TUCKEY(O'Connor)(8.52) —Madam Deputy Speaker, the Income Tax Assessment Amendment Bill (No. 2) to amend the law relating to income tax is not a very large document. It is a document that sets out to collect some revenue for the Government, and it will do that retrospectively. Many speakers tonight have told us that the activity this legislation deals with was a fraud against working people. Mrs Kelly —It was. Mr TUCKEY —I have not denied that. It was not a fraud against the revenue because the law specifically allows for the operation of a superannuation scheme . This Government is prepared to bring in legislation because it perceives a scheme, legal under the laws of Australia, being used in a fashion that has defrauded a number of working people and profited others. In fact there is no legislation in this House to get the money back for the workers. The Government can go ahead and bring down a piece of legislation to collect money that does not belong to it but it is not bringing any legislation into this place that will create a set of circumstances in which the money can be recouped. Members of the Government will give us a good argument as to why the Government should have this money, but if there has been a fraud of this nature the money belongs to the people who were defrauded of their superannuation, properly provided for by the laws of Australia. So I reject this piece of legislation on the first count, that is, that it is the wrong legislation. It does nothing for the people who lost their money, but it is a good trick by this Government to collect some revenue. We must then look at the second purpose of the legislation. This Bill is part of the Government's campaign for an early election. We know it, and we have heard the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) confirm it. So we have a situation now where the Government is looking to create an election platform on the old chestnut of the Liberal Party being a party which gives assistance to tax avoiders. That is denied by the 43 separate pieces of legislation introduced by the previous Treasurer, the honourale member for Bennelong (Mr Howard) to address the problems of tax avoidance. In fact, although it received my opposition, as this piece of legislation does, on the ground that it was retrospective, the honourable member even introduced a piece of legislation which set out to address retrospectively a problem basically by a lazy bureaucracy. That lazy bureaucracy was the Crown Solicitor's Office, and its laziness commenced in the days when the honourable member for Oxley (Mr Hayden) was Treasurer. Let us face it, he too might have livened up that group of people. There is no doubt that that laziness and inactivity, associated with other factors such as the inability of the Treasurer to get a lot of information because it was the property of State governments, created a situation in which all the accusations of what that Government did for the boys could be discounted on the grounds that the Treasurer would have acted sooner had he been aware of what was going on. What is the Australian Labor Party doing for the boys now that it is in Government? I refer to page 1586 of the Hansard of 11 October 1983, and I see there the name of a recent interjector, Kelly, R. J. Her name is there and, what is more, I can find other names which are on the Government's speakers list for tonight-Punch; Brown, R.; Gear; Morris, A.; Kelly and Edwards, R. That page shows that they participated in a vote, along with every other member of the Labor Government. Even those who were not present are carefully listed as pairs. How did they vote? They are listed as having voted No. I will tell the House what they voted against. They voted against a motion moved by the honourable member for Bennelong, in the following terms: I seek leave, in accordance with what the Minister for Finance (Mr Dawkins) has said, to move: that so much of the Standing Orders be suspended as would prevent the Deputy Leader of the Opposition moving forthwith a motion in the following terms: That the Minister for Finance be condemned for the double standards he has just displayed. If the honourable member for Canberra (Mrs Kelly) wants me to define that double standard again, it concerned my statement that the Minister for Finance (Mr Dawkins) was both tax avoider and tax evader. The honourable member for Canberra and others have come in here tonight and cried crocodile tears on the subject of tax avoidance and evasion. I guess we would have to put this in the category of tax avoidance. I will explain the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion. Mr Uren —Madam Deputy Speaker, I take a point of order. The honourable member continually makes the accusation that the Minister for Finance has done something wrong. If he has, the honourable member for O'Connor has the right to move a substantive motion. None has been moved and therefore I take the point of order that he has no right to make accusations in any shape or form against the Minister. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mrs Child) —There is no point of order, but I do draw the attention of the honourable member for O'Connor to standing orders 75 and 76. If he would like me to read them to him, I will do so. Mr TUCKEY —No, thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Bill before us addresses itself to a claimed method of tax avoidance. When I was interrupted by the point of order I was in the process of describing the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion. I should explain to the Minister for Territories and Local Government (Mr Uren), who might be one of those who did not vote on that occasion, that tax avoidance occurs when a person tells the Commissioner of Taxation how much money he has made and why the Commissioner cannot have it. Tax evasion occurs when a person fails to tell him at all. Without mentioning the Minister to whom reference has just been made, I say that all honourable members who voted on that occasion to defeat the motion voted for tax avoidance and tax evasion because one of their mates was involved and they did not want the embarrassment of admitting it. To suggest for one moment that it did not happen is to deny all the evidence laid down at that time, including comany documents, which were never challenged by the said Minister. More importantly and more interestingly, he claimed that they had been stolen from him. Of course, that makes the situation quite correct. At that time a company called Coomel Pty Ltd was referred to. I do not need a substantive motion on that. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! I refer the honourable member for O'Connor back to the Bill before the House. Mr TUCKEY —Madam Deputy Speaker, I have listened to the speeches tonight. They have ranged quite widely on the issue of tax avoidance and tax evasion. This Bill deals with a very small part of it. Might I add, as I have pointed out to you, that other speakers have said that it is here to save us $15m. I say that it is here to give the Prime Minister an opportunity to have an early election which will bring into this place over $15m worth of members of parliament 18 months ahead of time. If that is a way to get money for the poor and the unemployed, I will go he. I do not know how many of those new members of parliament are currently unemployed but I can tell honourable members that that is where the money will go. The intention of this legislation has been made very clear by the Prime Minister. He wants an election issue. He brings in this piece of legislation which is not a tax matter. It is a matter of fraud on the public. He does not seek to protect retrospectively the public; he wants a retrospective piece of tax legislation. It so happens that, if the estimate of the Attorney-General (Senator Gareth Evans) of $9.35m a year for his extra members of parliament is accurate, and if the Prime Minister has his opportunistic way with an early election, the cost of those extra members of parliament, for the 18 months prior to if and when we needed them, will equal exactly what the Government, with its crocodile tears, claims to collect with this legislation. What is the purpose? We know the purpose. Let us look at the types of schemes that these tax avoiders get up to. Tax avoiders are the people who use the law as it stands. Tax evaders are people who do not tell. For instance, if a person sells a property that has a real value of $540,000, for $680,000 over three years, he can write himself letters about it calculating what the interest will be but tell the Commissioner of Taxation that it was a capital sale, when in fact he is realising on an original value anyway of $70,000 because that was what was written into the estate of his father, that is tax evasion. That is an example of tax evasion. When the buyer will not pay that and the person does another deal with him, the people write each other letters about it and the deal shows that the selling price over three years is $ 550,000. Expensive accountants like McLaren and Stewart are employed by these people who can afford them. They write a letter saying 'Well, really and truly, the real value under this arrangement is only $438,000' which is a difference of $112,000; in fact the interest truly charged on that amount over that period is $112,000. If one goes into that, one will find that the tax on that for a company is something like $51,520. If one does not tell the Commissioner of Taxation about those little deals and hides those papers from him, that is tax evasion, that is not telling him. I suggest that when that group of people, including the honourable member for Canberra, voted out the motion of the honourable member for Bennelong, that represented absolute support of this Government for that activity. They have the hypocrisy, in the interests of having an early election and dumping another $15m worth of cost on the Australian public, to come in here and say that it is the Liberals who know all about tax evasion and avoidance and that we practised it. The score at the moment, and let us remember that we did not have control of the Senate, is that we passed 43 pieces of legislation destroying tax avoidance and evasion in contrast to the current Government's score of none. Mrs Kelly —Whose fault is that? Mr TUCKEY —The honourable member might go and ask the Independent senator, Senator Harradine, who was able to accommodate the previous Treasurer's point of view because in his view he saw justice and fairness in it. He has been unable to accommodate the point of view of the present Treasurer (Mr Keating). To my knowledge, Independent Senator Harradine is not a man who has ever played party politics for party politics' sake since he has been an Independent senator. He is hardly a Liberal and he has hardly had a Liberal background. The fact is that he has managed to support the previous Treasurer and oppose this one. There must be something wrong with the Government's legislation. Let me repeat that this legislation should have been directed towards protecting the people who were hurt. If the people who were entitled to that money had received it, the Tax Commissioner would have no claim upon it. But the Government is not bothered about the people that the Prime Minister claims to represent and to weep over. The Government is more interested in the revenue because it needs it to pay the politicians who have yet to be elected but whom the Government plans to bring into this place 18 months early. That is opportunism. Mrs Kelly —They will all be on this side. Mr TUCKEY —I am sure the Government is banking on that. When one gets down to tax avoidance, which is the other matter that the Government claims to be somewhat interested in, I refer to what is an old tax now because governments saw that it was hurting small people more than big people and in fact the big were able to employ expensive lawyers and solicitors to get them out of it. Nevertheless for a long time and even to this moment, provided a death occurred in a particular time, there were quite strong laws requiring persons who died, to pay probate. In fact on a particular occasion, which is an excellent hypothetical example of what I am talking about, a death duty assessment was lodged. It was a little incorrect because it had to be corrected by the tax assessor because prior to the death there was a loan, a debt. In fact at one stage the total assets of a particular company were $73,210. In fact, as we looked into this particular hypothetical case we found out that it was a situation where the total value of the assets sold to the company at that time were replaced by a loan of that amount. But on the advice of the expensive lawyers, the particular gentleman failed to include that in his estate because he said it would be refunded to the company at the moment of his death. But apparently, the inspector or whoever dealt with his application said this was not so. But of course that does not end the avoidance, does it? The estate then added up to $84,210. That was the paper value of this gentleman's estate. But the company to which he lent that $72,000, having made no further acquisitions, was able to be valued in a stripping statement. I say a stripping statement because the company was stripped; it did not have to be sent to the bottom of the harbour in a stripping process because on the good advice of expensive tax agents it had accumulated losses. When that company was stripped, it distributed something like $1.6m to the shareholders. If one gets to the stage of looking at what $1.6m would attract in probate at that time, we find that there was both State and Federal probate duty and in fact the $1.6m was a figure associated with another statement signed by a person well known to us all. But the fact is that if one worked out the true value-they had hived off a few blocks of land to some of the shareholders prior to this-which is simple enough on the calculations I have here, and I am sure a couple of the members opposite would like to check them and see whether they are correct, one could get the true value of that company up to $2,153,130. If we took that particular value, we find that the Commonwealth duty, which applied at 27.9 per cent at that time, was $600,732. That left a remaining balance of $1,552,398 which attracted State duty at that time of a further $388,099. That makes a total duty that that estate would have attracted of $988,831. That is if the original owner of the land had kept it in his own name and had not gone through an avoidance scheme. Consequently, having done that, he would have paid that amount of duty. But when we go back to the death duty assessment, we find that all the duty he paid was $ 21,610. That is absolute, shameful, shocking avoidance. What was the purpose of this? There was no benefit to the poor old fellow who died but there was great benefit to the beneficiaries. There was some $960,000 to be shared amongst them. When we look at those who got the money we find that they got some land and about that much each. That is the sort of thing that we can talk about. That is tax avoidance. That is creating circumstances, with the use of highly paid accountants and highly paid solicitors. They are the sorts of tricks that were practised by people very close to the Australian Labor Party-in fact so close that one of them sits on the front bench every day and has not been sacked. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mrs Child) —Order! I again remind the honourable gentleman about the Standing Orders I mentioned earlier. Mr TUCKEY —Madam Deputy Speaker, I have failed to name the person and I am taking the advice of the Minister for Territories and Local Government (Mr Uren) , who is at the table, on that. They are figures that show what people can do. Mr Howard —A person like that would not be a friend of the Prime Minister, would he? Mr TUCKEY —I remember that when I was trying to explain this to the Prime Minister and hopefully help him to get a particular cancer out of his breast so that he could appoint better people to do all the things proposed he sat before me and would not do a thing about it. His silence was notable. Not once did he get up to support this person. But it is interesting to note that this is the type of thing that these people do, and this is how they vote. They are all listed here. I have cited the page. It shows the people who came in to vote. I doubt whether the Minister at the table will deny that he voted. I have been trying to find his name amongst the many papers I have. I would dearly love to find his name and read it to him, just to let him know, but he could jump to his feet and say that he was not here and he did not vote to support that Minister at that time. It is an absolute sham that $1m of probate was avoided and $70,000 of company and personal tax was evaded. I have carefully explained the difference. They are both bad but evasion is worse because it involves lying. The Treasurer, who is listed here and who is a close associate, has never said to us that he has done anything about it in 12 months. The evidence still lies on the table. The only thing we know-and I have to wonder about that-is that the Minister concerned has become strangely silent. I hope that at least the Commissioner of Taxation has seen where his duty lies and has written the Minister a letter asking him when he is going to pay up. Mrs KELLY(Canberra)(9.13) —Unfortunately this House has just witnessed a speech which was total buck passing and total cowardice, a speech which did not face up to the issues of tax avoidance and to the issue that this discussion is all about, which is the issue of retrospectivity. Instead of doing that, there was a blatant attack on a member of this House, with no justification whatsoever. The honourable member for O'Connor (Mr Tuckey) did nothing to address the problems that this debate is all about. This debate is all about the issue of retrospectivity. This debate is all about who should pay the bill for tax avoidance. This debate is about justice. The honourable member for O'Connor did all he could in his speech to shift the burden of guilt. The burden of guilt lies quite easily on the members of the Opposition. The reason that burden of guilt is there is that they will not face up to their duties and responsibilities to move in on people who are tax cheats. That is what we are talking about. We are talking about a scheme that is illegal, a scheme that has caused members of the public to lose money, a scheme that has caused the Consolidated Revenue Fund to lose money. Are the members of the Opposition condoning that? That is exactly what they are doing. What we have witnessed here is an attempt by members of the Opposition to buck pass, to blame everyone else for their failure to face up to their responsibilities. They are the ones who are causing Consolidated Revenue to be lost. They are the ones who are ensuring that people who have broken the law will never have to pay their just debts. Let us put this matter into proper perspective. The sorts of people we are talking about are those who were mentioned in the Kelly case which was referred to in the Senate by the Miniser for Resources and Energy, Senator Walsh. I want members of this House to listen to what happened in this case because it gives an example of the sorts of people who are affected by this scheme and the sorts of people whom the members of the Opposition are trying to shield. Mr Hodgman —Madam Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. Not one member of the Opposition has supported the Kelly case. The honourable member should withdraw that because it is a reflection on members of the Opposition and is totally untrue. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mrs Child) -Order! There is no point of order. Mrs KELLY —By deciding to reject this legislation, both here and in the Senate, the members of the Opposition are condoning the actions of people who are tax cheats. There is a lot of irrelevant debate in this House but the remarks of the honourable member for O'Connor just show the depths of the irrelevancy that can occur in this House. I have noticed the members of the Opposition flee from the House when they have been forced to face up to the reality of what their vote means. (Quorum formed) Before I was interrupted I was challenging the members of the Opposition who were not prepared to face up to the reality of what their vote means in this instance. Their vote means that they are condoning tax avoidance practices and actions against a person such as Mrs Lowndes who should have been protected. Let me tell honourable members about her. That woman was taken in fraudulently by the Kelly brothers. I claim to be no relation of the Kelly brothers. However, I do know a great deal about the case because there has in fact been a judgment in that case. It gives some very good examples which the members of the Opposition should read and should listen to very carefully before they vote tonight because the Kellys are the sorts of people that they are protecting. The Kellys were quite clearly and fraudulently breaking the law. Honourable members opposite are condoning action such as theirs. Mrs Lowndes was due to retire on 15 July 1980. At the end of June her employment was termined on a Friday on the pretext that staff numbers had to be kept down. As a married woman, she was obviously the person to go. Nevertheless, she was re-employed as a casual on the following Monday. All that meant was that she did not get the amount of money that was due to her. Who gets it instead? It went right into the Kelly's coffers. They are the sorts of people honourable members opposite are condoning. We would never guess from the earlier contributions to the debate by members of the Opposition, who have done everything they can to avoid facing up to the issue, that this debate is all about retrospectivity. Retrospective legislation is a very serious matter and the members of the Government accept that. It should never be contemplated by legislators without strong and sufficient reason . As members of the Government, we argue that we have those strong and sufficient reasons. The issue of retrospectivity should be debated on a couple of issues, not that the members of the Opposition have seriously taken up this debate at all. The first issue is the legal obligation, the second is the moral obligation. Let us take the legal situation. I am not a lawyer but I think it is important that members of the Government and of the Opposition have to consider what the legal position is before we vote on this matter. There is no reference in the Australian Constitution to retrospective laws. As early as 1915 the High Court of Australia held valid a retrospective Federal criminal law in a case which was called the Kidman case. This was a much stronger case than a retrospective law on civil liability. So while most law is prospective in its operations, there is no legal impediment to the principle of retrospectivity. When we stand to discuss the facts, what do the honourable member for O'Connor and his colleagues do? They leave; they cannot face the reality of what their vote will really mean. The second objection to the legislation is usually on moral grounds. We have heard some discussion about moral grounds from those great law abiders on the other side of the House, who are condoning the actions of tax cheats. That is what they are doing, but they have attempted to justify it in their own way. What they are trying to prove is that citizens who innocently engage in conduct which is lawful at the time, ought, so the argument goes, to be able to presume that the law is prospective, and I really have no problem with such a proposition. I do have problems, however, with the proposition involving citizens who take part in an action which they know will injure innocent parties . I refer to actions which are both fraudulent and immoral. Such citizens ought to be willing to accept the consequences of their actions. This is what members of the Government are asking for in this legislation. We are asking for it to be retrospective and we are asking members of the Opposition not to condone action which is fraudulent and immoral. Is that too much for members of the Government to request from the Opposition? When members of the Opposition say here tonight that members of the Government will use this legislation as the basis for a Federal election, I welcome that. I am prepared to get involved in any debate at any time in a public forum with any member of the Opposition, because I know where the people will put their votes. They will put their votes on this side of the House and honourable members on the other side of the House are running scared because they know if there is an election on this issue or, frankly, on any other issue this year or next year, the numbers will be even further depleted on the Opposition benches. In this legislation we are confronted with a situation which came to light in 1977, whereby some proprietors of businesses established superannuation funds that did not provide benefits to employees but were operated and wound up to provide benefits to the proprietors. That is the scheme we wish to outlaw. Proprietors took advantage of tax concessions provided by legislation covering superannuation contributions and incomes from such funds. The honourable member for O'Connor said that no money was lost to Consolidated Revenue. What a farce! Some of the honourable members from Tasmania who sit on the other side of the House are a little slow in understanding; so I will go through it again. I can see the confused look on their faces. I want them to understand the facts because I want them to think very carefully before they vote on this legislation . We have seen people deliberately engaging in fraudulent practices, who deliberately cheat people of their money and once they have established the schemes, they get tax concessions. So more money is being lost. Mr Donald Cameron —Crooks. Mrs KELLY —A member of the Opposition said they are crooks. Of course they are crooks, but honourable members opposite will be condoning their actions in the way they vote on this legislation. The people who suffer from such practices are the unsuspecting employees on whom the fraud has been committed. Mr Hodgman —Whose money it is. Mrs KELLY —Right. There is a loss to general revenue, the fund which will be available to provide facilities for taxpayers. Somebody has to pay. While this money was not being recouped from people avoiding the payments of tax, people who also were getting tax concessions, the ordinary taxpayer had to pay out once more. So honourable members opposite are condoning that action too. They are condoning action that is illegal and they are condoning leaving money that rightfully should belong to general revenue and to the taxpayers of Australia with the tax cheats. Mr Goodluck —You are condoning a strike up here at the new Parliament House. Mr Hand —Be quiet. Mrs KELLY —I say to the honourable member that he should not worry about members of the Opposition. They have to raise irrelevant issues because that is all they have to talk about on this matter. Mr Hand —They are a pretty irrelevant lot. Mrs KELLY —The members of the Opposition are totally irrelevant. They raise in this Parliament whatever comes into their heads. They are not prepared to face up to this important, critical issue of retrospectivity in tax. When I raise the issues and confront them with the facts, all they do is walk out the doors. Very few taxpayers benefit from these schemes. The vast majority are disadvantaged and have been disadvantaged. Surely such an immoral situation cannot be allowed to continue for want of legislation in this Parliament. People who engage in fraudulent schemes know that they will have to pay tax at some time. They set up schemes such as the cherry-picker scheme, to put off paying tax. Honourable members opposite, by indicating that they will vote against this legislation will continue to support and condone the non-payment of legitimate tax. If this Parliament seeks to smash tax avoidance, it must utilise all avenues available to make sure that only a very minimum number of people put off paying tax. In fact, the ideal situation would be that no people put it off. When we see a situation in which people have blatantly avoided paying tax, I believe it is a legitimate role of government under its mandate to proceed to try to recoup that money and to ensure that there is sufficient legislation to cover those practices to ensure that they do not recur. Quite simply, that is all we are attempting to do in this legislation. The action which the Kelly brothers encouraged should not be condoned by anybody in this House. Such blatant tax avoidance cannot ever be condoned by this Parliament. Rejection of proposed new section 5 of the Income Tax Assessment Act by the Senate has doubtless been interpreted by the tax avoidance industry that the Opposition is soft on tax avoidance, and there is no doubt that the debate in this House tonight only reinforces that view. The Minister for Finance (Mr Dawkins) mentioned a sum of $3,000m which is owed by tax avoiders. We have to think about what that means. If those funds were available to Consolidated Revenue what could we do with them? That is what we have to think about. The issue is not just whether we condone people not paying taxes they should pay. Mr Groom —Where will the money come from? Mrs KELLY —The honourable member asked where the money will come from. That is a legitimate question. I would like the honourable member to think about that and answer it before he votes tonight. Where is the money coming from? I will tell honourable members where it is coming from. It is coming from the pockets of the wage and salary earners, the people who cannot avoid paying tax. It is coming from people like my constituents. Members of the Opposition, and in particular, the honourable member for O'Connor, blamed them for the tax avoidance. In his speech he blamed the bureaucrats for not doing anything about tax avoidance. The vast majority of people in my electorate-68 per cent-are wage and salary earners . They cannot avoid paying tax. They are making an enormous contribution to the taxation coffers. The reason why they are making such a contribution is that members of the Opposition condone people not paying the taxes they should. This Bill is about the citizens of Australia paying the taxes that legitimately they should pay. The Government of this country has a mandate to ensure that justice is carried out in this area. The debate we have heard tonight from the members of the Opposition has been a cowardly attack on another member of this House. They have escaped from the realities of what they are trying to do. They have condoned people deliberately avoiding paying their taxes and have done nothing to assist the people who are the victims of these tax rorts. I therefore move: That the question be now put. The House divided. (Madam Deputy Speaker-Mrs J. Child) Ayes . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Noes . . . . . . . . . . . 40 —— Majority . . . . . . . . . 25 —— Baldwin, P. J. Jacobi, R.Beazley, K. C. Jones, BarryBeddall, D. P. Kelly, R. J.Bilney, G. N. Kent, L.Blanchard, C. A. Keogh, L. J.Blewett, N. Kerin, J. C.Bowen, Lionel Klugman, R. E.Brown, John Lindsay, E. J.Brown, Robert McHugh, J.Brumby, J. M. McLeay, LeoCampbell, G. Maher, M. J.Charles, D. E. Mayer, H.Chynoweth, R. L. Mildren, J. B.Cross, M. D. Milton, P.Cunningham, B. T. (Teller) Morris, AllanDarling, E. E. Morris, PeterDawkins, J. S. Morrison, W. L.Duffy, M. J. Mountford, J. G.Edwards, Ronald O'Neil, L. R. T.Everingham, D. N. Punch, G. F.Fatin, W. F. Reeves, J. E.Free, R. V. Saunderson, J.Fry, K. L. Scott, J. L.Gayler, J. Staples, P. R.Gear, G. Steedman, A. P.Gorman, R. N. J. Theophanous, A. C.Griffiths, A. G. Tickner, R. E.Hand, G. L. Uren, T.Hayden, W. G. Wells, D. McM.Hollis, C. West, S. J.Howe, B. L. Willis, R.Humphreys, B. C. (Teller) Young, M. J.Hurford, C. J. Adermann, A. E. Hunt, R. J. D.Aldred, K. J. Katter, R. C.Andrew, J. N. Lloyd, B.Braithwaite, R. A. Lusher, S. A.Burr, M. A. McArthur, F. S.Cadman, A. G. MacKellar, M. J. R.Cameron, Donald Millar, P. C.Cameron, Ewen (Teller) Moore, J. C.Carlton, J. J. Newman, K. E.Coleman, W. P. O'Keefe, F. L.Cowan, D. B. Porter, J. R.Dobie, J. D. M. Robinson, IanDrummond, P. H. Rocher, A. C.Fife, W. C. Ruddock, P. M.Goodluck, B. J. Shipton, R. F.Groom, R. J. Sinclair, I. McC.Hall, Steele Spender, J. M.Hicks, N. J. (Teller) Tuckey, C. W.Hodgman, W. M. White, P. N. D.Howard, J. W. Wilson, I. B. C. Question so resolved in the affirmative. Original question resolved in the affirmative. Bill read a second time. The Bill. Mr HOWARD(Bennelong)(9.43) —As the Opposition has made very clear throughout the whole of this debate and the debate on the Income Tax Assessment Amendment Bill (No. 5) it has no objection at all to the prospective application of this measure. We have listened in vain for some kind of explanation from the Government as to why 1 July 1977 has been chosen as a commencement date. Of course, the Special Minister of State (Mr Young), in arranging for the gag to be moved, denied the Acting Treasurer (Mr Hurford), who has the carriage of the Bill, the opportunity of explaining to the House why the Government is running the commencement date of this Bill from 1 July 1977. The Opposition therefore repeats what it said during the second reading debate, that is that absolutely no case has been advanced by the Government as to why this Bill should run from 1 July 1977. Again and again speakers from the Opposition have invited the Government to give an explanation. Government speakers have produced a very general letter from the Acting Commissioner of Taxation which goes in no way towards answering the charge made by the Opposition that there is absolutely no justification for this Bill to run from 1 July 1977. I invite my friend the Acting Treasurer who has the carriage of this Bill, when he replies to the Committee debate, to explain to me why the advice given by the Commissioner of Taxation to me in February 1980 when I was Treasurer that we ought not to legislate in this area has been so overturned by subsequent circumstances that the Government can now dare to run this legislation from 1 July 1977, two and a half years before the letter from the Commissioner of Taxation stating: 'Do not legislate. We think it would be very unwise'. The Minister carries the onus to explain. The Government went shopping for a Bill. It was looking around for something. If the truth is really known the Treasurer (Mr Keating) said to the Australian Taxation Office: 'We want some anti- avoidance legislation that we can make a political issue about. Will you dredge something up?' That is what is involved in this exercise. This legislation was, in fact, already in preparation when the change of government took place. I refer the Acting Treasurer to the advice conveyed to me , which I have made public, by the Commissioner of Taxation a few days before the change of government. At that time legislation was already in preparation to deal with abuses in this area. This demonstrates yet again that this Government has done absolutely nothing of its own volition. Of course, this lends colour to what the Minister for Finance (Mr Dawkins)-the bottom of the harbour socialist- said the other day when he remarked that tax avoidance was dead as an issue. As far as the Opposition is concerned, it will support an amendment which states that this Bill's commencement date will be 7 December 1983 which was the date of introduction of the Bill. We will not in any circumstances support the legislation running from the beginning of July 1977. The Government has failed completely, and the Acting Treasurer has a last opportunity to justify to this chamber why the Bill will run from 1 July 1977. If he were able to say that the original advice of the Commissioner of Taxation was based on a misunderstanding of the situation, if he were able to produce a whole lot of new evidence, some might think there was justification in what he is doing. But there is absolutely no justification for what the Government is doing. The Minister at the table knows that. Many people on the Government side know that. The Government is doing it because the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) has decided to embark upon a thoroughly dishonest McCarthyist campaign against the Opposition on the subject of tax avoidance. The Government, and the Prime Minister in particular, obviously believes that if it repeats a lie often enough people will start to believe it. That is what the Prime Minister of this country is doing. He is lying to the Parliament and the Australian people about the position of the Opposition on the subject of tax avoidance. He knows that he conceals and protects a Minister on his own front bench, the Minister for Finance, who has been involved in tax avoidance arrangements. He has been demonstrated to have total double standards and hypocrisy on the subject of tax avoidance. Yet what does this Prime Minister -this bastion, this pillar of honesty and integrity-do? He puts his arm around the Minister for Finance and says: 'You are all right mate. We will stand shoulder to shoulder in good old socialist solidarity'. The Minister for Defence Support (Mr Howe) is grinning. He knows darn well what I am talking about. He would not be involved in a tax avoidance arrangement. He is far too genuine a socialist to be involved in tax avoidance. He is more than a little ashamed of what the Minister for Finance has done. He is more than a little embarrassed because he is true to his socialist principles. He believes that every man and woman ought to pay his or her fair share of tax. His mate from Fremantle does not really believe that; he is very good at dishing it out when other people are in the firing line but not terribly good when it comes to taking it. This Bill is a sham. This Bill and the actions of this Government on this issue will be seen for the dishonest sham that they really are. The parties on this side have a record for fighting- The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN(Mrs Darling) —Order! Would the Deputy Leader of the Opposition please come to the point and move his amendment in the form in which he wishes to move it. Mr HOWARD —Well, Madam Deputy Chairman, the point of the matter is that we are opposed to the measure. We would like everybody to be absolutely certain of that and nobody to be left in any doubt about it. That is why I have moved the amendment that is standing in my name. The amendment is that this Bill run from 7 December 1983. I happened to move that amendment about six or seven minutes ago. The reason that I moved the amendment is that the commencement date under this measure is an absolute disgrace. The Government has advanced no reason for doing it. The Government does not have anything to boast about in the anti-tax avoidance area. The Minister for Finance, in a flash of honesty a couple of weeks ago, admitted that tax avoidance was dead. He now has to recant that because the Prime Minister wants to run tax avoidance in the next election campaign as an issue and the poor old Minister for Finance has to be bashed into line. The bottom of the harbour socialist has to be bashed into line. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —Order! Will the Committee kindly come to order. I ask honourable members to remember that this is a Committee of the national Parliament. It is nothing more than a chook house the way it sounds now. Mr HOWARD —Madam Deputy Chairman- The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —Excuse me, I am waiting for the Committee to come to order. Mr HOWARD —I am sorry, Madam Deputy Chairman. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —I ask the Deputy Leader of the Opposition now to put his amendment in the form in which it should be put. Mr HOWARD —With great respect, Madam Deputy Chairman, I have already done that. A considerable amount of my speaking time having been wasted, I will conclude my remarks by repeating what I have done on two occasions and that is- The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —Order! I ask the honourable member to move his amendment. Mr HOWARD —I am endeavouring to do that. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —You have not, sir, officially put your amendment. Mr HOWARD —With respect, Madam Deputy Chairman, I repeat what I have said on two occasions and that is, I move the amendment standing in my name which has been circulated and that is, for the third time, we insert the date '7 December 1983' for the date '1 July 1977' wherever appearing and in that manner expose and repudiate the sham that this piece of legislation really is. I move: Clause 3, pages 1-3, omit '1 July 1977' (wherever occurring), substitute '7 December 1983'. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —The question is: That the amendment be agreed to. Mr Braithwaite —Madam Deputy Chairman, I wish to second the amendment. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —There is no need for a seconder. The question is: That the amendment be agreed to. I call the honourable member for Stirling. Mr RONALD EDWARDS(Stirling)(9.54) —Speaking to the amendment before the Committee, the honourable member for Bennelong (Mr Howard) has asked why we have to take the date as 1 July 1977. The clear reason for that is that he did not do his job when he was Treasurer. The Australian electorate knows that and so does he because in 1978 the honourable member for Balaclava (Mr Macphee) presented a speech on his behalf to an accountants' congress in Perth. At that stage the then Treasurer very accurately said that there are in existence blatant and contrived schemes to avoid tax. In fact, in that circumstance the then Treasurer was recognising that these schemes existed. We have had to move in the way we have in respect of the Income Tax Assessment Amendment Bill (No. 2) which is before the Committee because we found that in fact the job was not done when we came to office. The honourable member for Bennelong knows it and the community knows it and that is why we have opted for this date. That is the simple answer with respect to the question that the honourable member raised. I am sure if we go back and look at the public record we will find that in fact the job was not done when the honourable member was the Treasurer. I believe that in proceeding in this way what we are doing is clarifying the situation. However, further to that, I think the point has to be made that in fact there was in existence a series of contrived schemes with respect to superannuation. The intention of this Bill is to try to deal with those contrived schemes. We on this side believe that in fact there ought to exist an effective scheme of superannuation. We would be working ultimately towards a scheme of national superannuation. The intention of this legislation is to deal very specifically with removing those contrived and artificial schemes from the arena of tax practices. In fact, many speakers already in this debate have spoken about the case that was before the Supreme Court of New South Wales. It is interesting to note that in fact Justice Wootten in summing up referred to evidence given by a tax consultant to the effect that there are two sorts of superannuation funds-one, in fact, which was a genuine superannuation fund and the other one which was a contrived tax avoidance arrangement. This legislation is designed to deal with such a contrivance. That is why we on this side believe that this legislation is necessary. It is no good honourable members opposite protesting about the nature of the legislation when in fact they had an opportunity to do something about this matter when they were in office and they did not. We well know that they did not and the Australian community knows that they did not. Hence, the Government is proceeding this way with respect to this legislation. I would add further at this Committee stage that I believe that when we look at some of the cases that are on the public record with respect to such superannuation arrangements, there is good reason for the Australian community to believe that the inaction and inability of the previous Government to act has meant that such schemes have flourished. The reason for proceeding retrospectively in logical terms is that if in fact the legislation applies to the date of the inception of a scheme and it can be established that that scheme was an artificially contrived scheme to avoid tax, in fact that tax will have to be paid. I do not see what is inequitable or unjust about that if in fact such a practice can be established. One of the important things that has to be established in terms of accounting practice is the intention of a scheme. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —Order! Will Opposition members please lower their level of conversation. It is too high. From here it is very noisy. I am sure that they are aware of that fact. I call the honourable member for Stirling. Mr RONALD EDWARDS —Thank you, Madam Deputy Chairman. I appreciate your concern for the Australian community in particular. Some honourable members opposite do not seem to be so concerned, but we are. As I was saying, when we talk about the impact of legislation of this kind, one of the things that can be established is the intention of the schemes at the time. It is clearly understood with respect to accounting practice that there were schemes that were artificially contrived to avoid tax. If in fact the legislation goes back to the date of inception of a scheme and it can be established that the arrangement was a contrived arrangement, in fact this Government will seek to collect that revenue. There is nothing particular beyond that that we ought to say. But I think that when honourable members opposite, particularly the honourable member for Bennelong, talk about the fact that we are moving in a retrospective way it should be noted that the reason we have to move retrospectively is very simply that honourable members opposite did not do the job when they were in office. The Australian community understood that very clearly. That is why we are proceeding in that way. I would like to go on very briefly to point out that as far as this Government is concerned the reason why this piece of legislation is important is that we have sought to establish with respect to the operation of the prices and incomes accord in Australia a degree of equity both in respect of prices and incomes and in respect of our taxation arrangements. What this legislation seeks to do in terms of superannuation arrangements that were artificial and contrived is to say to the community that those schemes will not be tolerated. In terms of equity and in terms of management of the economy, those opposite know that their failure to deal with these things did mean that they in fact lost the support of the Australian community. To sum up I say very clearly that we are introducing this legislation because we believe it is necessary to deal with artificial and contrived superannuation schemes. This legislation does that. The honourable member for Bennelong has asked why we should make the legislation retrospective to 1 July 1977. The reason very simply is that when he was in office he did not do his job. Consequently, this Government is now doing that job. Mr BRAITHWAITE(Dawson)(10.01) —Having been prevented from seconding the amendment, I shall now show my support for it. The Opposition wishes to decry any claim from the Government that it was soft on tax cheats. Before the Treasurer (Mr Keating) and the Minister for Finance (Mr Dawkins) is evidence that in actual fact this legislation was proposed in a prospective manner at the time of the change of government last March. I certainly support the amendment because we agreed to a change in the legislation in March when the original legislation was introduced in a package. The fact that this legislation would retrospectively apply from 1 July 1977 is against the basic criteria that this Government should seek in its legislation to be firm and certain so that the constituents can then abide by that legislation. We believe also that legislation is unnecessary if, in fact, the Australian Taxation Office has the charter to stamp out tax evasion at any time under the provisions of the existing Income Tax Assessment Act. I believe that to be the case in this instance. I come to the question of the claim that the Opposition is only protecting tax cheats. I refer to certain correspondence between the Treasurer in the previous Government-the honourable member for Bennelong (Mr Howard)-and the Commissioner of Taxation, Mr O'Reilly. Initiation of that correspondence was on 7 September 1979-honourable members will notice that that date is two years later than that set for the retrospective application of this legislation-when the then Treasurer wrote to the Commissioner in these words: I continue to sign a lot of mail replying to people-many in the life insurance industry-who complain about the level of tax avoidance in regard to superannuation schemes. We appear to have had this issue under notice for a while. What is the position? Are there any blatant practices against which action should be taken? Mr Fife's representations to me of 13 July to which I have recently replied are the most recent example. I understand that many honourable members were getting those types of inquiries at that time. On 20 November 1979 there was a follow-up to that letter asking what was going on in this respect. About three or four months after the original letters to the Commissioner, the Commissioner replied. I think it is pertinent to quote two sections of that reply. On 8 February 1980, the Commissioner wrote: You have mentioned that you are frequently told of ways in which the superannuation provisions of the income tax law feature in tax avoidance arrangements and have asked for advice on how serious this area of tax avoidance seems to be. You have asked also for a brief outline of the ways in which superannuation provisions are being misused and an indication of the corrective actions that may need to be taken to put an end to these practices. The Commissioner went on to deal with possible corrective action. He wrote: The main problem in dealing with this matter is that the corrective measures that seem to be appropriate would also cause difficulties to the very large numbers of funds that must be regarded as completely genuine in every way. This will be evident from an examination of the kind of corrective actions that are indicated. Another difficulty I find with the legislation is that it gives discretion to the Taxation Commissioner to waive the rights of the Act if he decides that the particular amending Act should not apply in certain respects. Again, when discretion is given to the Commissioner an element of uncertainty is brought in. We should strive in this Parliament to bring certainty to our legislation and not use band-aid measures whereby the Commissioner has to apply his discretion in certain circumstances. In his letter the Commissioner indicated that the then Treasurer was aware of the situation. The Treasurer wanted some response and he was advised not to go on with the matter. Yet on 3 March, again after questioning, the Commissioner said that something should be done. In claiming this legislation as its initiative the Government is as much out of touch with the tax practices of this country as it is with the people, particularly when it claims that it fathered the correction methods for tax avoidance. It might be more appropriate to say that the Labor party was the father of the tax avoidance industry in the period 1972 to 1975. I come to the particular point that no one has done more to discourage the tax avoidance industry in this country than has the former Treasurer. As I understand it, about 36 separate lots of legislation- Mr Hodgman —Forty-three. Mr BRAITHWAITE —With forty-three separate pieces of legislation and one large encompassing anti-avoidance piece of legislation the former Treasurer, as the Minister for Finance indicated in Sydney a couple of weeks ago, made the tax avoidance industry no matter of concern in this country. On the admission of the Minister for Finance the former Treasurer had put to rest all aspects of the tax avoidance industry. I believe that in its own way the Government would acknowledge that. When in opposition the Government claimed that between $8 billion and $15 billion was being lost through tax evasion and particularly tax avoidance. Because of that rhetoric it now has to find a scapegoat to bring to fruition those claims. This is a miserable piece of legislation with which to try to do that. Over a period of six years it can rake up only $15m in collections from the tax avoidance industry. The Commissioner pointed out that through the tightening of the current legislation legitimate operators of superannuation funds would suffer in many instances and sometimes would be ineligible for the benefits meant to be received. What does this mean? The small businesses and the rural people of Australia are not able to do legitimately those things they intended to do; that is, finance their own businesses as the incentive was given. Thus this legislation is an attack not only on tax avoiders, but also on the liquidity of small businesses throughout this country. Those who were meant to be eligible could quite easily now become ineligible. Of course, nothing in the Commissioner's letter suggests that this tax avoidance practice overall was widespread or that it was so blatant, artificial or contrived that it warranted the use of retrospective legislation as intended by clause 3 of this legislation . If $15m is the extent of the loss for the past six years it goes nowhere near the claims of $8 billion to $15 billion which were made by the Australian Labor Party when in opposition and which the previous Government claimed was blatant, artificial and widespread. In that $8 billion to $15 billion figure the Dawkins scheme which has been favoured by the Government was not included. It had the opportunity to remove that tax avoidance scheme but it voted for the man. It encompassed him and said: 'No, that is all right; do not do it again'. Certainly a lot of emphasis has been placed on the mandate given to the Government in the election on 5 March 1983. No government has the right to make its laws retrospective in such a way as to change the whole system of legislation to attack a minority, and a minority it certainly is. Much was said by the Government in the second reading speech about the Kelly brothers case, the cherry-pickers case and other cases throughout New South Wales. But this legislation does absolutely nothing to remove the abuse that the employees suffered under those schemes. It does not one thing. Thus I wonder, as did a previous speaker for the Opposition, whether this is the appropriate place for this legislation. How are those people who were denied their proper and just contribtions under the schemes that were mentioned to be compensated? I come back to the point that the Income Tax Assessment Act has always intended that there should be a true and fair disclosure of all these matters. If there has not been a true and fair disclosure, the Commissioner has the right, on his own initiative, to re-assess the manner in which the income tax assessment is made out. But no, the Government has to come in with this heavy-handed piece of legislation to prove just one point-that is, that it is being hard on the tax cheats. It can find only $15m out of a possible overall tax parcel of $8 billion to $15 billion. I reject the legislation and support the amendment. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN(Mrs Darling) —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. Mr SPENDER(North Sydney)(10.11) —The case which has been put on behalf of the Opposition is that there is no justification at all for the Income Tax Assessment Amendment Bill (No. 2), which is before the Committee, which seeks to make the obligations under the proposed legislation retrospective to 1 July 1977 . It has been said knowingly and deceitfully that the previous Government was soft on tax avoiders. There is not a single piece of legislation that has been brought before this chamber by the present Government which in any ways seeks to attack tax avoidance generally. That is because everybody here knows that tax avoidance is a dead letter. This proposal is put to us for one reason and one reason only-to seek to put to the Australian people a perfectly groundless argument on the need to introduce legislation so as to buttress in some way an argument that the previous Government was soft on tax avoidance. There is not a single person on the Government bench who can point to any proposal to be introduced by this Government which will in any way improve on the work done by the previous Government. I refer to the attempts of the previous Treasurer to find out what the position was. This matter has already been placed before the Committee. On 7 September 1979 he asked the Commissioner of Taxation the following questions in relation to the kinds of proposals which are before the Committee and the so-called tax avoidance practices which the then Opposition stigmatised. First of all, he asked: What is the position? One could not ask for a clearer question than that. He went on to say: Are there any blatant practices against which action should be taken? One could not ask for a clearer question than that. The questions were referred to the Commissioner of Taxation and he replied in a letter dated 8 February 1980 . In that letter he hastened to add that the operation of the great majority of internal funds was beyond reproach. In relation to the possible courses of legislative activity, he proceeded to put possibilities which he then heavily qualified. He referred to a first step in relation to a definition of the minimum rights to be provided for employees by the fund. At the end of his consideration of that matter he said: However, very careful consideration would have to be given to the matter before immediate vesting in employees was made compulsory or before making it mandatory that resigning employees had to wait for some years before they were paid out. Then he referred to a second, and fairly obvious, safeguard. He outlined that safeguard. Mr Gayler —Read it. Mr SPENDER —Yes, I am reading from what was said by the Commissioner. He said: As regards employers who are conducting genuine funds, any regulation of their investment policies which excluded them from a major source of working capital could be expected to attract the strongest criticism. He went on to outline a third approach. After that he said: This approach also could attract heavy criticism from genuine employers and bona fide trustees who would not welcome the added measure of accountability placed on them. His final view on the matter was very clear. He said: Because, in revenue terms, we have many larger tax avoidance problems in other areas and also because of the need to make certain that no avoidable difficulties are created for genuine superannuation funds, I would recommend that you await the comments of the Task Force before undertaking any corrective measures to deal with actual or potential misuse of the superannuation concessions. I repeat: I would recommend that you await the comments of the Task Force- He did. Those comments came in shortly before the change of government. He accepted that advice. On 3 March 1983 the Commissioner of Taxation wrote to the Treasurer. He said: You have already given approval to the preparation of a Cabinet Submission for amendment to the income tax law to provide that moneys withdrawn from superannuation funds in the above circumstances are taxable in full in the hands of the recipients. There is also the loan-back problem which I hope has been contained by the latest administrative arrangements. There is nothing there to suggest that the Commissioner of Taxation was advocating or suggesting to the previous Government that action was required or needed. We now have a proposal before this Committee to set aside retrospectively arrangements going back to 1 July 1977, arrangements which the Commissioner of Taxation must have approved by the way in which he treated income tax returns put in by companies and organisations which would otherwise be affected by these proposals. The second reading speech of the Treasurer (Mr Keating), oozing crocodile tears , as one could expect, referred to a blatant and, indeed, a brazen abuse of the taxation law. What will this legislation recover? How much will it recover and over how many years? It is a negligible amount of money. The purpose is to seek to stigmatise the Opposition, then the Government, which put an end to tax avoidance in this country. It is an attempt to stigmatise the present Opposition as having been soft on tax avoidance. I suggest to that useful member of the Government, the honourable member for Leichhardt (Mr Gayler), whose voice is rarely heard here save for the occasional mindless interjection, who said 'Read it', that he reads what the Commissioner of Taxation said and sees what advice was given by him. His letter puts a perfectly plain case that there is no basis on which this legislation should be made retrospective to 1 July 1977 and that no one in the office of the Commissioner of Taxation thought that should be so. Otherwise, the advice of those gentlemen sitting quietly there to advise the then Government would have been quite different from the proposition which has now been advanced by the present Government. If one looks at the Bill one sees that proposed section 26AFA provides: Where- the benefit- (i) is not a benefit that the taxpayer has a right to receive from the fund- What does the word 'right' mean? Who defines a right? Has anybody here bothered to define the word 'right'? Has the Government in this legislation sought to do so? Have its advisers sought to do so? No, they have not. The clause goes on: or (ii) is an excessive benefit- In whose judgment has it to be an excessive benefit? Is it to be the judgment of the Commissioner? If a taxpayer receives a benefit which, in the judgment of the Commissioner he should not have received, the taxable consequences follow. This is a substitute of discretion for law. It gives to the Commissioner an even greater discretion over what is to be taxable and what is not to be taxable. It gives him a discretion to go back to 1 July 1977 and say: 'True it was that at that time I judged that those matters were perfectly proper. True it was that I assessed the matter on a certain basis. True it was that I believed and, indeed, I advised the taxpayer that everything was in order, but now I am going to change everything'. We are looking here at the consequences of retrospective law , and the consequences of retrospective law, be they in tax or in any other subject, are essentially to destroy the foundations of law. The foundations of law depend upon certainty and not upon whims. They depend upon what the law says and not upon what any individual bureaucrat determines are in the interests of his own department, in his own interests, or in the interests of the revenue. The truth of the matter is that there is no merit in this proposal at all. It is simply put up by this Government to find some kind of proposal to put before this chamber, somehow to justify a patently unjustifiable proposition. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN(Mrs Darling) —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. Mr JACOBI(Hawker)(10.21) —I have listened patiently this evening to the former Treasurer, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition (Mr Howard). I say to the former Treasurer that in his request to the Commissioner of Taxation he asked the wrong questions to get the right answers. He does not have a splendid record in the area of stamping out tax avoidance. The real answer is that it was a long time before he took any action at all. Indeed, it is fair to say that he was literally forced to take action. Mr Howard —Rubbish! Mr JACOBI —All right. This is what the former Treasurer said on 16 September 1982: Until such time as a court of this country demonstrates that a person involved in that- I assume that refers to bottom of the harbour schemes- could have been effectively prosecuted under the previous law, the opinions given by the Solicitor-General, whom I respect enormously as a lawyer, and the opinion given by Mr Costigan represent not declarations of the law, but opinions by them about the law. Mr Howard —That remains true. Mr JACOBI —It does not remain true. Let me come to the point. That Government failed to take any action. It sent nobody to trial; it did nothing about the matter. On 13 September, at a hearing before the Estimates Committee, Crown Solicitor O'Donovan said: Let me say categorically that, before Costigan's report was published, there was no instruction or request to my knowledge given in my office for a prosecution under the 1980 Act. I now come to the problem involved with bottom of the harbour schemes and dividend stripping arrangements. The former Treasurer knew about it. As early as 1978 I had put it on the Notice Paper. It was raised in the Australian Financial Review. I repeat what I said in the straw company debate: The former Treasurer had an obligation to ask O'Reilly whether these schemes were in fact in operation. Mr Howard —What about cherry picking? Mr JACOBI —Exactly. He should have asked what action was proposed to block them off. He never thought to ask that question at all. There was no prosecution under the existing law. There was no prosecution under section 231, the tax avoidance provision, and that has been on the books since 1915. Mr Spender —I raise a point of order, Madam Deputy Chairman. We are talking in Committee about an amendment moved by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. The honourable member for Hawker is speaking on an entirely different subject and he should be confined, as you sought to confine the Deputy Leader of the Opposition , to the issue before the Committee. Mr JACOBI —With all deference to the honourable member for North Sydney, I sat here listening to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition talking for 10 minutes about the same thing I am talking about. Mr Spender —Madam Deputy Chairman, you are required to rule. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN(Mrs Darling) —I am aware of that. There is no point of order. I will take the same line as I have throughout this Committee debate. Honourable members will be given some leeway as long as their comments relate to the issue. Mr Spender —Madam Deputy Chairman, you gave no leeway to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —Order! I have ruled. The honourable member will resume his seat. I ask the honourable member for Hawker to ensure that he keeps his points relevant. Mr JACOBI —The conflict before the Committee is one the present Opposition parties faced a long time ago. I refer to the conflict between retrospectivity, as applied in the British jurisdiction, which honourable members opposite have an utter reluctance to apply and enforcing the existing law. They failed to do that in the period they were in office between 1976 and the time they were removed from office. They did absolutely nothing in the area of prosecution. That is where the weakness lies in their argument and they know it. They knew about bottom of the harbour schemes. They knew they were in operation for a long time. Their attention was drawn to them, but they did absolutely nothing until amost the dying stages of the Parliament. I come to another point on which the Opposition has failed. At the start of my speech I said that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition had asked the Commissioner the wrong questions to get the right answers. Why is this legislation necessary? Mr Howard —It is your legislation; ask Hurford that. It is your legislation, not mine. Ask him why it is necessary. Mr JACOBI —I am coming to why it is necessary. The former Treasurer had an obligation under the provisions of the income tax legislation. They can talk all night but they will not over-talk me. In 1978 he had an obligation to this Parliament to act. There are no inhibitions or restrictions at law on this Parliament examining tax avoidance schemes. The former Treasurer failed to examine and to ask questions as to why the bottom of the harbour schemes were so prevalent. He knew they were in operation five years ago but did absolutely nothing. Mr Howard —What about the Crimes (Taxation Offences) Act? Mr JACOBI —The Crimes (Taxation Offences) Act? Perhaps the Deputy Leader of the Opposition can tell me why it is that Maher is now charged under section 86 of the Crimes (Taxation Offences) Act? That legislation has been on the statute book for 30 years. The former Treasurer did absolutely nothing. I refer to the report of Special Prosecutor Gyles. Mr Hodgman —What about Dawkins and the $1m? Mr JACOBI —What I am trying to say to the Committee is simply that we all had an obligation. I sincerely tried to bring this matter to the attention of the Government at that time. The failure of the previous Government was that it failed to enforce existing law. Maher and eight others are being charged under section 86 of the Crimes (Taxation Offences) Act because I persisted for four years. Now Gyles, the Special Prosecutor- Mr Howard —Madam Deputy Chairman, I raise a point of order. The remarks of the honourable member for Hawker are quite unrelated to the Committee debate on this measure. They are an interesting exchange on the issue of tax avoidance. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —Order! This debate is on both the amendment and the Bill and I have ruled that these comments are within the parameters of the amendment and the Bill. Mr Spender —I raise a point of order, Madam Deputy Chairman. Mr JACOBI —Are you trying to take up my last two minutes? Mr Spender —If you tell those mindless colleagues- The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —The honourable member for North Sydney will resume his seat . The House will come to order. We will not move on with this Committee until it does so. If honourable members find that they cannot restrain themselves enough in their positions to keep quiet during the debate, I ask them kindly to leave the chamber. Consideration interrupted. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —It now being 10.30 p.m., I shall report progress. Progress reported. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mrs Child) —Order! It being 10.30 p.m., in accordance with the sessional order, I propose the question: That the House do now adjourn. Mr Hurford-Madam Deputy Speaker, I require the question to be put forthwith without debate. Question resolved in the negative. Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER —Before the Committee resumes I draw the attention of honourable members to standing orders 75 and 76. If they need their memories refreshed-I particularly speak to the honourable member for Denison-I will be quite happy to read them. Mr Hodgman-I do know the Standing Orders, thank you. Consideration resumed. Mr HURFORD(Adelaide-Minister for Housing and Construction)(10.32) —I remind the Committee that I am speaking to an amendment moved by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the honourable member for Bennelong (Mr Howard). I have heard the speech that he has made tonight for the sixteenth time but I want to assure him again that all the noises that he makes on this subject, all the huffing and puffing, are not a substitute for sound argument. The amendment is a frivolous one. The schemes which he is seeking to protect between those dates of the amendment, the date in the Bill being 1 July 1977 for which he seeks to substitute 7 December 1983, would involve protecting people who have defrauded their fellow citizens in that time between 1 July 1977 and 7 December 1983. There is no justification for fraud. There is no qualification of fraud and I remind the Deputy Leader of the Opposition that neither he nor any other honourable member on his side should be caught defending tax cheats the way they have been caught tonight so defending tax cheats. Nobody who had defrauded his fellow citizens, as those who have indulged in this scheme have so defrauded their fellow citizens, should be defended in the way that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition is doing tonight. Why is it that in this amendment the Deputy Leader of the Opposition accepts that it is all right for this Bill to proceed if the date of 7 December 1983 is subsitituted for that of 1 July 1977? He must think that since then people have been defrauding the revenue and their fellow citizens. Therefore, this amendment is a frivolous one. I go further and say that anyone who indulged in this scheme should have known, and did know, about section 260 which prevailed until May 1981, and did know about Part IVA of the Income Tax Assessment Act which prevailed after May 1981. They should have known, would have known and would have received advice so that they did know very certainly that they were taking great risks when they indulged in these sorts of schemes. I am prepared to go further and say that with a High Court majority interested in protecting the interests of people against the wiles of tax evaders, and I do not believe that the Barwick court was such a court, they could and should have been caught under existing legislation- Mr Spender —I take a point of order, Madam Deputy Chairman. My point of order is that under Standing Orders imputations shall not be made against members of the judiciary. That is an imputation against present members of the judiciary, as the Minister must know, so he should withdraw it. Mr HURFORD —Talking to the point of order, my remarks were against a previous High Court, and I sustain what I said. Mr Howard —Speaking to the point of order, Madam Deputy Chairman, the honourable member for North Sydney drew the Chair's attention to the fact that an imputation on the so-called Barwick High Court is a reflection on some current members of the High Court of Australia in their judicial capacity. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —That is not a point of order. Mr HURFORD —That is not so. I talked about a majority. I have made my point and I move on now to say- The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —Order! I ask the Minister whether he would put the concerns of Opposition members at rest and just assure them- Mr Howard —With great respect- The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —Is this another point of order? Mr Howard —Yes it is. I take the point of order that the condition you attach to the request being made of the Minister is offensive to the Opposition. If the Opposition- The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —That is not a point of order; that is a point of view. Mr HURFORD —Out of respect for your authority, Madam Deputy Chairman, I withdraw . It should be mentioned now that the measure was first foreshadowed on 14 November 1983 so there is no justification at all for the date of 7 December 1983. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition must indeed have particular- Mr Donald Cameron —Are you cutting off the debate? Mr HURFORD —Yes, I am closing the debate. Opposition members interjecting- Mr HURFORD —I have just been informed that I am closing the debate. I am quite happy to close the debate because I believe that some honourable members want to have a few moments on the adjournment. I will do my best to ensure that their wishes are complied with. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN —Order! The House will come to order. I make the point from the chair that the Minister will not be actually closing the debate but is speaking to the amendment at this stage. Mr HURFORD —The Government is determined to get this Bill through tonight. I give warning of that. Any time that we take will come out of the time for the adjournment debate. The fact is that on 14 November 1983, by Press statement, the Treasurer (Mr Keating) gave the necessary notice of this Bill. There is no justification for the later date used by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. He really ought to be ashamed of himself that he had not done the necessary homework when introducing his amendment. In case there is any doubt about it, I wish to announce to the House that the Government does not accept the amendment proposed by the Opposition. I wish also to add a few words about the Government' s policy in relation to retrospectivity. This was outlined on 28 April 1983. What was then said was: . . . retrospective legislation will be employed to ensure that tax avoided under blatant tax avoidance schemes will be collected irrespective of when the scheme was entered into. These are blatant tax avoidance schemes and we are determined that we will not allow these defenders of tax cheats to prevent our collecting the funds that belong to the general taxpayers of this nation. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition asked me a fair question about why advice given to him was not then available to us. He alleged that that advice was that there should not be legislation in this area. Mr Hodgman —You have it the wrong way around. Mr HURFORD —I have not got it the wrong way round. The advice to him was that indeed there should not be legislation in this area. I have got it the right way round. I can tell him quite clearly that further information was available after he was quite properly defeated, and that further information has persuaded the Government that this is a good Bill. It is on the side of the general taxpayers of this nation as against defending tax cheats. These schemes are by any test blatant tax avoidance schemes. They contained elements of fraud against unsuspecting employees. These schemes are particularly distasteful, and this was graphically described by Mr Justice Wootten in the New South Wales case of Kelly v. Raymor, to which I know reference was made earlier in the second reading debate. The choice of 1 July 1977, while necessarily somewhat arbitrary, I do agree, is based essentially on advice that these schemes first became known to the Commissioner of Taxation about that time. The Government, in full light of the facts, determined that that was an appropriate retrospective date for the legislation to operate from, and it intends to press that before the Parliament. I am not going to allow this Opposition to go on defending tax cheats any longer in this Committee debate, so I now move: That the question be now put. The Committee divided. (The Deputy Chairman-Mrs E. E. Darling) Ayes . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Noes . . . . . . . . . . . 42 —— Majority . . . . . . . . . 24 —— Baldwin, P. J. Humphreys, B. C. (Teller)Beazley, K. C. Hurford, C. J.Beddall, D. P. Jacobi, R.Bilney, G. N. Jones, BarryBlanchard, C. A. Kelly, R. J.Blewett, N. Kent, L.Bowen, Lionel Keogh, L. J.Brown, John Kerin, J. C.Brown, Robert Klugman, R. E.Brumby, J. M. Lindsay, E. J.Campbell, G. McHugh, J.Charles, D. E. McLeay, LeoChild, J. Maher, M. J.Chynoweth, R. L. Mayer, H.Cohen, B. Mildren, J. B.Cross, M. D. Milton, P.Cunningham, B. T. (Teller) Morris, AllanDawkins, J. S. Morris, PeterDuffy, M. J. Morrison, W. L.Edwards, Ronald Mountford, J. G.Everingham, D. N. O'Neil, L. R. T.Fatin, W. F. Punch, G. F.Free, R. V. Reeves, J. E.Fry, K. L. Saunderson, J.Gayler, J. Scott, J. L.Gear, G. Staples, P. R.Gorman, R. N. J. Steedman, A. P.Griffiths, A. G. Tickner, R. E.Hand, G. L. Uren, T.Hayden, W. G. Wells, D. McM.Holding, A. C. West, S. J.Hollis, C. Willis, R.Howe, B. L. Young, M. J. Adermann, A. E. Howard, J. W.Aldred, K. J. Hunt, R. J. D.Andrew, J. N. Katter, R. C.Blunt, C. W. Lusher, S. A.Braithwaite, R. A. McArthur, F. S.Burr, M. A. McGauran, P. J.Cadman, A. G. MacKellar, M. J. R.Cameron, Donald McVeigh, D. T.Cameron, Ewen (Teller) Millar, P. C.Cameron, Ian Moore, J. C.Carlton, J. J. Newman, K. E.Coleman, W. P. Porter, J. R.Cowan, D. B. Robinson, IanDobie, J. D. M. Rocher, A. C.Drummond, P. H. Ruddock, P. M.Fife, W. C. Shipton, R. F.Goodluck, B. J. Sinclair, I. McC.Groom, R. J. Spender, J. M.Hall, Steele Tuckey, C. W.Hicks, N. J. (Teller) White, P. N. D.Hodgman, W. M. Wilson, I. B. C. Question so resolved in the affirmative. Original question put. That the amendment (Mr Howard's) be agreed to. The Committee divided. (The Deputy Chairman-Mrs E. E. Darling) Ayes . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Noes . . . . . . . . . . . 66 —— Majority . . . . . . . . . 24 —— Adermann, A. E. Howard, J. W.Aldred, K. J. Hunt, R. J. D.Andrew, J. N. Katter, R. C.Blunt, C. W. Lusher, S. A.Braithwaite, R. A. McArthur, F. S.Burr, M. A. McGauran, P. J.Cadman, A. G. MacKellar, M. J. R.Cameron, Donald McVeigh, D. T.Cameron, Ewen (Teller) Millar, P. C.Cameron, Ian Moore, J. C.Carlton, J. J. Newman, K. E.Coleman, W. P. Porter, J. R.Cowan, D. B. Robinson, IanDobie, J. D. M. Rocher, A. C.Drummond, P. H. Ruddock, P. M.Fife, W. C. Shipton, R. F.Goodluck, B. J. Sinclair, I. McC.Groom, R. J. Spender, J. M.Hall, Steele Tuckey, C. W.Hicks, N. J. (Teller) White, P. N. D.Hodgman, W. M. Wilson, I. B.C. Baldwin, P. J. Humphreys, B. C. (Teller)Beazley, K. C. Hurford, C. J.Beddall, D. P. Jacobi, R.Bilney, G. N. Jones, BarryBlanchard, C. A. Kelly, R. J.Blewett, N. Kent, L.Bowen, Lionel Keogh, L. J.Brown, John Kerin, J. C.Brown, Robert Klugman, R. E.Brumby, J. M. Lindsay, E. J.Campbell, G. McHugh, J.Charles, D. E. McLeay, LeoChild, J. Maher, M. J.Chynoweth, R. L. Mayer, H.Cohen, B. Mildren, J. B.Cross, M. D. Milton, P.Cunningham, B. T. (Teller) Morris, AllanDawkins, J. S. Morris, PeterDuffy, M. J. Morrison, W. L.Edwards, Ronald Mountford, J. G.Everingham, D. N. O'Neil, L. R. T.Fatin, W. F. Punch, G. F.Free, R. V. Reeves, J. E.Fry, K. L. Saunderson, J.Gayler, J. Scott, J. L.Gear, G. Staples, P. R.Gorman, R. N. J. Steedman, A. P.Griffiths, A. G. Tickner, R. E.Hand, G. L. Uren, T.Hayden, W. G. Wells, D. McM.Holding, A. C. West, S. J.Hollis, C. Willis, R.Howe, B. L. Young, M. J. Question so resolved in the negative. Bill agreed to. Bill reported without amendment; report adopted. Motion (by Mr Hurford)-by leave- proposed: That the Bill be now read a third time. Mr DONALD CAMERON(Moreton)(10.53) —Mr Speaker- Motion (by Mr Hurford) put: That the question be now put. The House divided. (Mr Speaker-Hon. Harry Jenkins) Ayes . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Noes . . . . . . . . . . . 40 —— Majority . . . . . . . . . 27 —— Baldwin, P. J. Humphreys, B. C. (Teller)Beazley, K. C. Hurford, C. J.Beddall, D. P. Jacobi, R.Bilney, G. N. Jones, BarryBlanchard, C. A. Kelly, R. J.Blewett, N. Kent, L.Bowen, Lionel Keogh, L. J.Brown, John Kerin, J. C.Brown, Robert Klugman, R. E.Brumby, J. M. Lindsay, E. J.Campbell, G. McHugh, J.Charles, D. E. McLeay, LeoChild, J. Maher, M. J.Chynoweth, R. L. Mayer, H.Cohen, B. Mildren, J. B.Cross, M. D. Milton, P.Cunningham, B. T. (Teller) Morris, AllanDarling, E. E. Morris, PeterDawkins, J. S. Morrison, W. L.Duffy, M. J. Mountford, J. G.Edwards, Ronald O'Neil, L. R. T.Everingham, D. N. Punch, G. F.Fatin, W. F. Reeves, J. E.Free, R. V. Saunderson, J.Fry, K. L. Scott, J. L.Gayler, J. Staples, P. R.Gear, G. Steedman, A. P.Gorman, R. N. J. Tickner, R. E.Griffiths, A. G. Uren, T.Hand, G. L. Wells, D. McM.Hayden, W. G. West, S. J.Holding, A. C. Willis, R.Hollis, C. Young, M. J.Howe, B. L. Adermann, A. E. Hodgman, W. M.Aldred, K. J. Howard, J. W.Andrew, J. N. Hunt, R. J. D.Blunt, C. W. Lusher, S. A.Braithwaite, R. A. McArthur, F. S.Burr, M. A. McGauran, P. J.Cadman, A. G. MacKellar, M. J. R.Cameron, Donald Millar, P. C.Cameron, Ewen (Teller) Moore, J. C.Cameron, Ian Newman, K. E.Carlton, J. J. Porter, J. R.Coleman, W. P. Robinson, IanCowan, D. B. Rocher, A. C.Dobie, J. D. M. Ruddock, P. M.Drummond, P. H. Shipton, R. F.Fife, W. C. Sinclair, I. McC.Goodluck, B. J. Spender, J. M.Groom, R. J. Tuckey, C. W.Hall, Steele White, P. N. D.Hicks, N. J. (Teller) Wilson, I. B. C. Question resolved in the affirmative. Original question put: That the Bill be now read a third time. The House divided. (Mr Speaker-Hon. Harry Jenkins) Ayes . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Noes . . . . . . . . . . . 40 —— Majority . . . . . . . . . 27 —— Baldwin, P. J. Humphreys, B. C. (Teller)Beazley, K. C. Hurford, C. J.Beddall, D. P. Jacobi, R.Bilney, G. N. Jones, BarryBlanchard, C. A. Kelly, R. J.Blewett, N. Kent, L.Bowen, Lionel Keogh, L. J.Brown, John Kerin, J. C.Brown, Robert Klugman, R. E.Brumby, J. M. Lindsay, E. J.Campbell, G. McHugh, J.Charles, D. E. McLeay, LeoChild, J. Maher, M. J.Chynoweth, R. L. Mayer, H.Cohen, B. Mildren, J. B.Cross, M. D. Milton, P.Cunningham, B. T. (Teller) Morris, AllanDarling, E. E. Morris, PeterDawkins, J. S. Morrison, W. L.Duffy, M. J. Mountford, J. G.Edwards, Ronald O'Neil, L. R. T.Everingham, D. N. Punch, G. F.Fatin, W. F. Reeves, J. E.Free, R. V. Saunderson, J.Fry, K. L. Scott, J. L.Gayler, J. Staples, P. R.Gear, G. Steedman, A. P.Gorman, R. N. J. Tickner, R. E.Griffiths, A. G. Uren, T.Hand, G. L. Wells, D. McM.Hayden, W. G. West, S. J.Holding, A. C. Willis, R.Hollis, C. Young, M. J.Howe, B. L. Adermann, A. E. Hodgman, W. M.Aldred, K. J. Howard, J. W.Andrew, J. N. Hunt, R. J. D.Blunt, C. W. Lusher, S. A.Braithwaite, R. A. McArthur, F. S.Burr, M. A. McGauran, P. J.Cadman, A. G. MacKellar, M. J. R.Cameron, Donald Millar, P. C.Cameron, Ewen (Teller) Moore, J. C.Cameron, Ian Newman, K. E.Carlton, J. J. Porter, J. R.Coleman, W. P. Robinson, IanCowan, D. B. Rocher, A. C.Dobie, J. D. M. Ruddock, P. M.Drummond, P. H. Shipton, R. F.Fife, W. C. Sinclair, I. McC.Goodluck, B. J. Spender, J. M.Groom, R. J. Tuckey, C. W.Hall, Steele White, P. N. D.Hicks, N. J. (Teller) Wilson, I. B. C. Question so resolved in the affirmative. Bill read a third time. House adjourned at 11.09 p.m. The following notices were given: Mr Scholes to present a Bill for an Act to amend certain legislation concerning the Defence Force and for other purposes. Mr Dawkins to present a Bill for an Act to amend the Audit Act 1901. Mr Dawkins to present a Bill for an Act to repeal the Curriculum Development Centre Act 1975, to amend the Commonwealth Schools Commission Act 1973 to provide for the establishment of a Curriculum Development Council and for related purposes. Mr Hurford to present a Bill for an Act to amend the States (Tax Sharing and Health Grants) Act 1981. Mr Hurford to present a Bill for an Act to amend the Loan (Income Equalization Deposits) Act 1976 and for related purposes. Mr Hurford to present a Bill for an Act to amend the Commonwealth Banks Act 1959 and for related purposes. Mr Hurford to move- That, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, the following proposed work be referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works for consideration and report: Construction of a submarine warfare systems centre, HMAS Watson, South Head, N.S.W. Mr John Brown to present a Bill for an Act to amend the Liquefied Petroleum Gas (Grants) Act 1980. Mr Uren to present a Bill for an Act to amend the Local Government (Personal Income Tax Sharing) Act 1976. Mr Uren to move- That, in accordance with Section 5 of the Parliament Act 1974, the House approves the following proposals contained in the report of the Joint Standing Committee on the New Parliament House presented to the House on 1 May 1984, namely: the construction of two standard bus shelters and one additional street light in King George Terrace, and the relocation of the two police guard boxes in Queen Victoria Terrace. The following papers were deemed to have been presented on 1 May 1984: Australian Meat and Live-stock Corporation Act-Order-1984-M20/84-Prohibition on Export of Edible Offals to Taiwan. Defence Act-Determinations-1984- No. 8-Higher Duties Allowance, Recreation Leave, Recreation Leave Bonus and Long Service Leave. No. 10-Special Allowance for Medical Officers and Dental Officers. No. 11-Airconditioning Allowance. No. 12-In Port Allowance and Settling In and Settling Out Allowance. No. 13-Payment of Financial Entitlements Consequent upon the Death of a Member or a Former Member. No. 14-In Port Allowance and Settling In and Settling Out Allowance. Defence Amendment Act-Interim Determinations-Statutory Rules-1984-Nos. 58, 59, 60, 61, 62. Health Insurance Act- Guidelines formulated under section 17, dated 29 February 1984. Statement of particulars of disqualification pursuant to section 19C in respect of-Dr Seng James Yap, dated 30 March 1984. Statements of particulars of Ministerial determinations made pursuant to section 106AA relating to- Dr Michael Jacob Bar-Mordecai, dated 21 March 1984. Dr Dimitri James Batalin, dated 21 March 1984. Dr James Murdock Duncan, dated 21 March 1984. Dr Elaine Beverley Katte, dated 21 March 1984. Dr Viviane Sarah Pleshivtseff, dated 21 March 1984. Dr Alexander Robinson Gallacher Watson, dated 21 March 1984. Lands Acquisition Act- Lands acquired for-Telecommunication services- Belvedere, NSW. Genoe, NSW. Regentville, NSW. Rooty Hill, NSW. Springvale, NSW. Willotia, NSW. Yetman, NSW. Statements (5) of lands acquired by agreement authorised under sub-section 7 (1 ). Proclamation by His Excellency the Governor-General fixing the date on which the following Act shall come into operation-Wildlife Protection (Regulation of Exports and Imports) Act 1982-1 May 1984. Public Service Act-Appointments- Department- Employment and Industrial Relations-Leon, L. E. Social Security-Tilmouth, W. R. Remuneration Tribunals Act-Remuneration Tribunal-Determinations- 1984/2-Holders of public office on the Promotions Appeal Board, Commonwealth Teaching Service. 1984/3-Holders of public offices on the Electoral Commission and the Livestock and Meat Industry Policy Council. 1984/4-Director of Public Prosecutions and holders of public offices on other bodies. Reserve Bank Act-Regulations-Statutory Rules 1984, No. 57. Seat of Government (Administration) Act-Ordinances-1984- No. 8-Juries (Amendment). No. 9-Court of Petty Sessions (Amendment). No. 10-Court of Petty Sessions (Amendment) (No. 2). No. 11-Co-operative Societies (Amendment). States Grants (Petroleum Products) Act-Amendment of the schedules to the subsidy schemes in relation to the states of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania, dated 31 March 1984 . Telecommunications Act-Australian Telecommunications Commission-By-laws- Telecommunications (Charging Zones and Charging Districts)-Amendment No. 43. Telecommunications (Community Calls)-Amendments Nos. 34 and 35. Wildlife Protection (Regulation of Exports and Imports) Act- Declaration under sub-section 9 (1) amending Schedules 1, 2, 4 and 6 of the Act , dated 9 April 1984. Regulations-Statutory Rules 1984, No. 56.