Wednesday, 2 November 1988 Mr ACTING SPEAKER (Mr Leo McLeay) took the chair at 10 a.m., and read prayers. Debate resumed from 1 September, on motion by Mr Keating: That the Bill be now read a second time. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —I understand that it is the wish of the House to debate this order of the day concurrently with order of the day No. 2. That being the case, the Chair will allow that course of action. Mr PEACOCK(Kooyong)(10.01) —Today we are debating the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill 1988. The Opposition will not be opposing the Bill. However, this Bill and the related privacy legislation are not the same Bills that the Government originally drafted. We are supporting what is now, in effect, a voluntary tax file number system which is swathed in privacy safeguards. What the Government originally drafted was totally inadequate. However, after consultation, the Opposition has forced the Government to adopt our recommendations on the two Bills. What we have convinced the Government to accept is that the tax file number system has to be voluntary. It cannot be some sort of licence to exist. In June this year the honourable member for O'Connor (Mr Tuckey), Senator Stone and I met with the Commissioner of Taxation on the Government's tax file number proposals. We stated the Opposition's unequivocal rejection of the Government's originally stated intention of freezing bank accounts and the threatened cessation of the purchase and sale of shares where the tax file number was not quoted. The Government accepted our arguments and opted instead for the application of a withholding tax as an alternative to its then draconian proposals. This alternative set up the mechanism whereby we could and did advocate and achieve a situation in which it will not be compulsory to quote the tax file number as it applies to dividends, interest and terms of employment. Our further amendments, accepted by the Treasurer (Mr Keating) on Monday, put beyond doubt that the scheme is completely voluntary, while at the same time retaining the essence of a withholding tax in those circumstances where the taxpayer chooses not to quote his or her tax file number. We have excised from the Bill any obligation implied or expressed on the part of the taxpayer to quote the tax file number and on financial institutions or employers to require the tax file number. We have also gained agreement from the Government to rewrite substantially its original draft privacy legislation. That began with a letter from the Opposition to the Minister for Justice (Senator Tate) detailing 10 points of obvious inadequacy in the privacy legislation. A number of lengthy meetings between the honourable member for Menzies (Mr N.A. Brown), in his position as shadow Attorney-General, and Senator Tate, in his capacity as Acting Attorney-General, resulted in the Government acceding to our requests. The honourable member for Menzies will want to give a fuller description of the concessions made on privacy. But I just want to note some key points. First, the original Privacy Bill provided that the Privacy Commissioner, to be set up under that Bill, `may' issue guidelines on the collection, storage, use and security of tax file number information. `May' is obviously not the same as `shall'. Under that provision the Privacy Commissioner may or may not have issued guidelines. If he did not, there would have been virtually no privacy safeguards at all. This was a critical defect of the Bill. So far as the tax file number was concerned, it did not ensure privacy at all. So we sought and subsequently obtained an effective change from `may' to `shall'. The Bill as introduced contains specified interim guidelines. They will have effect until the Privacy Commissioner issues his own guidelines. Those guidelines specifically restrict the use of the tax file number and stipulate that the number system is not to be used, by whatever means, as a national identification system. Additionally, the Bill ensures that the tax file number recipients shall not collect, record, use or disclose tax file number information in an unauthorised manner and, in particular, shall not act in an unauthorised manner to use tax file number information as a means of matching personal information about a taxpayer. Furthermore, the original Bill as proffered by the Government enabled the Privacy Commissioner to enter premises and inspect documents while pursuing a claim. However, that could be done only by arrangement with the government agency or tax file number recipient concerned. That virtually meant that the Commissioner would have to get the agency's consent before inspection. We in the Opposition were adamant that it was absolutely unacceptable that a government agency could avoid inspection. We sought an amendment so that the Privacy Commissioner could have instant access to government agencies without an arrangement being made in advance. However, in the case of the private sector, the occupier would need to consent to the visit or a warrant would have to be obtained from a magistrate. The Government again, I am pleased to say, agreed to this. Another key point is that originally the tax file number legislation was to become effective well before the privacy legislation. Some safeguard! The Government brought in a tax file number Bill and said that it was going to bring in a privacy Bill. The privacy legislation at that time was inadequate in relation to the tax file number but, irrespective of that, the Government was going to put the tax file number legislation into operation before the Privacy Bill was operating. That was yet another key point that we took up with the Government. The tax file numbers Bill was to come into operation upon receiving royal assent; that is, shortly after it was passed by the Parliament. However, the Privacy Bill was to come into operation only on proclamation, which could have been much later. As I have just indicated, it left a gap in that the obligations under the tax file numbers Bill would have been in force without the protection of the Privacy Bill. Mr N.A. Brown —What a cheek. Mr PEACOCK —It was a cheek. It was totally unacceptable that the tax file numbers Bill should come into operation either at the same time as or after the Privacy Bill commenced operation. We indicated that unless the tax file numbers Bill came into operation at the same time as or after the Privacy Bill commenced operation it was unacceptable to us. It also happened to be a crucial recommendation of the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. Again, I am pleased to say, the Government accepted that these amendments were necessary. The Opposition has sought and won substantial concessions from the Government. I make it perfectly clear that there would be no support for the tax file numbers legislation from this side had we not obtained agreement to all these measures, ending up in what, as I said before, is essentially a voluntary system. The Government's amended legislation has not quite gone from woeful to wonderful but there has certainly been a vast improvement. Mr Hunt —Thanks to you and Neil. Mr PEACOCK —Yes. My colleague did most of the work but I was pleased to sit down with the Treasurer and seek to establish in law that the tax file number system was to be essentially a voluntary system. As the honourable member for Menzies would thank Senator Tate for listening with care and interest, I would thank the Treasurer-this is a cherished and rare moment-for his patience in listening to my views, for agreeing that they were plausible and for changing the nature of the legislation. Mr Humphreys —He always speaks very highly of you too, Andrew. Mr PEACOCK —The Minister for Veterans' Affairs could have fooled me. We consider that we have successfully forestalled the tax file number being turned surreptitiously, through the back door, into an ID card. Our views on an ID card are well known. The sloppiness and ill-thought through elements of the original legislation presented to this Parliament could have allowed that to occur. We are satisfied that with the amendments that have been accepted by the Government that will not happen. Very significant amendments would have to be made in future to the legislation by future Acts of Parliament if it were to become a national identification system. People can rest easy that this element of incrementalism-incremental creep into other areas-will not occur because of the constraints that we have written into the legislation. There is no way that on our side of politics we will accept the reintroduction, by any method at all, of the Government's despised and discredited ID card legislation. When we were coming to our decision we sought to have regard to any viable alternatives that were around. Again, those alternatives were to be subject to what I could term our three-point check list-our three-point test-that any proposals would need to combat tax fraud successfully; they would need to be cost effective; and they must not jeopardise Australians' civil liberties. No other alternative became obvious to us. Certainly, upgraded computer facilities, as suggested by some people and based on the example of the British experience, did not provide hard evidence that this would effectively combat tax fraud to anywhere near the same extent as the tax file number system. In addition, a significant difference between Britain and the current Australian situation is that the British automatically withhold tax on interest income. Therefore, the United Kingdom does not have the equivalent problem to ours in Australia-it has been identified by the Government as a problem, and we concur-where two-thirds of the money to be recovered by the tax file number is accounted for by evaded interest income. As it turns out, with all the amendments that we have put in and with a voluntary system, we are satisfied that the legislation now to be so significantly amended meets the Opposition's three-part test mentioned before-namely, first, that it would need to combat tax fraud successfully; second, that it would need to be cost effective and, third, that it must not jeopardise our people's civil liberties. But what of the broader picture? The tax file number is, in reality, just another manifestation of the high levels of taxation in this country. Mr Kerr —Nonsense. Mr PEACOCK —Tax bracket creep has ripped into the living standards of average Australians. By saying `nonsense' the honourable member indicates to me that he is on a par with the current Treasurer, who will not spend time with the people of this nation. One has only to talk to anyone in the Australian community who is struggling to cope with the depressed living standards under this Government to understand the veracity of what I am saying. Ipso facto the honourable member must be detached from the mainstream of life in this country if he does not appreciate just how difficult it is today for people to cope not only with high interest rates and high rates of inflation but also with high rates of income tax. Tax bracket creep-edging up into higher and higher brackets-has unquestionably ripped into the living standards of the overwhelming majority of average Australians. Mr Saunderson —It has nothing to do with tax avoidance. Mr PEACOCK —One of the greatest motivations to avoid taxation, you fool, is to have high rates of tax. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The Deputy Leader of the Opposition will withdraw that remark. Mr PEACOCK —It was a very minor provocation, but of course I will withdraw it. In a roundabout way I make the point that it is estimated that between 1985-86 and July 1989, when the much awaited tax cuts are delivered, this Labor Government will have wrenched $10 billion-I will repeat that figure; it is not $10m but $10 billion-out of the pockets of Australian taxpayers through bracket creep. That is $10 billion of taxation by stealth. Mr Hunt —Theft. Mr PEACOCK —Like a thief in the night. The Government seems to spend too much time thinking of methods for collecting those little bits of revenue that it feels it is constantly missing rather than concentrating on cutting the tax burden. We are still waiting in vain for the promised tax cuts. There has been no relief from taxation in the period that this Government has been in power. The fiddles that have been going on have been termed `tax reforms' but they are not a form of tax relief. If, after this long period of gestation, the tax cuts finally arrive next year, the Government will need to give genuine relief. We are still waiting in vain for the promised tax cuts. I suspect that the Government may well have loved it had we opposed the tax file number legislation. It would have sought-I emphasise the word `sought'-to use our opposition, wrongly, as an excuse for the paucity of the tax cuts that the people are now promised next year. That excuse will not be there. We will watch the Treasurer like a hawk, so to speak, to ensure that the privacy legislation on the tax file number provides adequate safeguards. In the same way we will be on his back at every opportunity in this Parliament until July next year, and thereafter, to ensure that those Australians who are carrying the burden of this Government's economic policies through their depressed living standards get their tax cuts. They are tax cuts that are not only needed for those individuals but also, as I have said time and again in this Parliament, needed in a macro-economic sense. We would not use the surplus to shovel back some money to people. We would cut government expenditure as the primary method of providing those tax cuts, therefore reducing public demand, which would offset any increase in private demand for the increased disposable income that Australians would have. By doing that we would be not only doing the right thing for the economy but also restoring incentive to Australians to invest more and to work. These are two significant elements that have been rapidly vanishing from the Australian community. The incentive has gone. People work that extra period, move into a higher tax bracket and pay half their extra money to the Taxation Commissioner. The Treasurer's recent pronouncement that government expenditure had been pared back enough and that there remain no slack in the Budget for expenditure reduction was patently ludicrous. On the contrary, there always seems to be enough for the Government to shovel out here and there. We had the Government's extraordinary performance of paying for the Governor-General designate's trip. The Prime Minister said he needed a little break. So everyone chipped in and sent Bill away. He had a good break. Honourable members should not tell me that that money did not come from the taxpayers. In the last couple of days we have been discussing the waste of the Aboriginal Development Commission and its excesses. We have not even started to develop that discussion yet. That is another example of where our Waste Watch Committee has identified enormous areas of waste. It is just not conceivable that the Community Services and Health Department, the Employment, Education and Training Department and the Social Security Department are models of bureaucratic efficiency. We know that they are not. Do not come in here and tell us that there is no place where we can start cutting back, because we have policies and programs that identify areas. Beyond that, there is the element of waste, which those opposite deny even exists. If we had opposed this legislation, it may well have been that the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) and the Treasurer would have sought to label us as `friends of the tax cheats' and lashed out at us about being in cahoots with big business! However, rather than touching the rich-this is a fairly important point-the tax file number will be focusing on those Australians already suffering under a crippling tax burden. We agree that tax evasion, particularly through interest earned, has to be dealt with. However, I ask honourable members opposite to bear in mind that they are imposing an additional burden, although it can be exercised voluntarily, on the great majority of Australians, who are already carrying a heavy tax burden. Not only will we keep an eye on the way this legislation goes and make whatever changes will be necessary when we are in government, but every time I have to talk on any element of legislation that touches on taxation I will remind the Government of what it is doing to average Australians today-whether it be in regard to the purchase of their homes, their disposable incomes or the gross distortion of their living standards that the Government has dumped on them. Mr Hunt —While the corporate sector and the higher income people have got a cut. Mr PEACOCK —There is no doubt that in fact some of those people are doing very well. When those opposite talk about tax evasion and march in here and say, `We will deal with this and that element of tax evasion', it is always in regard to the little people. What did the Government do in the May economic statement? The Treasurer came in here and said, `We have identified another area of tax evasion. We are going to get on to it and close it'. He was referring to all those fellows operating tax havens overseas-actually, all the Government's mates. The Treasurer did not name them, but people around the world know where these tax havens are. The Treasurer said, `We are going to close them on 1 July 1989'. Have we ever in the history of this nation known a Treasurer to come in here, identify an area of tax evasion, and give people 15 months to rearrange their affairs and clean it up? Cut it out! Have another look at the contrast between what they do for a few of their mates and what they do not do for the great majority of Australians, who do not get a break like that. It is a stark, staring contrast. If honourable members opposite want to sit in here, interject and yap away at me about how this will get the tax cheats, they should recognise that they are dumping on people an obligation that so frequently they will seek not to dump on those who are their mates. Once again, I will draw the contrast. Because I am making these very real points in regard to taxation, those opposite are overlooking the reality that we are supporting the legislation because we want to see tax cheats effectively dealt with. However, I say to honourable members opposite that they should look at what they are doing in government and treat people on the same basis-not on the basis of a deal for those who give donations or services to their party. Sadly, people are evading tax because they have lost respect for a government that shows them no respect in return. Ironically, it is this Government that has seen the incomes of its rich mates grow while, as I said, the disposable income of the average family has fallen. By July next year a person on average weekly earnings with a spouse and two dependent children will require a tax cut of $56 a week to get him or her back to the living standards they enjoyed in March 1983, when the Keating-Hawke Government came to power. This tired Government is on the nose. The Treasurer may think that he has had a good year, but the fact is that through his own egomania he has damaged the Government to its roots. If more taxes is reform, in the words of the Treasurer, we are reforming ourselves right down the Argentinean road. As for the Treasurer's inflated rhetoric about Australia today, there have in fact been no economic miracles, which is what was pronounced; Australia is not, as is alleged by the Government, the envy of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development; and we are hardly used as a shining beacon to illustrate economic brilliance. Oh, I give him his due: in one extraordinary award a magazine gave him the title of the world's best Treasurer. Within 12 months he and someone from some north African state were considered the last two-for the world's worst. I do not know who these guys are, whether they are schizophrenic or human hiccups, but that is the sort of pendulum that has occurred in this country on those people. They were reasonably confident at the outset of this Government. There was a new government coming in, people were wishing it well and everyone was fairly confident, but look and see it now! This nation compares tragically with so many other countries in our own region, countries which when I came into this Parliament we used to give aid programs to. We used to give aid or development assistance to countries in our region which now look like having a better standard of living than us. It takes a touch of exquisite genius to do that in a generation. It has accelerated and worsened through both periods of a Labor government. The tragedy is, as I touched on before, that the incentive to save and to invest and for productivity to improve is absolutely crucial for Australia's future. Vague promises oft restated about tax cuts next year do not solve the problem. We cannot go on, as the Prime Minister has been doing, calling people in and setting up committees to try to help the Government. Does the Government not know what Australia requires? Does it not have a vision? Does it not feel what has to be done, quite apart from the intellectual pursuit of it all? The Government has a committee and sets down an agenda: How do we fix what we have created? It is an appalling reflection on a government that a Prime Minister has to produce a few committees to try to work out how he gets out of the mess that his own Government has created. At root there is the need for restoring incentive, for cutting taxes and for getting out of the rut of trying simply time and again to raise more taxes. Genuine tax cuts financed by cutting government expenditure is the only way to revive the growth of living standards in our country. Genuine tax relief is needed now and it is only the Opposition that is prepared to advocate it. Returning to the final element, the purpose of the legislation, which we are supporting as a consequence of the amendments that the Government has accepted, is to reduce, as I said, tax evasion by improving the Tax Office's income tax matching system. All social security beneficiaries-apart from the unemployed and those on sickness benefits-and most children will be exempt. Even for people who are registered there will be numerous financial transactions and accounts in respect of which the tax file number quotation will not be needed. For example, it will not be needed for: loan accounts of all descriptions, including mortgages, credit cards and leases; non-interest bearing cheque accounts; and existing interest bearing accounts with banks, building societies and credit unions, where the interest paid or credited each year remains below $120. Of course, it is understood that about 70 per cent of accounts with building societies and credit unions would fall below this level. It will not apply to investments subject to tax file number quotation requirements where the person is prepared to accept deduction of tax at the maximum marginal rate at the time income is paid, and to a range of investments, such as real estate and insurance bonds. Therefore any attempt to use the tax file number as the basis for collating information about a person's financial position-for example, by a credit reference bureau-would be faced with enormous gaps. In short, I am not boasting that the Opposition is supporting the legislation, but it is thanks to the Opposition that this legislation does not contain an obligation, implied or expressed, on the part of the taxpayer to quote his or her tax file number or on the part of financial institutions or employers to require the tax file number. It is hardly the best piece of legislation to be debated in this Parliament, but it is an immense improvement on the Government's earlier Bill and, together with the privacy legislation, should not now be a threat to our civil liberties-again, thanks to the efforts of the Opposition. If the Government would listen to us on the need for tax cuts and act as readily as it did on our suggestions for amendments to this legislation, it might not be in the dire political trouble that it is in today. Mr WRIGHT(Capricornia)(10.31) —Despite many of the comments made by the honourable member for Kooyong (Mr Peacock), I still welcome the bipartisan approach that has finally been taken by the Opposition towards this legislation. Having served in opposition in another House, I believe it is right and proper that any Opposition under the Westminster system have a special responsibility to seek the finetuning of any legislative measures, especially those measures that would result in some removal of or threat to privacy or any attack on civil liberties, which any type of numbering system must be seen to be. It needs to be stated for the record that this has been the attitude of Government members. We have worked long and hard, we have spent many hours, particularly in the legal administrative committee, working through the provisions of the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill. Mr Kerr —What an excellent chairman, too. Mr WRIGHT —We have many good members who have put a lot of effort into this piece of legislation. This effort was necessary because of the known public concern and the perception in the public arena about any move by government to introduce an upgrading of a numbering system which might challenge a citizen's civil liberties or rights to privacy. It is regrettable-when this is known, when there has been a bipartisan approach and cooperation and when the Minister for Justice, Senator Tate, as Acting Attorney-General, has been willing to sit down with the shadow Attorney-General, the honourable member for Menzies (Mr N.A. Brown), and work with all members of this Parliament to try to get it right-that we now have the honourable member for Kooyong getting up and making such statements as he did. It is an important measure. Time will demonstrate its effectiveness. It has to be recognised that all honourable members, irrespective of their political persuasion, have been concerned about the thrust of the legislation. As I said, we have laboured long and hard to get it right. We did not want to go through the unfortunate experience of the Australia Card again. Regrettably, it was misrepresented. That is why we argued long and hard to ensure that the privacy legislation which would underpin the tax file legislation was right. Government members raised many concerns. I give special mention to the honourable member for Denison (Mr Kerr) for the hours he spent working through the legislation. I do that because he made a marvellous contribution. Many of the measures now finally brought forward by way of amendment were first signalled by the honourable member for Denison. Our difficulty was that we worked within a very tight time frame. It was the Government's desire to have this in place by 1 November. When we had those inhibitions placed upon us, and when we had those difficulties before us, we had to try to move down the fast track. But the effort was made and the cooperation was given. I was pleased that it was forthcoming from the shadow Attorney as well. This measure was never meant to be a national identification system. I take exception to the honourable member for Kooyong implying that that was probably the original intention. It was never meant to be that way. It was always meant to address the civil liberties and privacy issues. At all times, at every step we took, we argued through those issues. My personal view is that the Opposition has been looking for an escape route. It has looked long and hard to find some way out of having to support this measure. It has tried to find some way to go public and say that it was opposing it. Mr Kerr —It had some good members but-- Mr WRIGHT —It had some good members. I give credit to the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Howard) because he gave the original support-not that this locked his Party in, but he set the parameters of debate; he set the foundation for that support. I am pleased that ultimately the Opposition came to this House with agreement. But for the honourable member for Kooyong to talk about how this Government has had this negative impact on the citizenry of this country is nonsense. Go back and look at the measures that have been taken and the changes in the taxation system. After all, it was the Opposition when in government under Fraser that had a reputation that it has tried to live down, a reputation as the government which supported the bottom of the harbour schemes and the family trusts used by every doctor. Doctors earning $50,000 split the income to give a child of two years of age an income of $25,000 so that the doctors could avoid paying tax. It was the Liberals and Nationals that had that type of legislation in place; it was the Liberals and Nationals that promoted corporate tax trickery; and it was the Liberals and Nationals that allowed billions of dollars to be lost to honest Australians because of the way the system worked under them. It has been this Government, the Hawke Labor Government, that has moved to address these problems, first by bringing fairness and equity into the tax system, by bringing the taxation rate from 60c in the dollar down to 49c in the dollar, from 48c to 40c, from 35c to 30c and from 30c to 24c and raising the tax free threshold to $5,100, and at the same time by putting in place measures that were going to help the family. What did the Opposition, when in government, do to help the families with family supplement? A family today earning $17,000, with two children, one aged 15 and one aged nine or 10, can get $50 a week tax free. If it is paying rent, it can get up to $30 as a rent supplement. Let us see what has happened because of those tax changes. I sat in a meeting this morning and worked out the figures. A person on $300 a week at this moment is $600 a year better off under the tax system. Between 1982 and 1988 he has saved $12 a week because of the changes in the tax system. Add that to the family supplement, the rental assistance and the tax advantages and honourable members will see that we have added to those low income families something like $90 a week in purchasing power, and it is tax free. The honourable member for Kooyong has the audacity to say those things. I suggest he has really been caught. I do not think he wants to be seen as a bedfellow of the tax rorters, as his previous Government was. But I do think he has been caught in the predicament of really wanting to play politics by saying what the Opposition has now done. I recognise the contribution made by a number of members of the Opposition as they have talked through the guidelines with the Privacy Commissioner, but they need to know that this had already been signalled by Government members. I am pleased we have come to some agreement. But as for them saying that we have to change the rule that the Privacy Commissioner only `may' bring down guidelines, if they had really talked that matter through, they would have found out that the reason why the word `may' was used and not the word `shall' is that the guidelines brought down by the Privacy Commissioner really work for the smaller issues, to help the small business person in the areas of dealing with the tax file number, securing it and posting it. The real guidelines are as set down in the 11 principles that apply not only to the tax file number but across the board in privacy in this nation. I would have thought the Opposition would have understood that. But still, we have gained something by it, because it was again the honourable member for Denison, on the Government side, who argued for some interim guidelines. As we have considered these proposals I believe that the legislation will be better for them because they do set down some interim rules. It might have been better, as someone said and the Treasurer (Mr Keating) originally wanted, to let the powers lie with the Commissioner. But once this legislation becomes an Act let the Commissioner then go to the interest groups, to business and to the Australian privacy groups and ask, `What should the guidelines be?', because those guidelines were only to embellish those already in place under the privacy legislation. The case for the tax file number legislation, despite its worth, is going to have to be stated over and over again, because already there are groups in the community who are trying to attack it, to distort it and to confuse people. I went on a radio program in Western Australia only last week and the person representing, unfortunately I believe, the Liberal Party there tried to make out that this was the Australia Card revisited. That is total nonsense. I was pleased with the final comments made by the honourable member for Kooyong when he talked about those people who shall be exempted. The fact is that Australia has had a tax file number system since 1936. It is not something new. The point is that the previous system was inadequate, and we needed an upgraded tax file number system to allow the Tax Office to improve the effectiveness of its matching of the moneys earned by employees with the declarations made as to money earned. It is a matching between the declared income and the true income earned. This has not always been possible because the Tax Office has had to rely on the names and addresses of the taxpayers. It depends on what they put in their returns. I know you, Mr Deputy Speaker, with your accountancy background, would appreciate the problems that can occur because of people's bad writing and misspelling, because of names which are very similar, and because of people having bank accounts in only their middle name. There is also the problem of different addresses and changes of addresses. It is no wonder there has been a problem and that in Australia we have been able to match up properly something like only 30 per cent of income earned with income declared. That is because of the fact that we have had only the name link and the address link and there have been problems with incorrect spelling, different addresses and false names and addresses-and that has so often been the case. It has not been only errors and discrepancies; it has been avoidance. This measure will overcome that. It will maximise the opportunity for the Tax Office, on behalf of the people of Australia, to get the tax in. If that happens, we are talking about some $2,000m over a 10-year period-a massive amount of money. It must bring down the tax burden on all Australians. It will be simple and it will be effective, because all the Tax Office will have to do is to match the tax file number assigned to the taxpayer with the tax file number supplied by the institution reporting the income, be it the employer, the banking institution or whatever. There is proof of performance on this matter, because we have seen such a tax file number system operating in the United States of America and there is a 92 per cent match and assessment rate in that country. Our system will not be perfect. We will not have a 100 per cent result, but it will be at least three times what we have now. This measure will result in a major weapon against tax evasion and avoidance. It will mean increased revenue. It will mean that people will pay their way-and everybody should. If those who work under a pay as you earn system have to pay their way, why should those who work on a part time basis or as casual employees not also pay? It will mean an end, I believe, to a lot of tax avoidance in a number of key industries. I am talking about the industries that employ the part timers, the casual employees and the moonlighters-the people who use the false names and addresses. It will target particularly such industry employment areas as the hotels, the clubs, aged care and nursing homes and the cleaning and security industries-where there has so often been collusion with the employers. I mention also the building industry, which we addressed in the May statement under the prescribed payments tax measures. Pseudo-subcontractors were taking a prescribed payment tax number and paying 15 per cent in some cases-although in other cases, with an exemption, they paid nothing-and that was the end of it; never again did they pay tax. One assessment held that this country was losing some $200m simply through the prescribed payment tax number arrangements because we did not have a proper system of matching; there was no way of fully matching up the pseudo-subcontractors with their real names. They were using false names and false numbers. One study showed that in one liquor trading firm 83 per cent of all employees had made false declarations as to their names and addresses, the vast majority being paid cash in hand. I know of another study in the cleaning industry. A survey of almost 2,000 employees showed that almost 1,300 were rorting the tax system. It is not to go on. It means less tax for the community; it means also a double deduction advantage for those who rort the system and use double names. I pulled out some figures to show that a person whose ultimate income was $30,000 would pay $7,000 tax, if he paid tax on that income, but that if he were able to split the income using false names in some way, getting $15,000 from one employer under one name and $15,000 from another employer under another name, the total tax would be $5,000. So such a person could rort the system for $2,000. If we multiply that across the nation we can see that we are talking about a multi-million dollar problem. Others pay no tax at all. They moonlight; they get cash in hand. We need these measures to counter the tax fraud and the welfare cheating. We need to have an upgraded tax file system and this is the best way of doing it. This is the best counter that we have to tax evasion. An employee who does not provide a number will be taxed at the top rate. So there is now an incentive to be honest, because otherwise a person will cop the requirement to pay 49c in the dollar as well as having to pay the Medicare levy. The scheme will also force employers to obey the law. Cases have been brought to my attention of farmers in small-crop areas who have encouraged workers to stay on the unemployment benefit. Those farmers have then paid these workers in cash in different names at below award wages. A worker says, `Fair enough, I am getting the unemployment benefit. What does it matter? I am getting cash in hand'. It is the old handful of threepences mentality that has operated particularly in some of the dairy industry areas of Queensland. Young people working in the hospitality industry have received cash in hand while often using false names. Allegedly they have been paying their own tax. Regrettably I know of cases of underpaid supporting parents-and I can understand their desire to get extra income-who are working in fast food stores. They are paid in cash but do not pay tax. I know of other cases of people on benefits who are working part time. One woman I came across in central Queensland had been working for 10 years in a firm while her husband was on an invalid pension. When she was finally caught she cried her heart out that her husband had backed her up and that she had rorted the system of tens of thousands of dollars. I know of another case in Queensland of a person in receipt of the unemployment benefit who had been hired to drive a taxi. It is not going to be possible any more for people to engage in these sorts of activities. It is not going to be possible for part timers-those people who work as bar attendants, nursing home staff and cleaners-to do these things. This legislation will cover areas in which there is a great turnover of employees. It will cover transient workers in the States who are in receipt of the unemployment benefit. As I have said, the tax file number is not new, but it is going to bring about greater effectiveness and integrity in the system. It will be a one-matching mechanism. I believe that it will overcome the problems. At the same time, it will provide protections which I think are warranted and which certainly have been wanted by members of the Government and, obviously, by the Opposition. The tax file system will be administered solely by the Taxation Office. Everyone needs to know that there is legislation to prohibit any organisation, employer and individual using the tax file number for any purpose other than simply to report to the Tax Office. The system is so simple yet so strict. It cannot be used as an identity system. There will be severe penalties for misuse or breach of confidentiality. People who start a new job or change jobs will have to use their tax file number. That will be able to be matched with jobs they have had in the past or other jobs which they might hold at that moment. People will be required to quote their tax file number on an employment declaration provided to the employer. As I said before, if they do not do so, tax will be deducted at the highest rate of 49c in the dollar, plus the Medicare levy. We will also end up stopping a lot of the welfare fraud, because those who apply for the unemployment benefit, the sickness benefit or even the Job Search allowance will also need to quote their tax file number to the Department of Social Security. Again, if they do not, tax will be deducted at the highest rate. More importantly, at the end of the day the Government and the people, through the Tax Office, will be able to get at those who are avoiding their responsibilities in the tax arena. We will be able to recover that tax. I believe that this legislation will be a deterrent to those who try to rort the system. The important point is that the scheme does not apply to age pensioners or to veterans. As the honourable member for Kooyong said, it does not apply to the under 16-year-olds, to the vast majority of children earning money. But it will apply to those out in the work force. It will ultimately apply to all income earned, be it from dividends or interest earned from a bank account. It will mean that people shall pay their way. It has to be the objective of this Parliament to ensure that there is fairness and equity and at the same time to underpin any such measure with protections through a privacy Act. I believe that that is what this legislation will do. It is regrettable that we had to have the asides from the honourable member for Kooyong, but I reiterate that I welcome the bipartisan approach. The people of this country need to know that this legislature, this House of Representatives, this Parliament, is really fair dinkum about solving the problems in our economy. That is being done not only by the strong economic measures that this Government has adopted, but also by putting an end to the rorts, the fraud, the misrepresentation, and the misuse and abuse of the taxation system. The measure before this House will do just that. Mr N.A. Brown(Menzies)(10.50) —We are debating cognately the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill 1988 and the Privacy Bill 1988. Although my principal concern is with the Privacy Bill, it may be appropriate if I start off with a few very brief remarks about the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill, which I will refer to as the tax file numbers Bill. The point must be made, as the honourable member for Kooyong (Mr Peacock) said in his speech, that the tax file number system which the Government proposes to introduce has in fact undergone a number of very substantial changes since the day on which it was conceived in the mind of the Treasurer (Mr Keating). What we have now is a substantially more truncated system than the system he originally proposed to introduce. I suppose there is no more eloquent testimony to this change than the list of Government amendments which are proposed to be moved during the passage of this legislation. It is not often that Government amendments, particularly to a taxation Bill, have a ring of oddity or almost humour about them. But when one reads between the lines, the exact extent of change which has taken place to this system since the Government promoted it as the answer to all of our taxation problems in this country becomes very clear. We find that a whole host of amendments remove obligations from the tax file numbers Bill and substitute in their place provisions which simply contain statements that, for example, a particular investor is an `investor in relation to an investment to which this part applies'. That is just one example. But if one goes through the tax file numbers Bill, it becomes very clear that virtually all the obligations have now been removed from the Bill and what is left is really very little more than a complicated accounting exercise. I think the exact operation of the Bill is not clearly understood even at this late stage. For instance, with respect to the honourable member for Capricornia (Mr Wright), who has just spoken, he does not have a clear understanding of the way in which the Bill operates. For example, we heard him say that the tax file number system does not apply to children. That statement, in its all-embracing nature, is just simply untrue. In many cases it does apply to children. It does not apply to a child who is an investor as defined and who has an investment which is not one of the investments listed in the Bill. But if the child comes under any other description and has income, even although at the end of the day the income might be beneath the threshold, that child is, of course, covered by the tax file number system. In fact, I think the system has a much wider operation than the honourable member for Capricornia would have us believe. Nevertheless, the tax file number system will now be subjected to substantial amendments in the course of the passage of the legislation. The system is put forward by the Government as a way of at least preventing some of the leakage of potential taxation revenue in this country. The Opposition has decided to support the legislation, and the Government has accepted the amendments which we have put forward. The substance of the amendments is that the scheme will now be, to a very large extent, a voluntary one. The result will be that the tax file number system will enable the Commissioner of Taxation to match numbers and ascertain whether people earning income should pay tax. As far as we are concerned that is a fair enough proposition and, with the safeguards that have been built in, it is a fair enough way of enforcing the proposition that there should be a voluntary-for that is in substance what it is-tax file number system. As I said at the outset, my principal concern in this matter is the Privacy Bill. That Bill likewise has undergone some fairly substantial sea changes since it was conceived in whichever Minister's mind it was conceived in. I must at this stage acknowledge the work of officers of the Attorney-General's Department, who set forth with their normal professionalism once the Government decided to change its ground and came up with a substantially changed piece of legislation-one which, in my view, is better than the original Privacy Bill which was intended to be introduced. The Privacy Bill can be seen to be divided into two parts. The first deals with what are known as information privacy principles, which will cover the collection, recording and dissemination of a wide range of information which successive governments, including the current Government, and government instrumentalities and agencies are accumulating on the individual citizen. These, of course, would have been introduced in some legislative form or another sooner or later, irrespective of the tax file number system. It would be unfortunate if this debate went past without our making it clear that Australia has not had, until the introduction of this Bill, a privacy law. One of the advantages of the debate which has emerged over the tax file number system is that Australia will now have such a law. It will not be a perfect law by any means, but it will be a privacy law and it will be embodied in Federal legislation. That by itself is an achievement which we should not overlook in a debate which has been concentrating essentially on the tax file number and the implications for privacy of that system. As I said, the first section, if one likes to look at it in that way, of the Privacy Bill deals with general information rather than being concerned particularly with tax file number information. The second area which the Bill deals with is the tax file number information itself; that is, the accumulated information which government instrumentalities, particularly the Commissioner of Taxation, will acquire once the tax file number system is introduced. The Bill therefore, with respect to both those areas, deals with those restrictions which in the Parliament's view it is necessary to have imposed to ensure that there is not an undue interference with the privacy of individuals, particularly those individuals to whom the information that government bodies have relates. So a series of rules is set down-I will look at some of them in a bit more detail later-with respect to general information and with respect particularly to tax file number information. Having set down those rules and having set out a regime under which privacy is to be guaranteed in both of those areas, the Bill then deals with the question of what can be done if any of those principles are broken. If there is an invasion of privacy, whether it is because of a breach of the information privacy principles or because of a breach of the guidelines for the privacy of tax file number information itself, what will be the consequences of a breach of any of those principles? The Bill sets up a system of complaints which may be made to the Privacy Commissioner. It gives him power to conduct investigations into those complaints, it gives him power to reach conclusions about complaints that he has investigated, and it goes as far as to enable him to award compensation for the invasion of privacy. It gives the Privacy Commissioner power also to make an award of expenses in addition to the compensation which he may award. In addition to that, there is a power, which has been overlooked, for people to go to the Federal Court of Australia to obtain an injunction to prevent a breach of a provision of the Act. That roughly is the scheme. Principles are laid down which are designed to guarantee privacy. If there are complaints that privacy has been invaded, those complaints may be investigated by the Privacy Commissioner and the Commissioner may award compensation and expenses. That structure, which has been set out in the Privacy Bill, is not a perfect system by any means-there is scope for improvement-but in our view it is a reasonable basis for starting off a privacy regime in Australia and a reasonable basis for supporting the concern for privacy, particularly in the context of a new system-namely, the tax file number system which is being introduced. As I said, there is scope for improving this Bill by amendment. At this stage I wish to foreshadow two amendments which I will introduce in the committee stage of debate on these Bills. The first relates to the remedies which a citizen may obtain if there has been an invasion of his or her privacy. At the moment, as I have already said, the Bill provides for procedures before the Privacy Commissioner which may result in an award of compensation. It seems to me that there is a case for taking these remedies further, and I will be moving an amendment to the effect that the citizen should have the right to bring an action in the common law courts for interference with privacy and that that right should be expressed in such a way that the citizen may obtain damages as compensation for the invasion of his or her privacy. The second amendment relates to appeals to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, which are already covered to some extent in the Bill, arising from proceedings for breaches of the information privacy principles themselves. As I have said, such appeals may give rise to an award of compensation and there is provision in the Bill for those who would be obliged to pay up to appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and to get an award of compensation and expenses set aside. Oddly enough, however, there is no right of appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for the unsuccessful complainant. The structure is that, if he goes before the Privacy Commissioner and loses, that is the end of the day; but if a government department goes before the Privacy Commissioner and loses, it is not the end of the day for the government, which has a right to appeal. It seems to us that the citizen should have an equal right to appeal, and the amendment which I now foreshadow will incorporate that principle and give rise to that right. I wish to add something to the proposition that the Bill is not perfect but is a reasonable start. It is now up to the Government to enforce the regime which is set out in the Privacy Bill and to make sure that it works. I say this particularly in the context of the tax file number scheme. We certainly would not be supporting the tax file number system, even with the amendments which have been made, if we had any doubts at all that the Privacy Bill provided a reasonable privacy basis for starting the system off and if we were not satisfied that the system was to be enforced. In that context particular attention should be given to the provisions which are set out in schedule 2 of the Bill and which are known as the interim guidelines concerning the collection, storage, use and security of tax file number information. It has already been said in this debate that these provisions are there, as their heading implies, to provide some privacy in respect of the tax file number information which will be collected when the tax file number Bill becomes an Act. It is important to place on record what some of them are. I think we can start off with the very important proposition that is contained in guideline No. 1: that the tax file number is not to be used as a national identification system by whatever means. I hope that those whose responsibility it is to see that the law is complied with in this field will comply with both the letter and the spirit of that proposition. The Government asserts-and already in this debate Government members have repeated-that it is not the Government's intention to use the tax file number system as a national identity system or as some pale shadow of the Australia Card which the Government attempted to have passed through this Parliament. If that is the case-and it is supported now by this proposition in the interim guidelines-we will expect to see both the letter and the spirit of that guideline enforced. If there is any evidence that comes to our notice to the effect that the tax file number system is being used, or an attempt is being made to use it, as a national identification system, by whatever means, the Government will certainly hear of it, to its regret. I venture to say that the public will take a very dim view of any attempt by the Australian Labor Party to set up a national identification system, or national numbering system, whether directly and openly as it endeavoured to do with the Australia Card, or by some back door method which some people in the community believe it is attempting to do by means of the tax file number system. It must be said, in fairness, that there is now a guideline in the Bill which has the force of law and contains the proposition that the tax file number is not to be used as a national identification system by whatever means. We simply say that we expect the Government to enforce both the spirit and the letter of that proposition. The guidelines go on to say that those who receive tax file numbers are not to act in an unauthorised manner so as to use the tax file number information as a means of matching personal information about a person. That is tremendously important because the great community concern is that those who have their hands on tax file numbers and the information that goes with them will use them as a means of matching up information on individuals-not just the tax file information but other information as well-and will then start to build up personal profiles on individual citizens. There is a lot of community concern that that should not happen. Again, we would expect both the law and the spirit of that guideline to be enforced. Rules are set out in the guidelines dealing with the storage and security of tax file number information. There are provisions in respect of the use and disclosure of tax file number information. Among those, the most important is that which says: Tax file number recipients shall not use tax file number information for other than authorised purposes. Some specific cases to which an embargo is applied are set out. They apply to employers and investment bodies which are prevented by this guideline from using the tax file number for the purpose of building up databases on individuals and from using the information for the purpose of cross-matching tax file number information with other information held about people to carry out activities which do not relate to obligations under the taxation law. I simply conclude by saying that the rules are there. They are reasonable rules to start off with. They are not perfect, but we will now expect, having given our concession to support the Government on this legislation, that both the spirit and the letter of the law will be enforced and applied. If not, I can inform the Government at this stage that the full wrath not only of the Opposition but also of the whole Australian community will come down on it like a ton of bricks. Ms JAKOBSEN(Cowan)(11.10) —We must forgive the Opposition for its preening and parading during the debate so far. Undoubtedly, it has contributed to the quality of the legislation before the House and we are pleased to have its support on this occasion. Its stand on the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill and the Privacy Bill has been widely applauded. It is a pity that it does not adopt such a sensible position more often instead of opposing important and necessary legislation in an endeavour to make cheap political points. For instance, the honourable member for Kooyong (Mr Peacock) made an extravagant claim that this legislation will impact on small taxpayers in the community. That is just not true. It is only the tax evaders in this country who will be adversely affected by the legislation. Ordinary salary and wage earners already paying tax will benefit from the additional revenue gained as tax cuts will be funded partly from this source. Our record on tax cuts is beyond reproach, despite what the honourable member for Kooyong said. We have progressively closed the net on tax evasion and tax avoidance, as the Treasurer (Mr Keating) pointed out in his second reading speech. Income derived from capital gains is now taxed on the same basis as income derived from employment. Fringe benefits are now taxed. The deduction for entertainment has been removed and people claiming tax deductions have to maintain proper records to substantiate their claims. The proceeds of these measures have been fully devoted to cutting personal income tax rates in Australia. Tougher enforcement has applied and fewer concessions have been extended to the corporate sector. The Commissioner of Taxation has taken his duties in this area very seriously in an endeavour to maximise compliance. This is especially important, given popular perceptions, or misconceptions, in the community that companies are not paying their fair share of tax. The Bills we are debating today represent one more link in our Government's chain of policies designed to ensure that tax is paid equally and fairly by all Australians in a position to do so. It does this by giving the Australian Taxation Office a simple and effective means of matching the income reports it receives from employers, companies and interest-paying organisations with the income declared in tax returns. Presently the Tax Office uses people's names to attempt this task. However, this method is clumsy and inefficient. It fails to match a large proportion of reports with names and addresses which are easily duplicated, coincidentally or intentionally. The use of tax file numbers with income reports enables them to be more easily checked against the returns which already exhibit the tax file number. For the bulk of Australians this Bill will have a negligible impact. For the rest, their present attempts to escape paying tax on all or part of their income deserve to be stopped. Where a tax file number is not provided, tax will be withheld at the maximum marginal rate, plus the Medicare levy. No legal penalty will be imposed. Hopefully, the mere fact that it will be withheld at that rate will ensure that people comply with the tax file number requirement. Many people in Australia want to pay less tax. That point was made, quite rightly, by the Opposition. However, that is not possible unless everybody who should be paying tax is doing so. It is expected that by 1993-94, $337m extra will be collected annually as a consequence of this legislation. In his second reading speech, the Treasurer estimated that over the next 10 years this legislation will return $2,200m to the revenue, all of which will be redistributed in the form of tax cuts. The provisions of this Bill should, therefore, ensure that the honest taxpayer with no easy way to disguise his or her income will feel that all people are sharing the burden of taxation to the extent that they are meant and able to, rather than thinking that some people are taking unfair advantage of the taxes paid by others. Mr Kerr —Hear, hear! Ms JAKOBSEN —I know that the honourable member for Denison feels very strongly about this. What is the extent of the problem? The Australian Taxation Office receives two major types of income reports: details of group certificates and of interest payments. Each year about one million group certificates are not reported in tax returns; nor can they be matched because of wrong addresses and false names. The statistics for interest payments are even worse. About four million, or 30 per cent, cannot be matched to anyone's return. I note that the honourable member for Capricornia (Mr Wright) pointed out this percentage in his speech. The difficulty of being able to match reports and claims by name and address is the major factor preventing the Tax Office from collecting the taxes due. Some people have claimed that this Bill is an imposition, but upon whom does it impose? It imposes upon those who evade tax by using false names and addresses; for instance, someone who has more than one job and does not acknowledge the extra job on his or her return-the moonlighters referred to by the honourable member for Capricornia. It imposes upon someone who has money invested in accounts which are not declared or someone who has no tax file number because he or she has never paid tax on earnings. These are the people who will be affected. I remind the House of what happened when the prescribed payments system was first proposed and of the concern that appeared to exist in the community of people who refused to accept the system. I was approached by several people at that time even though I was not a member of parliament. They expressed their concern to me. I said, `But if you already have a tax number you will not have to worry'. They were very quiet because they did not have a tax number. If they do not have a tax number they have not been paying tax. I suggest to the House that this Bill will overcome a lot of those problems, as has already occurred in other industries with the prescribed payments system. We all know of cases of people who do not pay tax even though they are working. The honourable member for Capricornia provided some graphic examples of these. The legislation may well be an imposition for those who evade tax but it will be a welcome relief for those who do not. Some people arrange their affairs so that companies receive the fruits of their investments, rather than receive the income themselves. The provisions of this Bill apply to the person who has the right to receive the income, not an in-between nominal company. They will therefore pay tax. How will the Bill affect ordinary employees, that is, pay as you earn taxpayers? Such people already have a number which they quote on their tax return. They will now be asked to add that number to the form they fill in each year to allow their employer to take deductions from their wages. In this way the number will be sent to the Tax Office twice-once from the employee and once from the employer, enabling the matching. People will have a year from July 1990 to June 1991 in which to notify their bank, building society or investment body of their tax file number. Again, the process is simple and allows the Tax Office to make an easy comparison. For people commencing employment the Tax Office will issue a number upon application. This can be done either at the Tax Office or at any post office where application forms can be acquired. Only two pieces of identification will be needed. As mentioned earlier, the cost of not providing a number is to have tax withheld at the maximum marginal rate plus the Medicare levy. If this is more than the taxpayer should pay, the money can be recovered when a tax return is submitted. Clearly there are certain types of people who should be exempted from the provisions of this Bill since their income is known and fixed. They were mentioned in passing by the honourable member for Capricornia and the honourable member for Kooyong. For instance, people on pensions-age, invalid, wife's, carer's and widow's pensions, supporting parents and veterans-and most children under 16 are exempted from using a tax file number. If they have any investments such people will only have to submit a declaration of their name, address and category of exemption. I take the point of the honourable member for Menzies (Mr N.A. Brown) about children who have substantial earnings or investments having to use the tax file number. I think that is only fair, because they are earning income and ought to be declaring it in a substantive fashion. At this point it may be useful to remind members of the House and others of the uses to which taxes are put. All too often we concentrate upon how much has been taken by government as taxation without considering what this money is used for. The majority of taxation is returned to the community in the form of pensions, basic services and the infrastructure which we use every day. Without going into the full details of all the government services provided through taxation revenue, it is clear that the people at whom this Bill is aimed are making use of most of those services without paying their share of the cost. They are riding on the back of existing taxpayers. This cannot be allowed to continue. A major concern which has been expressed about this Bill is that it may infringe upon people's rights of privacy. This concern is mainly the result of a misunderstanding of what the Bill does. I accept the contribution of the Opposition and members of my Party to the debate on the privacy legislation. I believe that the Government has made the correct decisions. Tax file numbers have existed since 1936 as the best means of clearly identifying each taxpayer. Names are one way in which we attempt to distinguish ourselves from other people, but because they are not unique they do not provide the same certainty as a tax file number. The number should help to remove any possibility of people with identical names being mixed up by the Tax Office. We can all cite common names in a fairly common employment area where there could be some confusion. The tax file number will now be known to employers and investment bodies. They will use it only when conveying payment details to the Tax Office and will have no access to other tax records. Some have likened the strengthened tax file number to the Australia Card in an attempt to create unjustified concern in the community. Tax file numbers already exist and they are not demanded as a form of identification other than by the Tax Office. Furthermore, it will be an offence to require the number's disclosure or its use as identification other than for purposes which are sanctioned by this Bill. People who endeavour to misuse the number in this way will be liable to a fine or two years gaol. This Bill also strengthens the penalties for unauthorised disclosure of taxpayer information by Tax Office staff. Such provisions already exist to protect information given by taxpayers, but for honest taxpayers that information will now be even more secure. The privacy legislation being introduced into the Parliament also covers the disclosure of information by public services. Unfortunately, information in the hands of private organisations is still not regulated. This is an area of considerable concern to many people in the community. I am hopeful that the Government will look at it in the near future. Some members of the Opposition apparently did not wish to support this Bill because it represented an extension of the powers of the Tax Commissioner. The fact that the Tax Commissioner was going to have more power and that he has extended his powers in the area of corporate compliance was recently pointed out in the report of the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. However, I believe that the Tax Commissioner is to be congratulated for his endeavours in this area. These endeavours may not concern the average Australian who is not cheating the system. The Commissioner is to be admired for his endeavours to administer the taxation laws so assiduously to the benefit of the whole nation. His stand is totally supported by the Government and should also be supported by the Opposition. We have given the Tax Office the necessary resources, staff and equipment to do its job properly and we are prepared to back it to the hilt. This Bill will help ensure that all Australians pay their fair share of tax. The only people who will be adversely affected are those who currently evade tax. The rest of the community will benefit from the availability of a significant amount of additional revenue which will contribute to overall tax cuts. I commend the Bills to the House. Mr BRAITHWAITE(Dawson)(11.25) —Today we are debating the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill 1988 and the Privacy Bill 1988. The manner in which these Bills were introduced is an absolute disgrace to the Government. The Privacy Bill, in particular, was introduced only yesterday afternoon. It was compiled in haste. It has not been before this Parliament. There has been no public exposure of that document. Today we are debating that Bill-with the support, I must say, of the Opposition. I want to point out what an absolute disgrace this whole thing has been. I am sure that this legislation was informally introduced and exposed to members of the Opposition by the Government on the basis that it would act as some type of mechanism for a double dissolution-something which in this Parliament helps only the Government and the Australian Democrats-because the Opposition would react on the basis of the three conditions it laid down after the identification card legislation fiasco. Luckily, because of amendments that have been rightfully proposed by the Opposition and accepted by the Government, this proposal will in no way act as an unofficial identification card system, which had been the suspicion of many groups outside. In fact, the way in which we have ensured that the tax file number will not be a de facto identification card is that the tax file number scheme is now voluntary, and not compulsory, as it was originally when it was intended that the tax file number would have to be used in the declaration of interest and dividends. I can understand in every way the suspicion of the public about the way in which these Bills have been introduced and the manner in which the attempt was made to introduce the ID card last year. I think that we now have to recognise the problems facing the Australian Taxation Office and look at the positive consequences of this legislation. When I say that we should recognise the problems facing the Taxation Office, I add, as a practising public accountant for many years-as I think you were, Mr Deputy Speaker-that it has always been a big concern to me that, while such powers were always contained in the Tax Acts, the Taxation Office never took the steps to use those powers as it should have. Even though the Taxation Office made the employer and investor comply with certain instructions about the lodgment of lists of interest and dividend payments and the matching up of wages payments at the end of the year-and there are very many honest taxpayers, employers and investors in the community who complied-it never took the trouble of trying to match that information in the way it should have. In fact, it was acknowledged in evidence, I think to the Joint Select Committee on an Australia Card which was set up last year or the year before, that only 20 per cent of forms detailing interest and dividend payments lodged with the Taxation Office were ever matched. I can understand how this could have been the case with the primitiveness of the Taxation Office's computer system. While on this subject of matching of information, it would probably not be understood by taxpayers and the public generally-as was revealed in evidence given by the Tax- ation Office just recently-that it is not possible for it to do more than aggregate the incomes which are listed under the tax file numbers with people's tax returns. It is not possible actually to detail separately the sources of income and to list that. It is possible for the Taxation Office only to aggregate the amounts, which then provides a profile which should then agree with taxpayers' returns. Before we go any further I think that we should also remove the suspicion that these Bills will have something to do with tax avoidance. We are talking here purely about tax evasion: the tax cheats, the people who earn income and do not declare it, the people who get payment in cash and use that for their own purposes without declaring it. As I think has already been determined by an eminent judge overseas, any taxpayer has the right to arrange his or her affairs, within the legal framework, to minimise personal taxation. There are aspects of the tax Act which allow that minimisation. I believe that we should focus on that aspect of the legislation that deals with tax evasion, and that anyone seeking to minimise tax should have nothing to fear while he or she provides a tax return within the framework of the taxation law at the time. We are talking about tax cheating. It surprises me that the Taxation Office estimates that tax cheating amounts to just over $2.2 billion over 10 years. I think that the Taxation Office claims that in the tenth year an amount of $330m will be recovered permanently as a result of the introduction of the tax file number. Of course, that amount of $300m in the context of the total amount of some $58 billion of income tax paid by the community is not a large amount. However, I believe, as would any honest taxpayer, that it is only right and fair that this tax should be collected. I feel that there are two aspects as far as honest taxpayers are concerned: they believe that taxes are too high; they also believe that people who are cheating the system, as some do, should not be allowed to get away with it. The other feeling that honest taxpayers have these days is one of persecution by the Taxation Office in regard to taxation. They feel that the Taxation Office is almost a police department in the manner in which it prosecutes and makes demands of honest taxpayers. Therefore, honest taxpayers are copping it both ways: they are paying too much tax because of the cheats and are being persecuted because they are honest. Perhaps someone along the line has tried to identify the psychology of tax cheats. I would be surprised if those sitting in the advisers' gallery had not applied their minds to this on many occasions. While I am not in the position of knowing the exact psychological make-up of a tax cheat-some are just thieves taking from the public purse-I suggest that some of their personality make-up is a result of government action. For example, the high rate of taxation, as I have already mentioned, is an incentive for people who might want to do so to cheat the system by non-disclosure of their incomes. Also, the Government's excessive expenditure over five years has created for taxpayers a $25 billion debt which they will have to pay off in the future and on which certainly they will have to pay the interest. I think that taxpayers look at the other side of the Commonwealth balance sheet to see how their money is being spent. I suggest also that part of the psychological make-up of tax cheats is created by the double standards applied by the Australian Taxation Office. I can give two examples of this. I give as an example a taxpayer who had to pay a late lodgment fee on his return, even though there was a credit due and a tax rebate followed-compared with the Treasurer (Mr Keating), who was allowed the same benefit of non-lodgment but did not have to pay the penalty in precisely the same situation. These are the double standards that apply right across this nation. I enunciate another example: the travelling allowance situation in which the Treasurer was involved three or four years ago. People in exactly the same situation but with more justifiable concerns have come to me because the Taxation Office applied the other standard of not allowing the travelling allowance to be tax deductible, although eventually it was allowed. Yet we have the double standard of the Treasurer being treated as a separate case. These are things that tell on the average taxpayers. They are matters of great concern to them, because they are up for the additional costs of compliance in ensuring that their fair share of tax is paid. Also, there is the aspect of the personality make-up of the tax cheats resulting, year by year, or day by day, from a reduction in their living standards and the quality of life which they would like members of their families and people around them to enjoy. I am in no way condoning the tax cheat, but I think that we have to understand that within this economy there are circumstances which have resulted solely from the action of the Taxation Office and the Government. I refer now to the complexity of the taxation law, which makes it quite impossible for not just the average taxpayers but also the legal experts to understand-unless they specialise in a specific branch of the taxation law. With an Act of probably 2,000 pages we can understand the frustration people must feel in saying, `Hang the whole thing; let's get on with more productive business'. However, I want to say again that I do not condone in any way the actions of the tax cheat. There is also the other case of how government interferes in the lives of all Australians, and certainly taxation is the most intrusive. There is a suspicion, which is natural in these cases, that expenditure is used by a government to control the lives of people in the community who are taxpayers in the normal sense, just ordinary Australians. It controls organisations by partly funding them and then taking control. The Minister for Community Services and Health (Dr Blewett), who is at the table, would understand that this is precisely the case with Medicare and the medical fraternity. The more recent example of the rescheduling of the pathology fees is an indication of how the Government was trying to control the activities of pathologists in private practice and in nursing homes. These are examples of areas in which there is complete control over the activities of ordinary Australians. No wonder some of them are screaming. I believe that this Government has changed Australians from being carers to being survivors. I fear most for the survival of taxpayers in this country. The Government seems to be content to have a survival program in place for others, but the taxpayers in this country have received very little consideration from this Government. So all these natural suspicions have made the acceptance of both these pieces of legislation difficult. I mentioned that there is already legislation that the Government might have been able to act upon, but in these modern days it is just not possible with the staff available and the complexity of the economy to be able to do this in the form that might have been wanted when that legislation was enacted. The honourable member for Capricornia (Mr Wright) mentioned fairness and equity in his address. I say to the honourable member, who has said that he has been instrumental to a large extent in the formation of the Privacy Bill, that there is no fairness and equity in a situation where we have to consider legislation that has not even been introduced, which has not been disclosed for public comment and is then rushed in to us at the eleventh hour. There is no fairness where the set-up date was 1 November and the Privacy Bill was not in front of us. We ask: How fair and equitable was this legislation that made the Opposition amendments so necessary and so acceptable to the government of the day? I also take up the honourable member's comments about the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Howard) and his record in this regard. No Treasurer in this country has done more to stop tax evasion and tax avoidance than the former Treasurer did with the raft of legislation that came in in 1982. I recall a comment made by a member of the Opposition and by people who were practising in this industry beforehand. They said, `The tax evasion and avoidance industry is dead. It was killed by the introduction of that division back in 1982 to the tax Act'. I think that the honourable member for Capricornia has been less than fair in his comments on that subject. Let us talk about the fairness and equity of the scheme that we already have in Australia which has been implemented by this Government. I have already mentioned the lack of fairness and equity and referred to the double standards. I have also referred to the fringe benefits tax. There is nothing fair or equitable about the fringe benefits tax. I can recall when the Treasurer of the day came in here and indicated that a fringe benefits tax would be imposed against the earner of that income-the employee. Within 24 hours the President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions said that a fringe benefits tax would not be imposed against the employee. The next day the Treasurer came into this House and said that it would be imposed against the employer. Where is there fairness and equity in that system? We have talked in terms of self-assessment and all the other necessities for a taxpayer to claim a deduction. All this has been at a tremendous cost of compliance for the taxpayer. I will give an indication. Last year I had to spend three times the amount of time I normally devote to the preparation of my tax return just to make sure that the compliance measures that had been built up by the Taxation Office had been enforced. Mr N.A. Brown —An honest taxpayer. Mr BRAITHWAITE —A very honest taxpayer, I might add; I cannot afford to be other than that. I just give that as an example of the tremendous cost of compliance for the taxpayer and the tax agent. I mentioned earlier that this tax file number system is not an identification card. While with the identification card system disclosure was voluntary in the original Act as far as the salary and wages content was concerned, it certainly was not voluntary in connection with the interest and dividends. Now it is voluntary and a withholding tax of 50.25 per cent is the price that one pays for non-disclosure. One wonders under those circumstances-unless a person is prepared to save up a credit for eventual refund at the end of June-whether that is really a voluntary system. But at least it does provide an alternative to noting identification. The Bill provides for exemptions, as outlined by the Treasurer (Mr Keating) in his second reading speech. They apply to age pensioners, veterans and most children. They do not apply to those on unemployment or sickness benefits. But in every other respect the exemption is there for the age pensioners and veterans and for children who earn minimal income and would not be taxed. As the shadow Attorney-General, the honourable member for Menzies (Mr N. A. Brown), mentioned in response to the honourable member for Capricornia, who did not know his own legislation, children can be caught under this Act in certain places. There are exemptions where accounts earn interest of less than $120 a year, which we believe will exempt about 70 per cent of people who have money in credit unions. The Government talks about a universal identification. That cannot be so when so many exemptions exist, and also in view of the voluntary nature of the provisions introduced by the Opposition. There are still concerns with this legislation. As much as we would have liked to have had access to the legislation to propose amendments, other than the amendments we have already proposed, I think it must be recognised that there will be faults in legislation that has been so hastily introduced into this place without that disclosure. We still do have concerns with this legislation. The shadow Treasurer, the honourable member for Kooyong (Mr Peacock), has already mentioned function creep and how it should not be allowed by successive regulation or amending legislation to apply in areas other than those it is intended to apply to at the moment. I know that is the concern of people overseas who have used the system-that function creep seems to be a necessary part of change into the future. I also believe that the penalties set up under the Privacy Act should be fully and rigorously applied because, unless they are, there could quite well be deficiencies in the system caused by those who want to apply somebody's tax file number in ways other than the terms of the Act. There is also the aspect of the rate of the withholding tax, which is at the maximum rate, and, of course, that applies the maximum difficulty. Perhaps one should suggest that after the Act has been in place for a while a more realistic assessment might be made of the rate of that withholding tax other than the high rate that is there at the moment. Finally, let us hope that, as this money is meant to be collected from the people who have been cheating the system, relief will be given, as the Government has promised for next July, to honest taxpayers and that we do see a significant decrease in the rates of tax which currently apply. I believe all these things should be drawn to the notice of this Government. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Hon. J. D. M. Dobie) —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. Mr MARTIN(Macarthur)(11.45) —The Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill has, in my view, three major pluses. Firstly, it is endeavouring to crack down on the tax avoidance industry which, despite the assurances from the honourable member for Dawson (Mr Braithwaite) in his contribution, still does exist, unfortunately, notwithstanding anything that the former Liberal Treasurer, the now Leader of the Opposition (Mr Howard), may have done in 1982. Secondly, it attacks the problem for the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) of matching incomes from all sources. Thirdly, as has been said by honourable members on both sides of this chamber today in the debate, it is not an identification system-de facto or whatever. I propose to look at each of those issues during my contribution this morning. I will just make one or two comments about the contributions by the honourable member for Dawson and the honourable member for Kooyong (Mr Peacock). There was some discussion about function creep. They expressed the view that they hoped the tax file number system would not spread to additional functions. The honourable member for Capricornia (Mr Wright) also mentioned what happened in the United States. I have some knowledge of this as well. An American friend of mine with whom I recently corresponded on this issue indicated that, for example, in the State in which he lives he is given a social security number. That number is also his tax file number, his motor vehicle drivers licence number and his motor boat licence number. He is an airline pilot by profession and therefore it is his licence number in the aviation industry. It is also the number with which he pays municipal rates and a whole swag of other charges, such as electricity. If we are talking about function creep and problems such as this, I think we have a long way to go to catch up with some of the examples in the United States. Nevertheless, some of the concerns expressed by the honourable member for Kooyong and the honourable member for Dawson, I guess, in some respects, are quite real. The honourable member for Dawson is stretching the point when he speaks of honest taxpayers being caught in the net, as it were, and being hounded and chased by the police that are the Australian Taxation Office. Quite honestly, the honest taxpayers today-they would basically be those in the pay as you earn system-are caught up in self-assessment. As has been indicated, the compliance function in this case has increased dramatically because of this system's introduction and, indeed, because of the various other measures introduced over the years by the Treasurer (Mr Keating) and the Australian Taxation Office to crack down on all forms of tax evasion and avoidance. I think that is appropriate. I would like briefly to trace through some examples of work done by this Parliament to strengthen the case for this tax file number issue not being one of controversy but one of universal acceptance by honourable members. It has often been said-indeed the honourable member for Dawson said it-that the legislation on privacy did not come forward in time for people to consider it. We can see from the examples of the workings of this Parliament that this issue of tax file numbers has indeed received considerable debate over a long period through the committee structure. I would like to point to a number of examples of that today. Firstly, I point to the majority report of the Joint Select Committee on an Australia Card. I accept that the Australia Card legislation was defeated but it is interesting to note that in paragraphs 4.8 and 4.19 the report states: The present tax file number has very low integrity . . . The majority of the Committee considers as an appropriate option the upgrading of the tax file number . . . So as far back as when that report was tabled, in May 1986, the majority-that is, both sides of the Parliament; indeed, all political parties in this Parliament-recommended and recognised the need for an upgrading of the tax file number system. In September 1986 a report entitled A Taxing Problem: Review of 5 Auditor-General's Efficiency Audit Reports into the Australian Taxation Office was tabled in this place. That report was compiled by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Expenditure which, with the restructuring of committees after 1987, disappeared. It looked at several efficiency audits: the collection of sales tax by the Australian Taxation Office, controls over processing of income tax assessments, processing the assessment of income tax returns, checking of dividends and interest disclosed in income tax returns and, finally, the processing of income tax instalment declarations. Opposition members of that Committee included the honourable member for Sturt (Mr Wilson), who was Chairman of the subcommittee that carried out that investigation and was Deputy Chairman of the Committee; the honourable member for Deakin (Mr Beale), who is the shadow spokesperson on transport and communications; the honourable member for Parkes (Mr Cobb); the honourable member for Wannon (Mr Hawker); the honourable member for Bass (Mr Smith); and the honourable member for Lyne (Mr Cowan). All of those Opposition members were members of that Committee and subcommittee that investigated those particular areas and saw fit to put their names on a report to which there were no dissenting views. Recommendation 18 of that report stated: With or without the adoption of the Australia Card, the Australian Taxation Office take the necessary steps to establish a high integrity identification system which would ensure maximum taxpayer compliance. That report was dated September 1986. That was after a thorough process of review, conducting public hearings, interviewing people with concerns in the taxation field with those efficiency audits and coming up with that unanimous recommendation. On the matter of evasion and avoidance, a report entitled Tax Evasion and the Tax Office's Response-an Audit Office view was delivered to the Australian Tax Research Foundation conference on 13 and 14 June 1987. In the course of that paper a number of examples were given by people from the Audit Office of problems in the tax area. I will give some of those examples. They looked at group certificates that showed earnings above $20,000, presumably from the taxpayers' main source of income. They took a second sample of group certificates showing mainly low incomes, probably from second jobs. The intention of that was to try to work out from the taxpayers' returns whether undisclosed income from second jobs, dividends, interest, Department of Social Security benefits or false claims for spouse rebate could be detected. A second sample was taken of unpresented group certificates prepared by 39 employers from industries known to employ part time or casual employees-employees such as caterers, cleaning contractors, clubs, hotels, nursing homes and restaurants. It is interesting that the examination of unpresented group certificates and other records found many cases where assessments had been issued but the ATO procedures had failed to discover omitted income because of processes in the ATO at the time, particularly on matching. As honourable members have said in debate this morning, the matching problem to date has been one of trying to match names and addresses with appropriate people. I will say a little bit more about that when I talk about more recent committee examples and how this issue is being tackled. In this paper presented by representatives of the Auditor-General's Office it was concluded: There is clearly a need for the employees to be better identified on group certificates so that unpresented group certificates can be allocated to taxpayers' returns by means of computer processing. Computer processing should also assist in detecting false claims for spouse rebate and, if extended further, in detecting undisclosed benefits from the Department of Social Security. I am sure that every member of this House supports the need to act upon that independent assessment made from case studies done by the Australian Auditor-General's Office and reported at a conference on taxation and the underground economy. In that report reference was made to computerisation and the need to upgrade facilities within the Australian Taxation Office. We move on to yet another committee of the Parliament which has examined this issue and the question of matching. The Joint Committee of Public Accounts, comprising both members and senators, in 1987 presented report 287 entitled Australian Taxation Office: Computer System Re-equipment and Redevelopment. The Opposition members of that Committee included Senator Watson, as the Vice-Chairman, Senator Bishop, the honourable member for Bruce (Mr Aldred), the honourable member for Cowper (Mr Nehl), the honourable member for Dundas (Mr Ruddock) and the honourable member for Wentworth (Dr Hewson) who, of course, is the shadow finance Minister. That report, when detailing its examination of computer re-equipment in the Tax Office and how it might be applied, looked at the issue of the Australia Card, income matching and other identification processes that may be necessary. The Committee noted at paragraph 5.21: . . . income matching activities of the ATO involved substantially manual processes and that they relied heavily on paper documents. I think we would all agree that that is not appropriate. However, it went on to say: Unless you have a unique identifier with an acceptable degree of integrity, you are putting a lot of effort into gathering information which you cannot effectively and efficiently match with taxpayer returns. The ATO, in evidence to that Committee, which was accepted by the Committee, said at paragraph 5.30 on page 68: . . . our analysis says also that if you had a unique numbering system you could probably improve the efficiency of (the matching) process by 50 or 60 per cent. It went on further to say, at paragraph 5.32: It was clear to the Committee that there were substantial benefits to be gained through the Australia Card or some equivalent high integrity numbering system. Paragraph 5.37, on page 69 of the Public Accounts Committee report, states: The Committee notes that the matching of dividends, interest and other income with taxpayer records is a vitally important part of the work undertaken by the ATO. The Committee notes that while the matching programs already conducted are highly revenue productive they involve substantial manual processes and are heavily reliant on paper documents. It concluded, therefore, at paragraph 5.39 that: the development and use of a high integrity numbering system could give the Australian Taxation Office the potential to maximise the improvements in its operations that are anticipated from the Office's computer systems re-equipment and redevelopment proposal. There we again have that example from the processes of the Parliament examining, through public hearings, through the receipt of information from government departments and the like, further evidence to substantiate the need for the tax file number system that has been introduced into this House. More recently, in May 1988, a report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration entitled A Taxing Review. Review of Six Efficiency Audits of the Australian Taxation Office was tabled in this place. The audits which were undertaken in this review were: the prescribed payments system, unpresented group certificates, external sources of information, disclosure of diesel fuel rebates, partnership and trust distributions and late lodgment penalties. The membership of that Committee included from the Opposition benches the honourable member for Sturt as Deputy Chairman, the honourable member for Dawson who is, of course, the shadow Minister for community services and aged care, the honourable member for Parkes, again the honourable member for Wentworth who is the shadow finance spokesman, and the honourable member for Corangamite (Mr McArthur). Again a bipartisan report was handed down based on evidence and on the parliamentary system of conducting thorough inquiries. At recommendation 13, on page 69 of that report, it was again stated: The ATO to take the necessary steps to establish a high integrity identification system which would ensure maximum taxpayer compliance. We then moved to the final example that I wish to bring to the attention of the House today, and that is of an ongoing inquiry, the results of which will probably be tabled in this House next week. Again it is an inquiry into an efficiency audit report conducted by the Auditor-General's Office into the Australian Taxation Office and involves taxpayers in unincorporated businesses. Once again it is the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration which is carrying out this inquiry which, of course, I chair. The Auditor-General's efficiency audit report-this is not the Tax Office or some group out in the community; it is the Australian Auditor-General's Office-states at paragraph 7.2.5 at page 43: The AAO agrees that systems effectively assigning a unique identifying number to individuals would provide a basis for resolving the present difficulties. Those difficulties that were identified were of course, associated with taxpayers and unincorporated businesses, the examples that were used being restaurants in Hobart, home builders in Canberra and home unit owners on the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. The Auditor-General therefore stated-I reiterate that this is the Australian Audit Office; it is not the ATO or a group in the community; it is not even a government department that is responsible for the tax system per se-in recommendation 44: . . . the ATO develop a high integrity unique identification system for all taxpayers which will provide full cross-referencing of relationships among companies, partnerships, trusts and individual taxpayers including those whom the ATO exempts from having to lodge returns. It did so because on the evidence that it had collated in that audit it found there was still a degree of non-compliance and a degree of evasion and avoidance in the wider community. By going through and looking at those various efficiency audits handed down by the Tax Office, and in looking at the process whereby the Parliament, both the Senate and the House of Representatives, can go through this process of a scrutiny of recommendations, it clearly concluded that an upgraded and improved tax file number system was essential in combating tax avoidance and tax evasion. I believe it has been proven conclusively, by those examples and by the process, that that is the case. I am pleased that the Opposition parties have chosen to support this legislation. I would certainly like to know whether any Opposition members of the committees that I have referred to argued strongly one way or the other in their party rooms on this issue, because I think on the evidence that has been presented to the committees on which they sat, they would clearly have to come out in its favour. The privacy issue is one which has also raised some concern. In the minute or so that I have left I would make this comment: concern was expressed about the time in which some members of the Opposition had to review that legislation. That surprises me, given what I read as the events over the last several weeks, when Opposition spokesmen involved in the privacy legislation and so on had a more than ample opportunity to discuss what the Government was proposing, not only with advisers in departments, but also with the Ministers responsible for the carriage of this legislation. Clearly the Government has been prepared to accept some of the concerns, indeed all of the concerns, that the Opposition has raised. I am pleased, therefore, that the Bills will today receive passage through this House and presumably also later through the Senate, and that this legislation will take effect. Once again, those honest taxpayers will have nothing to fear. The scaremongering tactics that may be used by certain groups in the community will not be necessary. I am sure that my friend, the honourable member for Denison (Mr Kerr), who is about to speak in the debate for our side, will testify that the privacy provisions of the legislation will more than safeguard the taxpayers' interests. I welcome the support from the Opposition members for this legislation. Mr ALDRED(Bruce)(12.05) —The great deal of behind the scenes activity prior to the introduction of the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill gives some indication of the great uncertainty in both the coalition and the community at large as to the intentions of both the Treasurer (Mr Keating) and his colleagues in the Labor Government. My outright opposition to the tax file number (TFN) as originally proposed is well known. Despite the Opposition's agreement to an amended form of legislation, I wish to state for the record that I still have very grave reservations about the ultimate aim of the Treasurer's new tax file numbering system. So as not to be misconstrued or misrepresented, I say now, as I have always said: tax avoidance must be stamped out. Those who profit from it do so at the expense of the majority of honest hard-working Australians who have, under the crushing tax policies of this Government, seen their standard of living decline quite significantly. Overtly, the Government says that its intention in introducing this Bill is to clamp down on tax avoidance. However, the system with which it proposes to do that has the capacity to be applied well beyond the needs of the Australian Taxation Office. It is not a dedicated system; it is a multi-purpose system. In other words, it could become a de facto Australia Card with subsequent enabling legislation over time. The Government's attempt to foist the Australia Card on the Australian people was, as we all know, pursued with a fanaticism rarely seen in this Parliament. Are we now to believe that an issue so vigorously pursued by this Labor Government has been dropped from its agenda altogether? I for one do not believe that to be the case. From the time when the Treasurer first announced the expanded tax file number system, precious little of the facts have emerged-and very little of the truth. The new Australian Labor Party branch office at No. 2 Constitution Avenue here in Canberra, formerly known as the Australian Taxation Office, has waged a campaign deliberately to muddy the waters of the TFN. The Taxation Office's submission to the Senate Standing Committee inquiring into the TFN was of such poor quality that the Committee told the Tax Office to go away and come back with some properly researched facts and figures. The Tax Office, in its first submission, failed to provide any breakdown of revenue estimates. It failed to take account of any contra-revenue outgoings and its treatment of alternative schemes was cursory and dismissive, being confined to generalities and with no proper analysis. Although the Senate Standing Committee, in its majority report concluded that, on balance, the TFN would result in a significant increase in revenue, it also said it `had some difficulties with aspects of the estimates, in particular with the basis of their compilation'. Before the Senate Committee, officers from the Taxation Office provided figures indicating that the likely revenue gains by 1994 would total $337m. However, in later evidence before the Committee, the Tax Office made certain concessions. It said that the revenue estimates were gross and did not take account of refunds. This was despite the fact that a Taxation Office pilot survey showed that more than 50 per cent of those who failed to present group certificates were likely to be entitled to refunds. It was apparent that no allowance had been made for the current tax amnesty under which 275,000 persons have filed tax returns, resulting in substantial revenue gain likely to exceed $100m. These funds would obviously reduce the potential revenue gains available from the TFN. The revenue estimates contained an allowance for increased voluntary compliance, but the Tax Office was unable to quantify the extent of this figure. Even with the use of a unique identifier, approximately 70 per cent of the interest which currently goes untaxed could still go untaxed. Little has changed. It was unclear to what extent the estimated allowance for interest of $204m took this factor into account. Some four million children under the age of 16 and 2.4 million pensioners would not be required to register under this scheme. These perfectly proper exemption categories would nonetheless provide irresistible temptations to deposit interest and dividend money into the bank accounts of children and pensioners. One area of cost consideration that has received no mention whatsoever, and is in fact one of the most important, is the cost to private enterprise of the TFN system. As far as I can ascertain, the Taxation Office has not produced any cost estimates for this area, despite the fact that the requirements of the TFN legislation impose extremely costly compliance and reporting procedures on all employers and investment bodies. Without doubt, these costs will eventually have to be borne by consumers themselves, adding further to the cost of living; and, as I said earlier, Australians have already suffered a very significant decline in their standard of living under this Government. I have searched my conscience long and hard on this piece of legislation. Stamping out tax avoidance is a must for any government. However, the method of doing so is just as important. In supporting the Opposition's amendments to this Bill, I strike a note of warning. Future exploitation of this proposed legislation by the Labor Government is a real possibility, given its fanatical endeavours to impose the Australia Card on the community. Turning the TFN system into an Australia Card could become a gradual fait accompli. In striking this note of warning, I remind the House that similar numbering systems in the United States and Canada-and this has already been referred to in this debate here this morning-began as dedicated, limited systems, but soon became universal identity systems. Furthermore, the success of the Government's privacy legislation is in large part dependent upon its commitment to the new bureaucratic body set up to administer it. To be effective, the new privacy body will need to be well resourced. However, the Government has a very bad track record in relation to the various oversight bodies for which it has responsibility. There have been very substantial reductions to the resources of the Auditor-General's Office-and that has been referred to in debate in this place and in the outside community-and also, of course, to the resources of the Parliament's Joint Committee of Public Accounts. That, too, has been a matter of public debate and concern. The Government has even frustrated the access of ordinary Australians to documents under the freedom of information (FOI) legislation. It is well known that a $30 fee is now payable upon application; further charges are imposed by the Department concerned to service the FOI request; a $40 fee is payable for a departmental internal review; and if, as occurs all too regularly nowadays, an FOI applicant is forced to take a matter to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, a further fee of $240 is payable. I wonder how long it will be before the Government moves to frustrate community access to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner through the imposition of fees and charges, as we have already seen in relation to FOI requests and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. I referred earlier to the Taxation Office's deliberate attempts to muddy the waters on the TFN. Part of those efforts was certainly its inaction in servicing a freedom of information request concerning the TFN proposal that I submitted to it on 30 June of this year. The FOI legislation requires that departments receiving FOI requests service them within 30 days. To date I have received no documents from the Australian Taxation Office, despite it being today day 125 since my FOI request was submitted. The Constitution Avenue branch of the Labor Party has done its bit towards frustrating informed public debate on the TFN, yet again. In concluding my remarks, I say that a degree of acceptability of this legislation has been achieved through the Opposition's amendments to the tax file number legislation and also, of course, to the Privacy Bill. From here on in, great vigilance must be exercised by this Parliament to ensure that the Government does not enlarge and expand the TFN system to fulfil its earlier aims as manifested in the Australia Card proposal. Mr KERR(Denison)(12.15) —The debate as it has progressed today has seen speakers from both sides of the House claiming victory for the manner in which the legislation has come forward. But the real winners are the people of Australia, because two very important social steps have been taken. Firstly, we have a measure that will ensure that tax avoidance is substantially reduced and, in some areas, eliminated. Secondly-and to date this very important part of the debate has not been highlighted-some very far-reaching protections of privacy will be brought into our law for the very first time. In referring to these matters, I might congratulate both the Minister for Justice (Senator Tate), who has been responsible for the conduct of the privacy legislation, and the Opposition spokesperson. Notwithstanding the shadow boxing and the claims as to who has best served the Australian people in this process, the end result has been a piece of legislation which, years on, we will look back at and about which we will say, `That was the beginning of a very important period in Australia's social development when we began to protect privacy in a serious way'. We will look at this as a foundation for further steps in the protection of privacy of individuals, not just in the public sector but also in the private sector-a point I will return to later. Let me first look at the situation regarding the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill 1988. We have had today from the Opposition what must be the most lukewarm support for the proposals that one could imagine. It really does seem that, notwithstanding the Opposition's agreement yesterday to support this legislation, there are still many members of the Opposition who would take opportunistic advantage of creating the kind of hysteria in the community that measures of this sort can so easily engender. We have just had a good example of that kind of nonsense from the previous speaker, the honourable member for Bruce (Mr Aldred), who, not content with raising spectres that have no substance at all, denigrated the Commissioner of Taxation, claiming that he was somehow an Australian Labor Party stooge. This is the kind of personal and trivialised nonsense that the Opposition is substituting for policy on taxation. Let us look at what has happened in this instance. No-one disputes that substantial sums of revenue are being evaded illegally by persons who should be paying tax. In the couple of instances where studies have taken place and industries have been subjected to exhaustive scrutiny, the Commissioner of Taxation has produced documented evidence that companies and individuals are ripping off honest taxpayers literally to the tune of millions of dollars. For example, there were not only instances of people in the cleaning industry taking cash payments, which I suppose in the order of things one would not say is the worst offence but which should be stamped out and prevented, but also instances of companies in the industry which fraudulently had imaginary employees on their books. They were paying people who did not exist, collecting back the payments they had claimed against outgoings on tax, and then pocketing that money, thereby reducing their corporate tax liabilities very substantially. That meant that those fraudulent company operators-not the individual employees; not the little battlers that we sometimes hear of-were benefiting and enriching themselves to a contemptible degree at the public's expense. Estimates of the extent of evasion, illegality and wrongdoing in this area will inevitably be the subject of some conjecture. It has been estimated that over 10 years the measures that will be introduced will result in the collection of something like $2,200m-that is, $220m each year over the next 10 years. This will be in addition to the money which honest ordinary taxpayers, like those people in the galleries who are listening to this debate, pay regularly to the Taxation Commissioner but which the cheats and the frauds in the community have so far avoided. These measures will go a long way to making sure that we have an honest straightforward tax system incapable of being subject to the kinds of rorts and abuses that have been so prevalent in the past. The Opposition really has nowhere to move on this issue, because for so long it was the supporter of rorts and practices which operated to the disadvantage of ordinary taxpayers. Measures which have been introduced to make sure that those on higher income levels and those who in the past have had opportunities to evade or avoid tax pay their full measure of tax have always been opposed by the Opposition. The capital gains tax, the fringe benefits tax and the prescribed payments system were all attacked by the Opposition. But there comes a point at which the Opposition's credibility would simply be zero if it persisted in its objection to a measure so fundamentally designed to make sure that honest taxpayers do not get overcharged, ripped off or cheated by people who are prepared to go to criminal lengths to defraud the tax. Nobody likes paying tax. We would all love to have our tax liabilities reduced. The Government has committed itself to substantial tax reductions in the next financial year. Those are the sorts of matters which are open for legitimate debate in this Parliament. But there can be no place in this Parliament for those who would sponsor the illegal evasion of taxation by those who are cheats and criminals within the system. The legislation before us will make sure that the evasion that has occurred in that area is largely stamped out. But even in this area the Opposition found itself wavering. Time after time excuses appeared. Questions were raised about how revenue effective the measures would be. That issue was hunted down, chased down, in the Senate by a Senate select committee. Ultimately, of course, the most telling blow in that area was dealt by Senator Stone, a former Secretary to the Treasury and now, I suppose, the eminence grise of the National Party of Australia-the leader in waiting in the Senate-who at least had the common decency and the good sense to tell the truth: that these measures would collect substantial revenue. That left the Opposition with nowhere to stand. It could not oppose the measure as being ineffective or not cost-effective in collecting revenue. Of course, a number of civil liberties arguments, mainly spurious but sometimes genuine, were raised in relation to privacy protection. We have to remember that, although the Privacy Bill does touch on and provide guidelines for the protection of privacy and the tax file material in particular, the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill itself provides very detailed and serious penalties for those who would breach the obligations of confidentiality that are imposed under that law. The penalties for the unauthorised use of tax file information are very high. Proposed new section 8wa in clause 26 of the Bill states that a person who requires or requests another person to quote the other person's tax file number for the purpose of establishing the other person's identity or for any other purpose not associated with its legitimate use is subject to a penalty of $10,000 or imprisonment for two years, or both. Similar penalties apply to the unauthorised recording of tax file numbers and other abuses of the system. Those very serious criminal penalties are in the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill itself. They have been there since the Bill was first introduced. These measures are not designed simply to provide a framework which can be abused; they are strong internal safeguards and intimidatory penalties that would measure with the penalties for any serious crime. In addition to the penalty provisions in the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill, the Privacy Bill provides for detailed guidelines to be established by the Privacy Commissioner after consultation with the collectors and users of tax file numbers. To make sure that provisions are in place when the scheme is first introduced, schedule 2 provides interim guidelines which will stand until such time as the Privacy Commissioner has brought in more detailed and more specific provisions. If the alternative guidelines put to the Parliament by the Privacy Commissioner are not thought appropriate by either the House of Representatives or the Senate they can be disallowed and the schedule 2 provisions will stand. Schedule 2 says very clearly that the tax file system is not to be used as a national identification system and includes detailed provisions about security for the collection of tax file number information, its storage, its use and similar matters. So there is a very comprehensive scheme to protect the privacy of individuals, but also to make sure that the system works, that the tax file system operates to ensure that those who have tax liabilities cannot avoid them by criminal action, cannot create phoney employees, cannot take jobs in two names-one fraudulent and the other the real name-and cannot engage in other activities of which we have already heard in this debate. These are very sensible provisions. As the possible excuses for opposing this legislation have been cut from under the Opposition one by one, it has been forced in the end to support it. But what a cavilling tone of support we have had. From the Deputy Leader of the Opposition (Mr Peacock), who spoke first, we had the most lukewarm support. That has been echoed throughout the debate, with the honourable exception of the shadow Attorney-General, the honourable member for Menzies (Mr N.A. Brown). I think the shadow Attorney-General has made the greatest and most positive contribution from the Opposition to this debate. There is no doubt that the work of the shadow Attorney in relation to the Privacy Bill has resulted in legislation that we will all be proud of years into the future. The Opposition's cavilling and unhappy acceptance of the provisions of this legislation was exemplified by the honourable member for Bruce, who made all kinds of damaging and outrageously unrealistic smears of the intention of the Government and, I believe, attacked the integrity of the Commissioner of Taxation. That is becoming the ball game for the Opposition. The Opposition does not have a tax policy. It does not have any framework for putting forward positive and constructive suggestions to the Australian people as to what it would do were it in government. Instead, it does three things. It says, `Let us bring forward tax cuts', but does not specify them, and, `Let us cut expenditure', but will not say where the expenditure cuts would be made. It also says, `Let us kick the head of the Tax Commissioner; let us attack the man. Let us play the man, because the Tax Commissioner has irritated some of our supporters, some of our friends'. That is sometimes the job of the Tax Commissioner. His job is to articulate clearly the needs of the revenue, to speak out on behalf of the ordinary, law abiding taxpayers of Australia and to make sure that people cannot get away with engaging in schemes that are devised to defraud the revenue or to avoid legitimate charges that have been imposed through legislation. It is a measure of the Opposition's lack of policy and of the way in which it has allowed its guard to drop in this area that, without specifics, it is now playing the man rather than the ball. On the front page of this morning's Australian Financial Review the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Howard) is reported to have made a renewed attack on the Commissioner of Taxation, saying that under a coalition government the administration of the Australian Taxation Office would be placed in the hands of a board dominated by the private sector. That does not seem to me to be an appropriate response to the kinds of concerns that the Taxation Commissioner has raised, I believe legitimately, in the community. I now turn to the Privacy Bill. I believe that this has been given insufficient weight in the debate to date. It is unfortunate that in the context of this debate it has become so tied up with the tax file numbers proposition, because the Privacy Bill extends far beyond the control of that scheme. The Privacy Bill extends to all information collected by Commonwealth government agencies. It establishes rules which those agencies must comply with-broad rules called the information privacy principles. Let me give an example of how such broad propositions are expressed. The first principle is: Personal information should not be collected . . . for inclusion in a record or in a generally available publication unless- (a) the information is collected for a purpose that is a lawful purpose directly related to a function or activity of the collector; and (b) the collection of the information is necessary for or directly related to that purpose. The second principle is: Personal information should not be collected by a collector by unlawful or unfair means. The Bill sets out 11 information privacy principles which govern the type of information that can be collected by government and restrict the use of that information. There has never been anything like this in Australia before. In the past, when a government has wanted information it has just collected it. If it has wanted to cross-reference that information, to use it as it has wished, it has done so. There has been no requirement under the laws of Australia that would restrict the use of such information. Citizens have a very real and proper concern that over time this build-up of information in the hands of governments will give rise to the possibility of abuse. No-one thinks that this Government would abuse such information, and I would hope that the Opposition, were it in government, would not do so, but some government might. These principles, established in the legislation, make sure that that possibility is much reduced. They give us great hope for the future and ensure that we will live in a society in which rights and freedoms are treated with the genuine respect that we ought to give them. I say in conclusion that there is one point that I think many of us in this House would like to see. We would like to see the privacy protections extended to the private sector. In the private sector consumer credit information bureaus collect information through credit card use and through other credit transactions and give information about people's credit ratings, creditworthiness and the like. At the moment they can make mistakes and abuse the information but are not subject to legislation. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Hon. J. D. M. Dobie) —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. Mr MACPHEE(Goldstein)(12.35) —The honourable member for Denison (Mr Kerr) said that there had not been enough attention in the debate so far to the Privacy Bill but he gave it about three minutes. I want to devote my speech to that Bill to rectify the imbalance. We know that this legislation is of crucial importance, but we have been given a scandalously short time in which to consider it. As we all know, the Bill was available to only one member of the Opposition until it was introduced into this House late yesterday afternoon. We have been given a scandalously short time in which to study vital legislation. We cannot be expected to say that, on such a short study, this Bill provides the answers to the complex threats to privacy which are posed by modern technology. I want to make some contribution now which at least my colleagues in the Senate may be able to take some advantage of when they have had a bit more time to look at the legislation. On looking at the second reading speech of the Attorney-General (Mr Lionel Bowen), it is very clear that he recognises the need for this legislation, especially as it is coupled with the tax file number legislation. In his speech the Minister said: The enormous developments in technology for the processing of information are providing new and, in some aspects, undesirable opportunities for the greater use of personal information. He went on to say: The Privacy Commissioner will ensure that some balance is brought to the debate as to the desirability of using the opportunities provided by new information technology to their fullest extent. While he spoke of some balance, I think one could say that the Minister and the Government are acknowledging that the task of the Privacy Commissioner to produce real balance between the public interest of gathering information and the public interest in protecting privacy will be exceedingly difficult. I do not think that any Government member can be sanguine about this Bill actually achieving that because, as we know, it is based on a draft Bill produced back in 1976 by the Australian Law Reform Commission. It is interesting to note that in the Journal of Law and Information Science, volume 2, No. 1 of 1986-a decade later-there are two important articles. One is a critique of the Law Reform Commission's proposals and the other is entitled `Privacy principles-tacit assumptions under threat'. It is important to recognise that this legislation, based as it is on the Law Reform Commission's report, has itself been overtaken somewhat by even more rapid developments in technology of the kind to which the Minister alluded. There is no doubt that privacy legislation is essential to ensure that individuals have some rights over information which is theirs, which is gathered by a range of agencies. However, this privacy legislation, based as it is on these privacy principles, is inadequate because of the way in which modern technology has been developed. Quoting from the article to which I referred, I can give one example: an on-line database collects information from many different sources and is available to the public. There are many different record keepers at various locations, none of whom may be responsible to the end user of that information. National boundaries are no obstruction and databases can be accessed from a different State or a different country. Even the storage of full text, such as newspapers, in a public database can lead to problems with privacy for individuals. James Thom and Peter Thorne say, in the article to which I have referred: It is already possible to interrogate the New York Times database for all the information collected on a particular person over the last ten years. There are very serious questions as to the right of privacy which some people have. They may be on a whole range of subjects beyond the consideration of the Australian Commissioner of Taxation. One can think again of people such as the Chamberlain children. Are they to be plagued for the rest of their lives because of the notoriety of a case involving the death of one of their siblings and the conviction of their parents? Will they be hounded forever by the media? Will they be subject to examination by other people as to income that their parents might get from stories, films or whatever? There is a whole range of ways in which our lives are intruded into and this legislation represents only a tentative beginning at giving us some protection. Certainly, common law and other statute law does not give us adequate protection. In fact, our distinguished former Governor-General, Sir Zelman Cowen, touched on the need for privacy legislation in the 1969 Boyer Lectures. It is a reflection on this Parliament and a succession of governments that we have not introduced legislation of this character earlier. He revisited those lectures only last Sunday for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and again pointed to the screaming need for legislation of this character and the reluctance of all interested parties, whether governments, media organisations or private data collection agencies, to have legislation. I think that the honourable member for Denison has been far too confident and complacent in believing that what we have before us now goes any way towards providing privacy. But it is a step and, as such, it must be welcomed. One of the privacy provisions set out in the Bill states that the record keeper should ensure that the person to whom information relates should be advised that information has been collected. The article to which I referred points out that the use of personal computers and publicly accessed databases makes this principle impossible to enforce; hence the importance of trying to reach the private sector. That is something which the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development principles on privacy have wished us to do but which is exceedingly difficult to do. The Australian Law Reform Commission considers the right of access to be the single most important principle, but there are instances where information about one can reveal information about another individual. So the Privacy Commissioner will have a very delicate task even in weighing that set of balances, quite apart from those to which the Minister referred in his speech. With the wide dissemination of information in the public access system, the right of access will be virtually impossible to provide. Many times people will not know that someone has had access to information about them and has acted upon it. In the United States of America there have been cases of people impersonating people because they have access to a file number which gave them a whole lot of information. Eventually, criminal action and other rights of action will have to be provided for people in those circumstances. Under the Freedom of Information Act there are numerous exemptions relating to the right of access of an individual to personal information. Those restrictions are too great. The Minister claimed in his second reading speech that this Bill has extended the Freedom of Information Act. It is true that it has amended it, but it has not extended the basic rights available to it. One of the problems with which we are faced in drafting legislation of this kind is that the people who gather information, whether in private or public agencies, have something of a fetish about not releasing it. I will quote from a Yes, Minister script which makes the point rather well. A very famous letter to Sir Humphrey from the Campaign for Freedom of Information says: Dear Sir Humphrey, We are delighted that you have accepted our invitation to become a patron of The Campaign for Freedom of Information after your retirement from the Civil Service. We note your proviso that you intend to work for the freedom of information `whenever it is in the public interest'. That is the nub of the problem which we have in handling privacy legislation. Having read the legislation, in conjunction with the tax file legislation, I do not feel confident that the Privacy Commissioner or any individual affected by the gathering and dissemination of information will ever be able to get past the mental barrier of people who are the custodians of the information in the civil service or the private collection agencies, because they have a great belief that what they have is very important and it is in the public interest not to have it made public. Although the Bill deals with many of the responsibilities of the Privacy Commissioner, I believe that much more work has to be done effectively on getting a job description. What we are asking the Privacy Commissioner to do is to produce privacy impact statements, just as we are now looking increasingly for environmental impact statements. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Hon. J. D. M. Dobie) —Order! It being 12.45 p.m., the debate is interrupted in accordance with sessional order 101a. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the honourable member for Goldstein will have leave to continue his speech when the debate is resumed. Sitting suspended from 12.45 to 2 p.m. Mr HAWKE(Wills-Prime Minister) —I inform the House that the Minister for Land Transport and Shipping Support, Mr Brown, left Australia today on Government business in New Zealand. He will return to Australia on 4 November. Questions normally addressed to Mr Brown and to the portfolio Minister, Mr Willis, who is still unwell, should be addressed to the Minister for Telecommunications and Aviation Support, Mr Punch. Mr SINCLAIR —My question is directed to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. On his instructions on 10 August 1988 did a senior member of his office write a letter to a senior member of the staff of the Minister for Local Government, his colleague in another place, seeking additional Federal assistance for the Tennant Creek Town Council `to keep the Northern Territory Government out of the Warumungu land claim negotiations' and to enable the Commonwealth Government to `raise its image' with the Tennant Creek community? Is it not a further fact that the letter was disowned by the Prime Minister who, on 5 September, wrote to the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory that `the correspondence does not reflect the views of the Commonwealth Government'? Can the Minister explain why, since that letter was written and he was pulled up by the Prime Minister concerning the maladministration of his portfolio, that commitment to consultation has not been honoured? If the Minister would like to see it, I have the correspondence to go with the question. Mr HAND —I recall the correspondence and the exchange of correspondence. I also recall the Prime Minister being written to by the Chief Minister. I think it deals with the question of the land claim and advice and assistance provided for by the Department to people in that area. It is my understanding that in recent times, since that letter was written, there have been discussions between the Northern Territory Government and the people concerned up there. As I understand it, the Prime Minister responded to the Chief Minister's letter. Dr THEOPHANOUS —Can the Treasurer please advise the House whether the Commissioner of Taxation, Mr Trevor Boucher, continues to enjoy his full confidence? Furthermore, will the Treasurer adopt a recent suggestion that a board, incorporating a majority of private sector members, be appointed to oversee the operations of the Australian Taxation Office (ATO)? Mr KEATING —In relation to the first part of the question I say very positively that the Tax Commissioner does enjoy my full confidence and the confidence of the Government. The second part of the question arises from the discussions associated with the tax file number debate. I take this opportunity to emphasise that the Government welcomes the constructive manner in which the Opposition has approached that debate. I think we have probably produced a better Bill as a result. However, I reject absolutely the claim that the Tax Commissioner has been too vigorous in his approach to implementing the tax laws. This view has been put particularly by a minority in the corporate sector. It is certainly true that the ATO has in recent years intensified its efforts to crack down on corporate tax evasion. The results have been significant. Corporate tax collections will rise in 1988-89 to $10,200m-up from $4,563m in 1983-84. As a percentage of the total tax take corporate tax collections have risen from 9.4 per cent in 1983-84 to an estimated 11.8 per cent for this financial year. Of course, the greater part of these increases is due to increased economic activity-that is, more people are doing more things and there is more growth for companies to feed from. But much of it is due to increased action by the Australian Taxation Office, which has directly increased revenue while increasing the climate of compliance. From 1982-83 to 1988-89 total collections from audits increased from $228m a year to $820m a year, up by more than 3 1/2 times. Within that increase company audit collections have risen from $86m in 1982-83 to $383m in 1988-89; that is, up 4 1/2 times. I repeat: company audit collections have risen from $86m in 1982-83 to $383m in 1988-89, up more than 4 1/2 times. In other words, nearly half of all the extra tax collected from audit checks is now coming from companies, compared to one-third in 1982-83. In summary, the Tax Office is doing a good and effective job. Of course, some people do not like it and they have pressured the Opposition about that. In particular, the Leader of the Opposition has come up with the idea of having four people outside the tax system running the Tax Office. One would not have to be a political genius to understand where those four people would come from. It would not be a random selection of four ordinary taxpayers. They would come from the top end of town. The Leader of the Opposition would go to the so-called Liberal tax specialists, the people who have been out there managing some of these schemes, and put them in charge of the tax administration. We would reject such a notion out of hand. The ATO's job is to implement fairly the tax laws of the day. The current Commissioner is doing that. If he makes an incorrect decision there are, of course, the normal remedies in the courts. That is why the courts are there. There have been many challenges to the Tax Office and to the Tax Commissioner in the courts. We reject the claim that the Tax Commissioner has intervened in the political debate. He has merely made observations about what is needed to make the tax administration effective. Similar conclusions have been reached by numerous bipartisan bodies. What a shocking thing! He has said that in this day and age of computers the tax system would be advantaged by having a common number. Such an innocuous observation draws the stinging reproach, `How dare you enter the political debate! Do not remind us of the tools that are required for a Commissioner to run the tax system. How dare you remind us of these things! That is an unwarranted participation in the political debate'. I will leave it to the public to make its judgment about the veracity of those kinds of comments. The speech from which some of this debate started was the one by the Commissioner on 19 September 1988 in Brisbane when he said: Our tax system is built on the premise of equity, every person paying their fair share. What a shocking concept that is! If one person does not pay his or her share, someone else has to cover for that. What a shocking and objectionable proposition that is! Mr Tuckey —I rise on a point of order, Mr Acting Speaker. I have raised in this House time and again the issue of the abuse of Question Time by Ministers choosing to make speeches when they should be answering a question. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! Will the honourable member draw my attention to the point of order? Mr Tuckey —I ask you, Mr Acting Speaker, to ask this Treasurer, as he has been asked to do frequently in this House, to bring his answer to a close. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The Treasurer is answering the question. Mr Tuckey —I rise on a further point of order, Mr Acting Speaker. My point of order was not that the Treasurer was not answering the question. It related to the amount of time he was wasting to do so. He is now making a speech and it is your obligation to ask him to draw the matter to a close. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The Treasurer is in order. The honourable member for O'Connor will resume his seat. The Treasurer will answer the question. Mr KEATING —The Opposition is saying, `We approve of the corporate tax rate being declined. We believe in having lower tax rates, but the Tax Commissioner or anyone who manages the tax system must know that the way we believe the rules should be played is that rates of taxes should be applied to that amount which is brought to tax'. Those opposite say, `What is brought to tax is such that the Commissioner should not lean too hard into the breeze; there is some line beyond which a tax administration should not pass. We say to any Commissioner who actually enforces the law that we may take his job. We will intimidate him and may take his job away if we become the government'. In other words, they are saying, `For the people we represent there are not simply pay as you earn deductions on a Friday from the pay packet-but a debate. Do not push too hard on that which is brought to tax for income purposes. In other words, on that basis-- Mr Tuckey —Mr Acting Speaker, I raise a point of order. We are clearly getting a speech, and it is your responsibility. The Opposition is playing the game, and you are allowing the whole thing to degenerate again. We did the right thing-- Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member for O'Connor will resume his seat. The Treasurer will answer the question. Mr KEATING —Mr Acting Speaker, I am dealing with the concept of a board running the tax system, particularly in the context of pointed remarks made by the Opposition Leader about the Commissioner of Taxation and his administration. It is the absolute essence of being in order. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —I think we might get to the end of this. Mr KEATING —This is not the only area in which we are seeing attacks on the Public Service. We have also seen attacks on the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia. Mr Spender —The Treasurer should conclude. He should sit down. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member for North Sydney will cease interjecting. The Treasurer might bring his answer to a close. Mr KEATING —Mr Acting Speaker, we have also seen attacks by the shadow finance spokesman on the Governor of the Reserve Bank. This is an attack on a person who has managed one of the greatest changes in any financial system in the world, a person of enormous integrity who was appointed by the former Government. This very tawdry practice of attacking public servants who cannot defend themselves-- Mr Spender —Mr Acting Speaker, I raise a point of order. Mr KEATING —You can't cop it, can you? Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member for North Sydney has a point of order. I ask the Treasurer to sit down. Mr Spender —Mr Acting Speaker, you told the Treasurer to bring his answer to an end. You have told him to do that three times. Each time he ignored you. You should have sat him down. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! I have asked the Treasurer to bring his answer to a close. I think the Treasurer is doing that. Mr Spender —You should sit him down now. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —The honourable member for North Sydney will resume his seat. I call the Treasurer. Mr KEATING —Mr Acting Speaker, I have no intention of being intimidated by these tactics of the Opposition. This answer is within the Standing Orders and it will be delivered until it is completed. Mr Spender —Mr Acting Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —I call the honourable member for North Sydney on a further point of order. Mr Spender —The point of order is that the Treasurer was told to bring his answer to an end. He was told three times. He gets up and says that he will not be intimidated by this side, nor does he intend to obey your ruling. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! There is no point of order. Mr Spender —Sit him down. If he will not sit down, name him. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member for North Sydney will resume his seat. I call the Treasurer. Mr KEATING —Mr Acting Speaker, I conclude on this point: We have total confidence in the Tax Commissioner. We do not accept the right of the Opposition to intimidate public servants who cannot defend themselves, whether they be the Taxation Commissioner, the Reserve Bank Governor or the Statistician. We regard it as a lowly act on the part of the members of the Opposition. They should resist and desist from it. Mr TUCKEY —Has the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs now had the opportunity to consider the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Expenditure, to which I referred yesterday, on the inquiry into the Aboriginal Development Commission, in particular the in camera evidence? What steps does the Minister propose in regard to this report? In particular, will all first person allegations made in camera to the Standing Committee be made available to those responsible for conducting the Auditor-General and Department of Finance investigations into allegations of maladministration in his portfolio area? Dr Klugman —Mr Acting Speaker, on a point of order: would the Minister be entitled to look at in camera evidence? Mr ACTING SPEAKER —There is a very distinct point of order there in that the Minister would not be able to look at the in camera evidence. I call the Minister. Mr HAND —As the honourable member for O'Connor would know, given that he was a member of that Committee during the preparation of the first report and what is known as the final report, and as you know, Mr Acting Speaker, as the chairperson of that Committee, it would be impossible for me to have access to that material. Mr Sinclair —Oh, rubbish! You can move a resolution in this place. Mr HAND —It is impossible for me under the Standing Orders. It is a question of privilege. It amazes me that when honourable members ask questions sometimes they do not want an answer. The Leader of the National Party of Australia understands and is a great protector of the Standing Orders and the rules of this House. The question was whether I had seen the information. The answer is clearly no. The point is that this matter is governed by the Standing Orders. I think that the matter ought to reside with you, Mr Acting Speaker, as Chairman of that Committee. Dr CHARLESWORTH —My question is addressed to the Minister for Administrative Services. Will the Minister advise the House whether he has issued authorities for exploration and access at Coronation Hill and El Sherana in the Northern Territory? If so, has he attached environmental conditions to all such activities? Mr WEST —The honourable member for Perth has always exhibited an abiding interest in conservation matters. I have issued four authorities with regard to these two areas, which are, of course, within the Kakadu conservation zone. There have been two exploration authorities and two access authorities granted to Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd (BHP) and BHP Gold Mines Ltd. The first exploration authority basically was to validate the legality of the existing leases at Coronation Hill. The second exploration authority was, in fact, to allow some drilling to occur on the parameters of the leases to allow the preparation of an environmental impact statement and a mining feasibility study. Two access authorities have been issued. The first access authority is in regard to a large area of the conservation zone in which BHP considers it necessary to undertake some drilling and testing in order to support the production of an environmental impact statement and of a mining feasibility plan. The second access authority has been granted on the advice of the Minister for the Arts, Sport, the Environment, Tourism and Territories, Senator Richardson, so that we can produce a public environmental report prior to the consideration of whether exploration should proceed at the old El Sherana goldmine site in the Northern Territory. On the advice of Senator Richardson, I have attached very strong and stringent environmental conditions to these four authorities; that is, two exploration authorities and two access authorities. I would like to table the most recent of those environmental conditions. Of course, if they are breached, I can withdraw access at any given time. I would like to say also that, as far as El Sherana is concerned, I believe that the public environmental report that has been ordered by Senator Richardson is now publicly available and open to public comment. As far as actual mining at Coronation Hill is concerned, there is a great deal of interest. The Government and I would take no decisions as to whether to grant a mining authority until the Minister responsible for the environment, the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and the Minister for Resources have had an adequate opportunity to study the environmental impact statement, and until the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and the Government have had the opportunity to undertake the fullest possible consultation with representatives of the local Aboriginal community. Mr MOORE —My question is directed to the Attorney-General. In view of the national concern, particularly of the financial community and the national editorials, and indeed the general concern of the taxpayers of Australia, that has been pointing to the role played by the Western Australian Government in sponsoring Rothwells Ltd merchant bank with taxpayers' dollars, and following yesterday's suspension of trading in the corporation's shares, will the Attorney-General now order a special investigation into the corporation as section 291, subsection (2), of the Companies Code empowers him to do under such circumstances? Mr LIONEL BOWEN —Firstly, the question assumes that nothing has been done by way of investigation. Secondly, it requests that action be taken by me in what is called the national interest. There is no precedent for that and there never has been any action taken by an Attorney-General pursuant to that particular provision, for this very reason: under the cooperative scheme-as the honourable gentleman would know-the administration of companies particularly relates to the State in which they are incorporated and also relates to the Corporate Affairs Commission in those States. It also relates to the fact that the National Companies and Securities Commission itself has a responsibility. Further, all these matters are the subject of report to what is called the Ministerial Council, which was set up under this scheme. The Ministerial Council gets reports from Mr Bosch of the National Companies and Securities Commission as to the particular company that the honourable member has now raised questions about. Those reports have indicated that the National Companies and Securities Commission is investigating the situation, and that is still the position. I think it would be far better to leave it in the hands of Mr Bosch and the National Companies and Securities Commission, and any State Corporate Affairs Commission that has the jurisdiction so to do, to undertake that investigation. I think that it can be done and is being done. I suggest that the honourable gentleman await the deliberations of that inquiry. Mr HOLLIS —My question is directed to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister inform the House of progress towards ensuring the ceasefire in Namibia, which was to become effective yesterday, and the proper implementation of United Nations Security Council resolution 435? Mr HAWKE —I thank the honourable member for Throsby for his question. His strong and continuing interest in African issues is well known. I must say that the prospect for a negotiated settlement of Namibia's independence is now looking more hopeful than it has for very many years indeed. One can say with confidence that all parties-that is, Angola, Cuba and South Africa-appear to be committed to reaching an agreement, but, as the honourable members has indicated in his question, the earlier target date of 1 November has not been met. Nevertheless, I can say to the honourable member that very substantial progress has been made in discussions between the parties and in recent discussions, both in Brazzaville and in New York, on the question of the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola. As the House will appreciate, there are a number of difficult issues still to be settled, particularly the question of future national reconciliation within Angola itself and, of course, the question of continued South African destabilisation in the region. That does now look more optimistic than at any previous stage. For that process to come to a successful conclusion, we do look to the Government of South Africa to cease its support for insurgency by guerilla movements opposed to the Government of Angola. The position is, as all honourable members would appreciate, particularly the honourable member who asked the question, that Australia is not a party principal to these talks. We do, however, welcome and welcome very strongly the very constructive approach that has been taken so far, and we certainly call on all parties involved to continue those constructive negotiations. We strongly believe that the implementation of the United Nations plan for independence in Namibia, contained in Security Council resolution 435 of 1978, offers the best possible process and path to resolution of this issue. I conclude by reminding all honourable members that an integral part of the United Nations plan is the deployment of what is known as the United Nations Transitional Assistance Group (UNTAG) to monitor the implementation of this plan. Honourable members may recall that Australia offered under the previous Government in 1979 to provide an engineering contingent for UNTAG totalling some 300 personnel. That offer was made, as I say, under the previous Government in 1979 and that commitment was reaffirmed by my Government in August of this year. Mrs SULLIVAN —Will the Minister for Social Security confirm that there is not an entitlement to family allowance for all families with parental income of less than $50,000, that a family can have an income significantly lower than this supposed means test point but get no family allowance? Since he claimed at the time that he introduced the means testing of the family allowance that it was necessary for reasons of social justice, how can he justify that some families may not be paid any family allowance whilst other families on substantially higher incomes do receive the allowance? What action is he prepared to take to prevent this inequitable treatment of different families? Mr HOWE —I am not altogether certain that I understand the question. I thought that the rules with respect to family allowance were well known. The fact of the matter is that the income test on family allowance is not only set at the level of $50,000 but is tapered in such a way that where there are additional children families with incomes substantially above $50,000 are eligible for family allowance. The year of taxable income on which the family allowance income test is based is the previous year's taxable income. So I suppose that the implication of the honourable member's question, although it certainly was not clear in the question, is that in subsequent years people may have a significant reduction in their income. That is provided for in relation to the income test for very substantial variations in income. It may be that the honourable member is referring to the fact that where those variations are less substantial, but nevertheless significant, it is possible for people to be in the circumstances described, where they are not eligible for family allowance. I think that the family allowance is related to the taxation system. Of course, the taxation system does operate essentially on the basis of the previous year's taxable income. The assumption that applies, for example, in relation to payments for beneficiaries, or payments for low income working families, is that the question of the immediate circumstances is not quite as pertinent when we are dealing with what is effectively a tax measure. I will certainly examine the issue that has been raised by the honourable member to see whether we do need to make any further adjustments to the way that the income test operates. But I say to honourable members that I have been rather surprised that not only have the estimates in relation to the number of families affected by moving to income testing the family allowance been so precise-that is, the number of families affected is almost exactly the number that was predicted, or certainly very close to the range that was predicted-but also the community has recognised that in current economic circumstances at least, the extent of family assistance should be targeted towards low income families. It is true to say that something like 60 per cent of the expenditure in relation to families is currently concentrated in the lowest quartile of the population. I think that in difficult economic circumstances that is a very good illustration indeed of the Government's commitment to social justice. Mr MOUNTFORD —My question is addressed to the Minister for Social Security. I refer the Minister to the release of the Social Security Review paper Towards a National Retirement Incomes Policy. Does the paper express concerns about early retirement? Could the Minister indicate the community's reception to the paper? Mr Spender —Mr Acting Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Under standing order 101 provision is made for the calling on of business of the House, questions without notice, presentation of papers and ministerial statements. This paper should be debated in this House and a ministerial statement should be made on it. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member for North Sydney will come to his point of order. Mr Spender —The Minister for Social Security has been asked to make a statement on a paper. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! There is no point of order. The honourable member for North Sydney will resume his seat. Mr Spender —And he should not be allowed to abuse Question Time in this-- Mr ACTING SPEAKER —I warn the honourable member for North Sydney. The honourable member for North Sydney will resume his seat. Mr Keating —Mr Acting Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The frivolous points of order taken continually by the Opposition in disrupting Question Time are directed simply at answers which they do not like. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —There is no point of order. Mr Spender —Mr Acting Speaker, why do you not warn him or is there some reason that you feel-- Mr ACTING SPEAKER —The honourable member for North Sydney will resume his seat. Mr HOWE —The honourable member, in asking his question, referred to the concerns about early retirement. Attention is drawn to these concerns in the paper he mentioned. The question asked for information about the trend towards early retirement. The statistics are very dramatic. Honourable members opposite, of course, prefer to have a committee meeting, presumably to discuss tactics. In early 1968, 80 per cent of males aged 60 to 64 were still in the work force. That fell to 50 per cent by the 1980s, and in 1987 just under 45 per cent of males aged 60 to 64 years were still in the work force. Increasingly, early retirement is shown up not only in that age group but also among people still in their fifties. For example, among males in the 55 to 60 age group one also finds an equally significant and quite dramatic trend towards early retirement. Under the previous Government, when there was very high and growing unemployment that trend was welcomed and accepted. It was not seen as a matter of any great concern. But Professor Cass, in her paper, quite cogently argues that if we are to develop within this country a retirement income policy not only for the 1980s but also for the 1990s and for the first decades of the next century that trend needs to be arrested. In her discussion paper, issues paper No. 6, she makes a number of suggestions about the way that that issue might be addressed. It has been extraordinarily impressive how widely this issues paper has been welcomed. It is true that the aged community-including various pensions and retired persons associations-the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the industry and many informed media commentators have seen this paper as a very significant contribution. Opposition members interjecting- Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! Honourable members on my left will cease interjecting. The Minister is answering the question. Mr HOWE —The question clearly asked me to indicate the community's reception to the paper. If the community had reacted against the paper, there would be no problem about this issue being raised in Question Time. But because the reaction has been positive, we have honourable members opposite complaining. The reception to the paper has been extremely positive. People see this paper as providing a very effective framework. There will be widespread opportunities all around Australia for people to respond to this paper. Mr Sinclair —But not in the Parliament. Mr HOWE —Indeed, in this place. If honourable members opposite had the slightest interest in policies, they would ensure that under the Standing Orders of this Parliament, within the rules, the matter was debated. I have no concern about such a debate because it is only through discussion and debate that that very widespread positive reaction to this paper will be translated into a long term retirement incomes policy. It is of considerable concern to me and to this Government to ensure that we put in place a policy in this area that endures over the longer term. That is why we are interested in widespread discussion, consultation and debate. That is why people will have the opportunity to make submissions to me and to the Social Security Review over the next several months. Mr HOWARD —I ask the Prime Minister: Given that the Joint Select Committee on Video Material reported six months ago, why has the Government failed to take appropriate action to stop those in the community who continue to peddle X-rated pornography and excessively violent videos in those areas under the control of the Government, particularly in view of the fact that the Opposition declared its support for such action more than nine months ago? Is it a fact that many members of the Labor Party are opposed to such action and that, at present, the Government is considering a conscience vote on the issue for its own ranks? In short, when can we expect to know the Government's position? Mr HAWKE —Very shortly. Mr LES SCOTT —My question is directed to the Minister for Science, Customs and Small Business. I appreciated his comment yesterday on the greenhouse effect. Can the Minister explain to the House the reason for the large number of bogong moths invading the precincts of the Parliament? Mr Spender —Mr Acting Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We are here for Question Time. This is making a joke out of the whole procedure. That is what is damn well intended, and you know it. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! There is no point of order. Honourable members on my right and left will cease interjecting. Mr BARRY JONES —The bogong moth-or, as the Opposition would call it, the Agrostis infusa-migrates through Canberra at this time each year. The larvae are minor pests of crops and pastures on the western slopes and plains of New South Wales and other-- Mr Spender —Mr Acting Speaker, I rise on a point of order. A Minister may be questioned about matters of public administration. Under standing order 142: Questions may be put to a Minister relating to public affairs with which he is officially connected, to proceedings pending in the House, or to any matter of administration for which he is responsible. We know that he is a man of many talents, but he is not responsible for the moths. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The Minister, as I understand it, is responsible for the CSIRO, which may have something to say about the moths. Mr BARRY JONES —As Minister responsible for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and in particular CSIRO's Division of Entomology, which is giving advice on this area, I think it is absolutely central. The numbers of moths this year are higher than average. Problems can be expected in most years, but it does not seem to be as great as the great invasions of 1952 and 1969. However, Parliament House does appear to be a special problem. The moths are attracted at night to strong illumination and at dawn seek shelter in dark places-I would have thought perhaps where the shadow Cabinet meets. They frequently enter buildings via air-conditioning systems. The moths are attracted to white or blue lights, less so to yellow and red lights. The Parliament will have to evaluate the advantage of having this building on the summit of Capital Hill illuminated all night-indeed, in some areas of the building the floodlights stay on throughout the day-against the disadvantage of having the building inundated by bogong moths, which occasionally make the place look like a set from a Bunuel film. The problems may be eased by reducing the intensity and/or colour of outside illumination and placing mesh-- Mr Reith —This is an abuse of Question Time. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member for Flinders will cease interjecting. I warn the honourable member for Flinders. Mr BARRY JONES —The problem can be eased by placing mesh screen, maximum distances between wires of 3 millimetres, over entry points-for example, air-conditioning ducts. We are in a building where for the first time we have bogong moths circling around us. Opposition members interjecting- Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! Honourable members on my left and the Leader of the Opposition will stop interjecting. Mr BARRY JONES —There is quite a direct connection, and I concede that, but that was not the question I was asked. Opposition members interjecting- Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The Minister will answer the question. Honourable members on my left will cease interjecting. Mr BARRY JONES —The migration is very seasonal. It will abate in November. The moths migrate back to the breeding ground in the autumn and the migration is less conspicuous. But there is a problem, and I think the solution essentially lies in Parliament's hands. Mr HUNT —My question is directed to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. When will the Minister answer my question No. 374 regarding the purchase of the Nardoola property near Moree, which has been on the Notice Paper since 4 November last year? When will he answer my question No. 624, placed on the Notice Paper on 26 November last year, regarding the provision of information about all the capital outlays for property Australia-wide and subsequent funding by the Aboriginal Development Commission and his Department of Aboriginal Affairs? When will he answer my question No. 621 regarding the purchase and the running costs of the Oasis Hotel, Walgett, placed on the Notice Paper on 18 February this year? Does he think that the millions of dollars expended on these and other unproductive investments would have been better spent in Aboriginal housing, job training, education and health? Because of the public interest in these matters will the Minister refer these issues that I have mentioned to the Auditor-General's inquiry for a thorough investigation and report to this Parliament? Mr HAND —Yesterday I referred to two of those points in my comments and I did make the comment that I would be supplying the information to the honourable member because I know he has a deep interest in particularly-- Mr Howard —What has this to do with-- Mr HAND —Just a moment. He has a deep interest in particularly those cases concerning his own electorate. In fact, yesterday we had a discussion and both he and I later this afternoon will be meeting one of the groups involved in a particular case that he mentioned. The answers will be provided and, as I said yesterday, they will be provided probably within about 24 hours. The question did go to the point of whether I thought some of these projects were a `waste'; I think that was the word used. I would remind the honourable member and the House that one of the cases he mentioned goes back to 1982. I think he appreciates the fact that there is a long period of time involved in at least two of these cases. They are very complex and complicated but I will be discussing them with the honourable member and supplying the answer. Mr SCHOLES —My question is directed to the Minister for Science, Customs and Small Business. In view of the finding that cement is being imported from Japan at dumped prices, can the Minister indicate why no dumping duty has been applied? Does this give a competitive advantage for discounting to the importer? Does the Minister have authority to apply a dumping duty retrospectively should the importer use the price advantage gained by dumping as a basis for unfair competition? Did the Minister seek information or comment from the Australian cement manufacturers before deciding not to apply a duty? Mr BARRY JONES —The Australian cement industry lodged a dumping complaint on the basis that future exports to Australia of cement from Japan threatened material injury to the Australian industry. The Australian Customs Service (ACS) notified the initiation of the investigation on 16 May. The first shipment of cement arrived on 30 August and the ACS published a preliminary finding on 21 October. Essentially the ACS found that although the imports of cement from Japan are dumped, the ACS has calculated the non-injurious price level as being much lower than normal value. If anti-dumping measures were to be taken they could be taken only to the extent of lifting the import price to the non-injurious price level in accordance with Australia's legislation and obligations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. However, this imposition would not force any increase in the price of the imported product to end users. The imports into Victoria account for less than 3 per cent of the estimated Australian market of 6.4 million tonnes per annum. ACS has ascertained that the imports into Victoria are not causing or threatening material injury to Australian industry on the basis of no price suppression, as the imported goods are being sold at the Victorian market prices. There were no lost sales at 1987-88 production levels, which were high as Victorian cement producers operated at or near their full capacity. The predicted volume of imports is expected to be absorbed by the forecast market expansion in Victoria and the most conservative estimate is 130,000 tonnes. However, I have indicated that if the circumstances were to change-for example, if the imports were to be re-sourced from elsewhere at a dumped price, which did then cause material injury-the ACS would regard this as a new situation and fresh action could and would be taken very rapidly. There is no power on the part of a Minister to change the law about tariff levels on his own motion. We have set up the Anti-Dumping Authority so it can make appropriate recommendations to the Government. Indeed, I have indicated to the cement industry that if it were to challenge the nature of the finding by ACS, although technically it would not be eligible under the existing law to apply as of right for a review to the dumping authority, I would use my ministerial discretion to direct the dumping authority to review the matter as if it were an appeal. So the matter raised by the honourable member for Corio is being looked at very carefully. I think he can assure his constituents that their interests are being looked after. Mr BEAZLEY(Swan-Leader of the House) —Papers are tabled as listed in the schedule circulated to honourable members earlier today. Details of the papers will be recorded in Hansard and the Votes and Proceedings. The schedule read as follows- Steel Industry Authority-Annual Report 1987-88-section 31 of the Steel Industry Authority Act 1983. Independent Air Fares Committee-Annual Report 1987-88-section 32 of the Independent Air Fares Committee Act 1981. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —I have received a letter from the honourable member for Richmond (Mr Blunt) proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely: The crises confronting Australian aviation. 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 BLUNT(Richmond)(2.50) —Today, we are debating one of the most glaring examples of this Government's failure to take a hard decision. This Government is very fond of telling us that it is quite capable of addressing the hard decisions that are necessary to be taken in the best interests of the Australian community and the Australian economy. But, when it really comes down to taking those hard decisions, absolutely nothing is done. Today I will address my remarks to Kingsford-Smith Airport in Sydney. I am sure the Minister for Telecommunications and Aviation Support (Mr Punch), who is at the table, is well aware of this matter. He is the only Minister responsible for this particular area in the chamber today. His electorate is located very close to that airport, and, of course, that is an issue which we will discuss later in this debate. We will discuss the significance of this Minister and his electorate and the impact that it has on the political process and what that means in terms of cost to the Australian travelling public, to the aviation industry and, of course, to the tourist industry in Australia. Let me quote what was said by Mr John Riley, the Chairman of the New South Wales Air Transport Council. In a speech the other day to a conference in Tamworth, at which the Minister was present, he said: The greatest challenge facing aviation in Australia today and tomorrow is the capacity of Kingsford-Smith Airport. What Mr Riley was alluding to was the inability of that airport at the present time and under this Government's policy to cope with aviation growth in this country. Any person who has caught a plane on the eastern seaboard of this country knows that he or she will encounter serious delays, which not only inconvenience travellers and have an impact on air safety standards in Australia but also cost real money, and not just to aviation operators as these costs are passed on to travellers in the form of higher air fares. The effect of those increases flows through to the entire economy. Perhaps people do not understand just how serious this is getting. Qantas Airways Ltd, Australia's government-owned airline, says that unless the capacity of Kingsford-Smith Airport is increased our tourist boom will be stifled. I quote from yesterday's press for the Minister, in case he has not read it: The boom in tourism to Australia would halt unless the Federal Government reversed its opposition to a third runway at Sydney Airport, Qantas said yesterday. But the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA)- which is another creation of this Government- has already approved new buildings to be erected near the boundaries of the airport, which would prevent aircraft landing on the runway proposed by Qantas. This is very serious, because the Government not only is prepared to adhere to a policy of not building an additional runway at Sydney but also is prepared to adopt a deliberate course of limiting the options of a future government in this area. People say aircraft noise is significant. Aircraft noise affects 78,000 people in Sydney very seriously. Let us not deny that; it does. The Minister has said on occasions that it is one million people. If he mentions that figure in here today, it is incumbent on him to tell us where that figure comes from, because the Air Transport Council of New South Wales quotes a figure of 78,000. So the Minister should not come up with any pumped up figures when he responds later; let us talk about the realities of the situation as it is in New South Wales. Sydney Airport is the ninth busiest airport in the world, according to the people of New South Wales. It has more international activity than all the rest of the Australian international airports. But it is unique in that it is not a multi-runway airport-and under this Government it never will be. It has capacity limitations. Its theoretical maximum capacity is 220,000 movements a year. In fiscal year 1987-88, there were 211,725 movements, and already for selected periods it is operating at over its theoretical maximum. When bad weather occurs massive delays result there. Sydney Airport has a capacity for 32 arrivals an hour. If we have bad weather, that is reduced to 15; and in fact the airport can be closed. We get delays of three hours to scheduled services and five hours for others. Only the other day Continental Airlines Inc. had a 747 sitting on the end of the runway for an hour. It was moved from one runway to another. Does the Minister know what that cost? It cost $8,500 an hour. That is what it costs to sit a 747 at the end of a runway-and the traffic at Kingsford-Smith Airport will continue to increase. Mr Lee —What is your answer? Mr BLUNT —Our answer is to build a third runway. That is what we will do. We will build a third runway. But let us get back to the issue at hand. A few years ago, in an attempt to come to grips with this increasing traffic at Kingsford-Smith Airport, slot times were introduced. Now the Civil Aviation Authority is saying, `We have done all we can. We can do no more to increase the capacity of Kingsford-Smith Airport, Sydney'. That is what it really comes down to. So the Minister said, `We will upgrade the terminal'. That is marvellous. It should have been done years ago; the Government has been in office for 5 1/2 years and there have been all sorts of inquiries and reports into the matter. We now have a proposal to spend $214m-about 5 1/2 years too late. It is a pity the Government did not listen to the honourable member for Parramatta (Mr John Brown) when he was telling it what would happen with tourism. Does the Government not realise what is happening? We will have just over two million tourists this year; the projection was for 5 million tourists by the end of the century; and that projection has been revised to over seven million tourists. How will the Government get them into the country? What will it do? Will it go to Boeing and say, `Build us a 747 that flies like a helicopter and we will drop them straight in'? It is not going to happen. The only way we can cope with the growth in traffic is to build that third runway. Not only have we this problem with the CAA and the upgraded terminal, but also both Ansett Airlines of Australia and Australian Airlines have commitments to increase by one-third the parking facilities for their aircraft at Kingsford-Smith Airport. They have just signed 20-year leases with the Federal Airports Corporation (FAC) to upgrade their terminals. They will not reduce the number of flights going in there. And, of course, Qantas will expand its jet base. Of course, all the international airlines that operate into Australia at present have landing rights for more flights and they will use them into the future. This issue involving Qantas raises another question to which I refer in passing. Qantas will spend $6 billion expanding its fleet, when it works out how this Government will finance it. The real problem is that there is policy paralysis on the other side of the chamber. When it comes to addressing the issues that the Government confronts day by day, it gets policy paralysis; it is too hard. The paralysis in this particular case is because of one electorate. There is a major conflict of interest between this Minister sitting at the table and the needs of aviation in Australia, the travelling public and the tourist industry. For the sake of one lousy seat, this Government will not address the problem. Mr Acting Speaker, if you do not believe me, let me illustrate how paranoid the Government is in talking about this issue. I quote from a press release from Gary Punch, Minister for Telecommunications and Aviation Support, which refers to the curfew changes at Sydney Airport. It states: The Minister said the development did not call for any expansion of the runways and restated the Hawke Government's firm opposition to any second runway. There is a second runway there; he really meant a third one. The Minister should talk to his press office about that. The Minister really should be precise. The Government says, `Don't worry: we are building the new airport at Badgerys Creek'. But at the bottom of this press release we get some clues as to what Badgerys Creek is all about. The Minister says, `Badgerys Creek will be operating within five years'. The holding time of a 747 is pretty long, but it is not five years. Badgerys Creek was referred to as an important general aviation airport. Honourable members know what general aviation is; it is light aircraft. It is not 747s, 767s and 727s. It is none of those. It is Pipers, Cessnas and all of those aircraft. This is what the Minister is talking about. What will he do about it? Qantas is quite open about this matter. It says there is a major problem. It has said: Inbound tourism is growing 8 per cent faster than Qantas estimates earlier this year of 18 per cent annual growth. The promotional efforts of other States are not moving people out of Sydney. Most foreign tourists insist on landing in Sydney. It is the natural airline hub for the South Pacific. It is the preferred destination for airline travellers. Qantas says: Some flights could be diverted to Brisbane or Melbourne, but those airports are approaching capacity during the peak arrival times. Honourable members should listen to this: For several hours each day it was impossible to fit an extra international jet into any three of the East Coast capitals. Qantas then goes on to say that it plans to double its fleet and double its flights. I ask the Minister to say where those flights will land. What will he do about it? At present we have a proposal by the FAC to introduce discriminatory landing and parking charges at Sydney Airport to reduce the number of light aircraft. The Minister, when he goes to his electorate, talks about the need to control air traffic noise pollution. He is running a policy under which small light aircraft will be moved out from Sydney Airport. That is quite an interesting policy. The aircraft are small and they do not make a lot of noise. But guess what is going to happen to the slot times that they leave behind? Has the Minister told the good people of Barton that these small aircraft are going to be replaced by jets or has he not figured that they could probably work that out themselves? There is not even any logical consistency in the Minister's approach to this whole issue. What is the Minister going to do about the capacity at Bankstown Airport when general aviation aircraft under 5,700 kilograms are moved there? Bankstown is operating at near operational capacity. If intrastate commuter airlines are moved to Bankstown, money will have to be spent to upgrade the airport's standards and there will be some operational and safety difficulties. When are we going to get a statement about this matter? What we do not have from this Government is any sort of comprehensive statement about its master plan for Sydney Airport-or in fact for the whole aviation industry right throughout Australia. This comes back to the very important issue that I raised about what Botany Council is approving at present and what the CAA is unable to do. Mr Howard —A famous council for the Labor Party. Mr BLUNT —A very famous council. If the Minister wants any guidance, he could probably talk to Laurie Brereton about it. I am sure that Laurie would tell him all about it. He will tell the Minister the ins and outs of it and whom he should talk to. The Minister could probably achieve anything he liked, despite the fact that, because of the Government's policy, the CAA does not have power to do anything. The position at present is that Botany Council is about to approve development applications for buildings on the perimeter of the airport that go above the general 15-metre limit. They go to 51 metres, which is the old 150-foot height limit for development in proximity to airports. Qantas, the government-owned airline, is worried that these buildings effectively prevent the development of the third runway which it has proposed. This matter has been referred to the CAA for a response. The CAA, being a fairly efficient and pretty good organisation, went out and got a legal opinion. It was told that it would be in a very difficult situation if it objected to these buildings. This opinion was given on the basis that it was Government policy that there would be no third runway. So the CAA could not hypothetically, on spec, say, `No, you cannot put these buildings up'. The Minister knows this. But he has done nothing to help the CAA's situation, because he is determined to ensure that Sydney Airport is frozen in time, no matter what the consequences and the costs are. The real problem is that the Minister cannot put his own political career behind the significance of aviation and the growth of Sydney Airport. The Minister should really consider whether his conflict of interest should make him walk away from making this decision. Mr Lloyd —He is putting the future of the tourist industry of Australia at risk for his own selfish purposes. Mr BLUNT —That is right. The good people of Barton might be backing him. However, I wonder whether they really are, because a survey conducted a few years ago indicated that most of them were in favour of the development of a third runway. But we have a situation in which the most significant airport in Australia-and it is going to be the most significant airport into the future-is being held back because of the political interests of one member and the right wing machine of the Australian Labor Party. As I said, this is a very important issue. The Government has to overcome its paranoia and address the real issue. It has made some curfew changes but it should make a few more, because the technology is such that aircraft are getting quieter and larger. It is quite possible to bring more aircraft in at later times. It is not appropriate to say that aircraft can be diverted to other airports. As Qantas said, those airports are absolutely chock-a-block and there is not much else that can be done. Under the Government's current plans, Badgerys Creek will operate general aviation within five years. Badgerys Creek is needed. Let me assure the House that we on this side recognise the need for this airport. We would certainly go ahead and build it. But it is not the solution to the problem facing aviation in Australia at present. The Government should be building the third runway at Sydney Airport. If it took a decision now, that runway would come on stream at about the same time as the new terminals. That would be a masterstroke, would it not? The Government would actually coordinate something. Terminals and runways would be finished at the same time, and maybe we would get away from the lousy reputation that the Government has given us in the past few years for totally inadequate airports. The Government should proceed with Badgerys Creek in an orderly fashion. Badgerys Creek should not be used just for general aviation. The Government should recognise that Sydney is growing to such an extent that there is going to be a need for a second major airport and that there is a role for Badgerys Creek in terms of interstate and intrastate transport and, eventually, international transport. If we look at what Qantas has had to say about Badgerys Creek in terms of international transport, we can see that it is going to be like Narita Airport: it will be 15 to 20 years before it is a major international port. That is what Qantas says about this issue that the Government will not come to grips with. Mr PUNCH(Barton-Minister for Telecommunications and Aviation Support)(3.05) —I am really flattered. We just heard the honourable member for Richmond (Mr Blunt) say, over too long a period, that it is all because of me that we are not building another runway at Sydney (Kingsford-Smith) Airport. Occasionally I like to claim credit for that. But the honourable member should bear in mind that for some two decades now it has been Australian Labor Party policy that we should not build another runway. This view has been consistently held at State, Federal and local government levels. This view has been consistently held for two basic reasons. First of all, the building of another runway is not in any way a sensible proposition. Secondly, another runway would be to the detriment of the 1.1 million Australians who live in the municipalities that surround Sydney (Kingsford-Smith) Airport. Let me say at the outset that I find it a little amazing that the honourable member went into a diatribe about how this Government has not been keen to make the tough decisions. I wonder where he thinks the May Independent Review of Economic Regulation of Domestic Aviation came from. When the Opposition was in government its whole back bench was on about this matter. What did the honourable member for Tangney (Mr Shack) have to say about that? We did it, and we are doing something about it. The Bosch Independent Inquiry into Aviation Cost Recovery was initiated by this Government. We put in place structures like the Federal Airports Corporation (FAC) and the Civil Aviation Authority to make airline operations in this country work, and work effectively. We set up structures so that they would continue to operate effectively into the future. The honourable member for Richmond talked about Sydney Airport. The Government's consistency on this airport cannot be doubted. It is a long held policy decision from which we have never been deterred. Our policy is that we should acquire and build the second Sydney airport at Badgerys Creek, a site that we established after a suitable and proper process, and that in the meantime we have to make adjustments at Sydney (Kingsford-Smith) Airport to allow that airport to cope. Frankly, if there is one line I am sick and tired of hearing, it is this tired, hackneyed old piece that, if we do not build another runway, the tourism boom will end. There is no second runway protruding into the bay-or third runway, as the honourable member wants to describe it-of the type that is wanted by the honourable member. But the record growth in tourism under this Government cannot be disputed. The honourable member's argument is paradoxical. What is the Government doing about Sydney Airport? First of all, just recently the Federal Airports Corporation announced a $214m extension to the international terminal building, with associated apron works and gateways, to take the loading bays from 14 to 22. These extensions are designed to meet the peak periods in Sydney where there is a problem at the moment. That is what we are doing. The problems with that terminal have been brewing for years. It took this Government to correct those problems. Action was taken several years ago at Sydney Airport in regard to baggage handling facilities and so forth. Let me talk about the curfew for a moment. Honourable members opposite have a classic hypocritical stance on this matter. Members of the local Liberal Party parade up and down the streets saying, `We will not touch the curfew at Sydney. We will not touch the Sydney curfew at all'. The honourable member for Cook (Mr Dobie) is holier-than-thou about the whole issue. The curfew, after the runway, is target number one in this chamber and in every country newspaper across the State. It is the subject of repeated targeting. If honourable members opposite think that the people of Sydney do not know what a coalition government would do with the curfew, they are mistaking them for fools, because they do. What has the Government done in respect of the curfew? We have adjusted to the hard reality of finding a curfew pattern that provides, firstly, more flexibility and capability for Kingsford-Smith Airport in the short term while, secondly, improving the lot of the local residents if we can. We think that we have found a formula that does that-a formula that adds two extra hours to the day with a quota of flights between 11 and 12 at night and five and six in the morning. It is a trial, and so it should be, because we want to see what the effect of it is. The curfew is the second instance of what we are doing at Kingsford-Smith to help that place cope while Badgerys Creek is being built. The third issue which the honourable member raised is the peak hour charges of the Federal Airports Corporation. It is of interest to note that at the moment general aviation (GA) aircraft take up some 15 per cent of peak hour capacity at Sydney. There would not be a member on either side of the House who has not sat on the tarmac at Kingsford-Smith Airport while plane loads of tourists in 747s, domestic airliners and so forth were held up by two- and four-seaters. The FAC has come up with a peak hour charging proposal for the hours 7.30 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. to 7 p.m. for GA non-regular public transport flights. The honourable member for Parkes (Mr Cobb) interjected a short while ago, `What are you doing about the country commuters?'. He should know that country commuters are not affected by proposals such as this. That is a simple fact. This proposal would not affect helicopters nor would it affect domestic and international aircraft. Again, we are following the same theme, the same policy direction-to give Kingsford-Smith an extra capability in the short term while Badgerys Creek is being built. What else is being done? The joint Federal-State task force will report to me very shortly. It should have reported by now and I have been, to say the least, hurrying it up. It will examine a range of issues in the light of helping Kingsford-Smith cope better while the second Sydney airport is built. Issues such as hubbing through Sydney have to be explored. All such issues must be explored. Sydney's airport tarmacs are a very precious resource. Sydney's airport tarmacs are roughly one-third the size of those of most major international airports. The shadow Minister, the honourable member for Richmond, a few moments ago talked about the business that goes through Kingsford-Smith compared with a number of other airports. What he said in this respect is quite true, but he should note that Sydney Airport is about one-third the size of most other major airports. It is hemmed in on all sides except the Botany Bay side, and it is hemmed in to some extent on that side by the nature of the industries at Kurnell and Botany. That issue should not be dismissed lightly, either. That brings us to Badgerys Creek. I found it very interesting that the honourable member acknowledged that we need to get on and build the airport at Badgerys Creek. That seems to be a pretty standard departure, to use airline vernacular, from the honourable member for Deakin (Mr Beale) and the honourable member for North Sydney (Mr Spender). I find it quite amazing that he matched his rhetoric with such a departure, because the Opposition's policy seems to have done more somersaults than a Romanian gymnast. It goes back as far as 1981 when on two occasions the then Liberal Prime Minister, Mr Malcolm Fraser, said that a second Sydney airport had to be found. So the Labor Party, in opposition and now in government, has not changed its position on this matter; we are just finding it active viewing watching the Opposition change its policy. No doubt it will change it again before the next election. We come to the issue of the runway. Not once did the honourable member for Richmond say what sort of runway was needed. Why did he not? It is because, like his predecessors, he does not know. It is as simple as that. Does he mean a close-spaced parallel runway west or a close-spaced parallel runway east? Does he mean a stubby runway for small general aviation, a wide-spaced parallel runway east or a wide-spaced parallel runway west? Does he know how much the resumptions would cost on the properties that would have to be resumed? Has he gone into the estimates for the fill requirements for coming into the bay? According to one estimate, one of the larger runways, which we would have to build to get any economically sane capability or extra capacity at Kingsford-Smith out of another runway, would require some 40 million cubic metres of fill. I invite the honourable member for Richmond to identify where we are to get that fill from. We cannot get it out of Botany Bay. I invite the honourable member to tell me how quickly we could build the preferred runway. He bandies around figures such as five years. The former Minister, the honourable member for Hume (Mr Fife), sitting next to him, was not too sure about that when he announced a close-spaced parallel runway. He was not so keen then. The honourable member for Richmond ought also to bear in mind that in the case of one of the runway proposals it would take one tip-truck arriving on site every 20 seconds for five years to bring the fill in. The honourable member asks where the 1.1 million people who will be affected come from. I will tell him where they are. They are the ratepayers of the councils which will have to pay for the cracked roads and the diminished standard of living in that area, right across that part of Sydney. Under him, one-fifteenth of the population of Australia would bear that cost. There is no doubt about it. If I had the time we could talk about environmental issues. Such a development would destroy Australia's birthplace, Botany Bay. But, even if we accept all of that, as the honourable member for Richmond clearly does, to what avail would we do it? What additional capacity would we generate at Kingsford-Smith with that huge and bottomless pit of public expenditure, if such a runway could be built? I believe that it is the classic urban myth; that it cannot be built. The honourable gentleman did not mention capacity once because he does not know. That is the truth. The truth is that we can meet Sydney's long term air needs only by getting on with the construction of a second Sydney airport. What are we doing about that? I will tell the House. We have said it on a number of occasions, but I will say it again. The Minister for Transport and Communications (Mr Willis), who has primary carriage of this issue because it is a policy issue, and I will be taking a submission to Cabinet, we trust before the end of the year, to speed up the development at Badgerys Creek. That is consistent with the pronouncement by the former Minister, Senator Gareth Evans, in August this year about the need to get on with the second Sydney airport. He identified the four-phase development at Badgerys Creek, commencing-not limiting, as the honourable member implies-with general aviation standards. He even gave some rough figures-$10m to $15m on the first phase and $15m to $25m on the second phase. The honourable member walks around the bush saying that this Government has no clear policy conception of these issues. We have a clear policy conception about Sydney's airport needs and are pursuing it. I might say that we have never been aided in meeting Sydney's airport needs by any Liberal-National Party Government, State or Federal, and the present New South Wales Government is no exception. The Liberal and National parties have a simple cement psychology. `Slap a bit of cement in there. We don't know how much it will cost, how long it will take or what capacity it will generate'. They produce no figures and no facts-just more of the urban myth about a third runway. I will tell honourable members why it has not been built to date. If honourable members opposite really believed that that runway could be built when they were in government, they would have got on and done it, and not left it until the final hours when their regime was crumbling, as they did in 1981. It is as simple as that. Those opposite are not interested in Sydney's airport needs. We are, and so are the people who live in the area. There are 14,000 people who work at Kingsford-Smith Airport whose interests we are concerned with, on top of the other 14,000 whose jobs directly depend on it. We are interested in Sydney's airport needs; those opposite are not. Very clearly, as has been traditional Liberal Party philosophy in this country for 70 years, they would rather see the business transferred to Melbourne. Under us it will not be. We have a sensible, logical plan that is valid not only for the aviation industry but also for the residents. Let me say finally that I saw Captain Terrell's remarks. I just put it on the record that it is the Government, not Qantas Airways Ltd, that sets policy on aviation matters; and the Government, not Qantas, will continue to set aviation policy. Mr JULL(Fadden)(3.20) —Every time a member of the Australian public buys an airline ticket and worries about the cost of that ticket, I hope that he will blame this Government and the Minister for Telecommunications and Aviation Support (Mr Punch). Every time people read of a further increase in the price of international air tickets, I hope they will realise that the blame rests with this Government and the Minister. Today we have had a typical example of the `couldn't care less' attitude that has been displayed towards the whole aviation industry by this Government since it came to power in 1983. I take great exception to some of the statements made by the Minister this afternoon because what he has said is patently not true. He talked about the grand plan for Sydney and for Australian aviation, but there is not one shred of evidence that anything is happening. I take exception to some of his remarks about Sydney Airport. One thing that has not been raised this afternoon is the situation in the airport terminal. He made brief reference to the fact that the Government is looking at changing things there, but for more than two years Sydney's international terminal has been an absolute disaster. Despite the bandaid remedies he has applied in recent times, every international tourist who comes to Australia takes at least one hour to get through immigration and at least one hour to get through Customs and is fed up with the place within an hour after arrival. Nothing has been done to improve that situation and it is getting worse. We cannot say that it is all about slots because there has been a massive change in the number of arrivals at Sydney international from the morning to the evening. We now have a double disaster area. The disaster area exists not only from 6 o'clock until 9.30 in the morning but also at night. With four or five arrivals and a couple of take-offs then too, one cannot move in the terminal; it takes an hour to get through. It is no wonder that the surveys that are made of departing visitors to Australia show that they do not like those delays and, in particular, the attitude of some of the personnel who serve at the airport. I have a great deal of sympathy for the Customs officers at Sydney international purely because of the sheer hell conditions in which they have to work. There is no doubt at all that the worst possible introduction and farewell that we can give to international tourists coming into and leaving Australia is the perception that they get in Sydney. I now turn to the impact this `do nothing at Sydney international' attitude will have on the Minister's electorate. At present about 18,000 people are employed at Sydney international terminal. Does the Minister realise that his part of the world attracts about $900m a year in expenditure? He is going to get rid of that direct expenditure by airlines and infrastructure from his area. Is he worried about that? Is he worried that his head in the sand attitude will deprive the young people of his electorate and those in other electorates of much needed employment? His is one of the high unemployment areas of Sydney, but he stands there and says, `I don't care what happens to young people'. If we had had a sensible redevelopment approach to Sydney international those young people might have had a chance of getting employment. The Minister has not taken that into consideration. I hope that when he walks up the main street of St George people go up to him and say, `I am unemployed. Thank you very much for not allowing the proper expansion of Sydney international so that my sons and daughters might have an opportunity to get a job'. The trouble with this Government is that it does not realise that aviation is big business. Lots of benefits can be gained for Australia's international economy and lots of benefits can be gained through employment for our young people, but obviously that is disregarded. We heard of the tremendous advances that have been made by the establishment of the Federal Airports Corporation (FAC) and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). I say on record in this place that so far those decisions have proved to be absolutely disastrous. The prime reason the decisions have been disastrous is simply that the FAC does not know what its responsibilities are; the CAA does not know what its responsibilities are; and indeed this Minister does not know what their responsibilities are. I asked him a question in the House last Thursday week regarding security at Brisbane Airport and he got the answer wrong; he stuffed it up. He did not know which part of the operation airport security came under. We have heard all about the situation at Sydney international, which is a disaster, but let us look around the rest of Australia. The prime reason Brisbane international cannot take any more international traffic at the moment is that the Government has given it only five gates. Because of the Government's small-minded attitude and its refusal to proceed with the construction of a new international terminal for Brisbane, we are missing out. One of the options which the Government had to take some of the pressure off Sydney international has been lost. As I have said in this House on a number of occasions, private enterprise corporations are prepared to build a brand new terminal costing the taxpayers of Australia not 1c, but the Government closes its mind to that. What is worse, the Minister for the Arts, Sport, the Environment, Tourism and Territories (Senator Richardson)-this Minister's bosom buddy-gave a major speech in Brisbane last Thursday to the Queensland Tourist Industry Association's annual lunch, at which I was present, and I was appalled at what he said. When he was asked about future growth in tourism he rightly said that there would be about five million coming in the year 2000. In fact, the figure will be 7.8 million. When the follow-up question came to Senator Richardson about what he intended to do about the lack of facilities at Brisbane international he said, `Frankly, I think that there are other areas that are more important than the Brisbane international airport because everybody wants to go to Sydney'. That is probably true. Fifty-eight per cent of the international traffic wants to go through to Sydney. Qantas Airways Ltd says that it will double its capacity by the turn of this century. And what does the Government propose to do? It intends to build a light aircraft strip at Badgerys Creek. Let us get this on the record: How long will it take before there will be full international operations at Badgerys Creek? The latest projection is that it will occur in about the year 2015. So what will we do until then? It will cost about $3 billion, and the Government says that it is not possible to get a third runway in. Of course a parallel runway is possible. Of course it is possible to get quick taxiway exits, which would relieve the traffic. Of course it is possible to kick the air traffic controllers around a little to try to get them to change some of their procedures. But no, the Government does not have the intestinal fortitude to do that either. Of course it is possible to get the whole procedures at Sydney international into some semblance of order. The Government is not just charging the passengers of Australia higher fares because of its head in the sand attitude. Over the last couple of years, there has been a magnificent increase in the amount of air freight carried in Australia. In September there was an increase in domestic air freight of 7.6 per cent, up to around 40,000 tonnes. That is not counting international air freight. I invite honourable members to look at the freight forwarders and the international freight airlines. They are all screaming for space at Sydney international. There is space capacity there, but the Department and this Minister will do absolutely nothing about it. They are helping to ruin the export market because of that sort of attitude. The whole thing begs comprehension. It is no wonder that people get terribly worried and upset at this continuing lack of effort by the Government. On numerous occasions in this House we have talked about the growth of international tourism, the contribution that it makes to our economy and the fact that in the last five years an additional 400,000 jobs have been created, but what do we have? Brisbane's terminal is at capacity; Sydney's terminal is at capacity; Cairns is out of control with more and more airlines trying to fly in; there are difficulties in Melbourne with the whole radar set-up; there are tin sheds in Adelaide, in which nobody is terribly interested; and the Government managed to stuff up the Perth terminal. On and on the story goes. The greatest warts on the backside to progress and the future growth of the tourism industry in Australia happen to be the Minister's Department and the attitude that the Minister has taken in recent times on these questions. Until we get some sort of action and sense into the situation, we can never realise the full growth potential of tourism in this country, Never let us forget the figures of the Bureau of Industry Economics that show that every time we increase the number of international tourists coming into this country we provide another 1,400 jobs for young people. The attitude of the Minister and his Department would indicate that they could not care less about that. I hope that the message gets through to the people of St George. Mr LEE(Dobell)(3.29) —I point out to the honourable member for Fadden (Mr Jull) that the Minister for Telecommunications and Aviation Support (Mr Punch) is the honourable member for Barton, not the honourable member for St George. The honourable member for Barton makes one thing very clear; that is, the stark difference between the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Howard), who is leaving the chamber now, and our side of politics. The Leader of the Opposition wants to build a third runway into Botany Bay. He also wants to abolish the curfew which currently protects the one million Sydney residents who are affected by aircraft noise. The Leader of the Opposition does not care about those people. He does not care that their lives are affected, that they cannot get to sleep at night and that they cannot pick up television reception as planes zoom in and out of Mascot Airport hour after hour. There are probably people in the galleries today who live near Mascot airport and therefore know what it is like to live near an international airport that operates 24 hours a day. The Leader of the Opposition, who lives in Bennelong on the north shore, does not care about those people and the effect that a 24-hour a day international airport has on them. They are the sorts of people that he is not concerned about. Come the next election campaign he will be shaking hands in the main streets of Hurstville and St George and trying to pretend to the people in those areas that he is not really going to run a third runway in Botany Bay, he is not really going to abolish the curfew, that is something he will look at at a future time. Today the Opposition has put it on the record. The shadow Minister for aviation, the honourable member for Richmond (Mr Blunt), has said that aircraft are getting quieter and in his opinion more jets can be brought in at night. The shadow Minister is saying that the curfew which currently exists at Sydney International Airport should go. The Opposition wants to have jumbo jets and the loud jets of Ansett Airlines of Australia and Australian Airlines coming into Mascot at 2 a.m., 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. What will that do to the people who live in this area? The shadow Minister commutes from his farm on the New South Wales north coast. The people who live in Sydney should not have to sacrifice their quality of life so that the honourable member and his mates can land there in their jets. People such as John Elliott who are flying around in sleek gold-plated executive jets think that they should be able to land their executive jets at Mascot at any time of the day or night, any day of the year. I think that the people of Australia have a right to decide who uses those runways at Mascot. They are a scarce resource. Anyone who saw the Sunday television program a few weeks ago which showed a small light aircraft with one or two passengers delaying a jumbo jet carrying hundreds of passengers as it was approaching Mascot airport would understand the problems we face at Mascot. As the Minister said, 15 per cent of its capacity is used by these small aeroplanes, the Pipers and Cherokees, that the shadow Minister mentioned. The shadow Minister believes that those small aircraft should be allowed to hold up the very large jets which are carrying the bulk of Australia's domestic and international commuters. We on this side of the chamber are prepared to take action to make sure that Sydney Airport works better. This cannot be done by building a third runway into Botany Bay with, as the Minister said, trucks dumping fill into Botany Bay every 30 seconds for five years. That is not the answer. The answer is not to abolish the curfew. The answer is to get the small planes and helicopters which are currently using Mascot out of Mascot. It is ridiculous that the jumbo jets are held up by these small aircraft, especially when the runways at Sydney International Airport are a scare resource. Let me go to the history of the proposed second international airport for Sydney. In the long term that is the answer to Sydney's airport needs. In the 1970s we had a Liberal Prime Minister, John Gorton, wanting to build Sydney's second international airport at a place called Towra Point in the electorate of Cook. The honourable member for Cook (Mr Dobie) ran a great campaign to save Towra Point. It ran along the lines of, `Do not build Sydney's second international airport at Towra Point because the residents of Cook would be affected by that international airport'. He had a great win. Prime Minister Gorton backed down. In the next Liberal Government-the McMahon Government-no decision was made, as with many other areas under that Government. The Fraser Government set up the MANS committee. It received lots of submissions but could not make a decision. The Fraser Government was in power for seven years. What did it do about a second international airport for Sydney? Could it come up with a site? Could it pick a site in the electorate of the honourable member for Dundas (Mr Ruddock)? No, because he was too busy protecting his constituents. The Liberal Government could not force itself to make a decision. It was too gutless. It had no backbone. It was left to the Hawke Labor Government. It is the only Federal government which has taken the tough decision of picking Sydney's second international airport site. That site is at Badgerys Creek. The Minister has made it clear that there will be a phased development of Sydney's next international airport at Badgerys Creek. That is the long term answer. The answer is not the Opposition's solution of building another runway into Botany Bay and destroying its national park. The solution is not to abolish the curfew and have people kept awake all night. The answer is the phased development of Badgerys Creek. The Minister has also ensured that there will be other improvements at Mascot to make sure that it runs better. He has announced that $214m will be spent on the new international airport. The shadow Minister scoffs at that. That is something his party never did when it was in power. This Minister is responsible for the Federal Airports Corporation announcing that there will be a new international terminal which will provide not 14 gates as we have at the moment but 22 gates. Many people who fly through Sydney Airport complain about the facilities at Mascot due to the massive expansion in foreign tourists visiting Australia. I can understand that. What is the Government's response to this massive expansion of our tourists? Mr Cadman —None. Mr LEE —The honourable member for Mitchell says there has been none. It shows how little he knows about this whole area. This Government is spending $40m of taxpayers' funds on expanding and improving the existing international terminal at Mascot, including new baggage handling facilities. I hope next time the honourable member is jetting off around the world on an overseas trip he will be able to take advantage of the new baggage handling facilities. Then he will not make the ridiculous comment that we are not making any changes. When we look at the aviation industry in Australia as a whole we see that the most fundamental change which will occur in this decade will be due to the fact that this Government has given notice that it will be terminating the two-airline policy. What did the Opposition do about the two-airline policy? The Liberal and National parties signed the two-airline agreement. They brought in regulation in 1952 when in government. The last time the two-airline agreement was renewed was in 1981 when the shadow Minister who is attempting to interject from the Opposition benches was running the National Party in New South Wales. At the same time the National Party in this chamber was fighting as hard as it could to preserve the two-airline agreement. It was fighting the honourable member for Tangney (Mr Shack) and his deregulatory views because they were a danger to the protection of country residents. The National Party rump had a win. It ensured that the two-airline agreement was signed for another 10 years, locking Australia into a restricted regulated environment until the 1990s. Last year this Government, with courage, introduced in this House a motion giving notice of termination of the agreement. I am pleased to say that it finally got the support of the Opposition. Perhaps the National Party has reconsidered its position on this matter. This Government has introduced other reforms in aviation. We have renegotiated overseas agreements with the United States and Japan to ensure that Qantas Airways Ltd is able to have fairer access to overseas markets. That will help not only Qantas but also Australia because Qantas earns money for all of Australia. The Government has reformed the structure of Australian Airlines so that it is no longer a statutory authority. It is now a company. It is owned 100 per cent by the Government, but it is a company and no longer has those unnecessary and needless bureaucratic controls which were hampering its performance. I believe that this Government can be proud of the changes it has made in aviation. It has reformed Australian Airlines. Qantas gets a fairer deal in overseas markets. The Minister is responsible for millions of dollars being spent at Mascot to make sure it works. He has tried to get rid of those small general aviation light aircraft that are holding up the large passenger jets that should be using Mascot. What is the Opposition's response? It is against our moving general aviation out of Mascot. It wants to abolish the curfew. It wants to build a third runway in Botany Bay, a proposal that just will not work. Perhaps the crisis is not in this Government's policy on aviation; the crisis is in the Opposition's lack of policy on aviation. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mr Mildren) —Order! The debate is concluded. Mr TUCKEY(O'Connor)(3.39) —I move: That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the member for O'Connor moving: That this House authorises the release of all in-camera evidence provided to the Standing Committee on Expenditure Inquiry 1984-85 into the Aboriginal Development Commission and all documents, proceedings and reports of this Committee to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and to all other persons directly associated with such inquiries into the Aboriginal Development Commission or the Aboriginal Affairs Department as the Minister authorises. In speaking to this motion for the suspension of Standing and Sessional Orders, I remind the House that it is the responsibility of every government to ensure that all expenditure is effective and that the operations of its departments are above charges of maladministration and/or fraud. The recent Senate Estimates committees hearings have uncovered evidence of gross maladministration amongst bodies associated with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs. We have asked the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs (Mr Hand), in response to his answers in this place that there was no hard evidence to assist him in his inquiries, to look to the reports tabled in this House of the inquiry into the Aboriginal Development Commission by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Expenditure. Consequently, when the Minister was asked today whether he had taken any action on those matters, he responded that because the evidence was given in camera he had no right to see it. Section 340 of the Standing Orders strictly provides for that, but it also provides that, if the House so approves, the matters can be released. The Opposition is pleased today to facilitate that for the Government, to give the Government the assistance it needs to do one simple thing: to run its affairs properly and, of course, to protect the rights of the people for whom this Parliament allocates those moneys. It is interesting to get the views of some of those people. This morning the Australian Broadcasting Corporation sent Mr Mike Carey to Walgett to discuss some of these matters. I would like to-- Mr Beazley —Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. This is strictly a motion debating the suspension of Standing Orders. It is not a motion permitting the detailing of the matters that are involved. The honourable member should stick to his motion. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mr Mildren) —Order! I ask the honourable member for O'Connor to speak to the motion. Mr TUCKEY —Mr Deputy Speaker, I am asking the House to suspend Standing Orders so that the Opposition can move a motion to assist the Government in its administration. It is my responsibility to give the House reasons as to why it should offer me this facility. One of the reasons I am putting this forward is that there is great concern in the community, and the House, therefore, should make the time available for this motion to be debated. Of course, the Leader of the House (Mr Beazley) has a simple solution: he can jump up, accept the motion, and vote with us. If the Government were to be embarrassed by the release of this information to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and his inquiries, I would be agreeably surprised. I am happy for the Leader of the House to say that he will accept the motion and vote to support it. In that case we can all go back to discussing matters on the Notice Paper. However, if he is not prepared to do that but is planning to oppose the motion, it is my job to explain to the House why it should support it. I was drawing the attention of honourable members to the fact that certain people would otherwise be in receipt of the moneys that this Parliament allocates to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and the Aboriginal Development Commission. This morning we were told by Mr Carey: Namoi reserve is out of sight, and out of mind. It's decidedly worse than Toomelah which was called Third World-- Mr Beazley —Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. There is a very strict interpretation of Standing Orders applying to a motion for the suspension of Standing Orders. It does not permit a canvassing of the issues related to the debate. It is a debate as to whether at a particular period of time there is a requirement for the House to debate this matter now, rather than having it placed on notice. That is what the suspension of Standing Orders is about. Quite clearly, the honourable member for O'Connor is now canvassing broad materials that would be appropriate for a debate on the motion itself. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mr Mildren) —I ask the honourable member for O'Connor to address the issue for the suspension of Standing Orders, rather than debate the issue. Mr TUCKEY —Mr Deputy Speaker, I have to say to you again that evidence must be given to the House as to the urgency of this motion. The urgency of this motion is contained in the views of the people on this reserve, who are browned off with the Government wasting their money on blooming gambling houses in Canberra. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member for O'Connor will listen to the Chair. The honourable member for O'Connor will be given ample protection by the Chair, but the Chair is requesting that he address the specific issue of the suspension of Standing Orders rather than debate the issue. If the suspension of Standing Orders is resolved in the affirmative, he will have ample time to address the specifics of his concern. Mr TUCKEY —Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Again I put to you that we are debating the urgency of that matter. I put it to you that it is urgent because there are allegations in the community relating to fraud, corruption and maladministration in the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and its associated commissions. They have been dealt with at some length in the Senate. Consequently, the Minister has told us that he lacks evidence. The Standing Committee on Expenditure has to my knowledge, because I was a member of it at the time, a literal raft of evidence that in some cases would make one's hair stand on end. People are concerned. I thought that there was a third component to this Parliament-the people. The people are concerned. Consequently, we are asking the House to enable the suspension of Standing Orders so that this Parliament can give the Minister permission to view that evidence. Mr Deputy Speaker, I wanted to give you some examples of the urgency of that matter in terms of the views of these people. The words I read out a few minutes ago are evidence that there are Aboriginal people living in shocking circumstances while a department of this Government proposes to give $1m for a gambling club in Canberra, another $1m for a hotel that can only bring upon these people further degradation-- Mr Beazley —Mr Deputy Speaker, these are matters that were in no way canvassed by this 1985 committee report. The honourable member is obliged to argue in this House-- Mr Sinclair —How do you know? Mr Beazley —It is alleged to have happened last year. No, it did not happen in 1985. So the remarks of the honourable member for O'Connor are quite clearly irrelevant to a motion for the suspension of Standing Orders. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! I have asked the honourable member-- Mr Spender interjecting- Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member for North Sydney will cease interjecting. He is interfering with the time available to his own speaker. I ask the honourable member for O'Connor to heed the Chair and to direct the discussion to the suspension of Standing Orders. Mr TUCKEY —Mr Deputy Speaker, let me now refer to the actual reports. The first report, which was a unanimous report, I recollect, barring one small dissent, said: A number of other matters brought to the attention of the Committee have involved serious allegations of maladministration which in some instances may lead to criminal prosecution. The Committee went on to add that it would submit another report-the second report. However, in the interim, the Committee got a Mr John Coombs, QC, to give it some assistance. Mr Coombs is reported as referring to the now Secretary to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Mr Perkins, in the following terms: Perkins was generally an evasive and unhelpful witness from whom Committee attempts to seek answers were probably a waste of time. Mr Beazley —Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a further point of order. These matters have been in the public domain since 1985. The honourable member for O'Connor has not explained to this House why this matter cannot be dealt with in the normal way on notice and why the suspension of Standing Orders is necessary three years later. He has not explained that to this point. Mr TUCKEY —In the time remaining let me say that we are raising the urgency of this matter because the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs advised the House this morning that he was not able to read the in camera evidence or pass it on to the inquiries which have been announced by the Government. We are asking for the suspension of Standing Orders so that we can assist the Government to provide that information to the Minister. As I said, I can think of no better reason for the Leader of the House to move us to that situation straightaway. Let us have that vote so that we can see whether the Government is game to let the Minister read the evidence about his own Secretary to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and about the way in which his Government is running Aboriginal Affairs, to the detriment of the poor Aboriginal people. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! The honourable gentleman's time has expired. Is the motion seconded? Mr WILSON(Sturt)(3.49) —I second the motion. The motion before the House is to suspend Standing Orders to enable to be debated and, I hope, carried a motion that would release to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs (Mr Hand) certain information that is presently the information of a committee of this Parliament. This week the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs has been under severe questioning in relation to the administrative and other arrangements within his Department and the organisations under his control. Yesterday in the way in which he answered a question, I thought he put his reputation on the line in a very positive way. He said that if there were any allegations drawn to his attention relating to the conduct and affairs within his Department, or the people within his responsibility, he would urgently set in train inquiries and investigations to see that any doubts that might arise were fully examined. He made it quite clear that if information of a serious nature was brought before him he would act quickly. Today he was asked whether he would act in relation to some findings that were before the former House of Representatives Standing Committee on Expenditure, albeit some time ago, and he has now sought to hide behind the procedures of this Parliament because the evidence on which the allegations were based was taken in camera and is the property of that Committee, unless it is opened by the Parliament. What this proposal is seeking to do-- Mr Hand —Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. I ask that that comment be withdrawn. It is wrong and dishonest to say that that is the position. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mr Mildren) —Order! The honourable member for Sturt will withdraw the word `dishonest'. Mr Spender —The Minister said `dishonest'. Mr WILSON —I did not use the word `dishonest'. Mr Hand —`Sought to hide', you said. Mr Spender —The Minister said `dishonest'. Couldn't you hear him? Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER —I do not really need the assistance of the honourable member for North Sydney. I call the honourable member for Sturt. Mr WILSON —Therefore, in the light of the commitment made by the Minister, it is urgent that he should have made available to him all the information upon which allegations are based. Some of that information is the property of the former Expenditure Committee and, through the rules of this House, is the property of this House. The honourable member for O'Connor (Mr Tuckey) is proposing that there should be a debate so that this House can decide whether that information should be made available to the Minister so that he can examine it on its merits. It is interesting to note that when members of the Expenditure Committee did go into the matter, instead of doing as a large number of the members of the Committee recommended-mostly those sitting on this side of the House-and having a judicial inquiry, they said that they would get the opinion of a Queen's Counsel. The Queen's Counsel examined the information that was before the parliamentary Committee and recommended that certain matters be referred to the Australian Federal Police for potential prosecution. The Committee then took the matter into its hands and by the Government members using their majority sought-in conflict with Mr Coombs's advice that the Committee was not a criminal investigating body-to investigate the matter itself, and in a most unsatisfactory way reached the conclusion that there was no further matter to be dealt with. They then went behind the whole Committee and referred the matter again to Mr Coombs. He wrote to the then Chairman of the Committee and said: . . . I see no reason to disagree with the Committee's decision- which was a bare majority of all Labor members voting against the coalition members- not to pursue the various allegations further beyond the current investigations by appropriate authorities in respect of the allegations against Mr O'Brien. The significant thing is that he did not say `not to go against the allegations against Mr Perkins'. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. Mr BEAZLEY(Swan-Leader of the House)(3.54) —The Government will reject this motion because it has too much respect for the way in which evidence is given to parliamentary committees to take this nonsense for one minute. Mr Tuckey —Cover-up. Mr BEAZLEY —There is nothing for us to cover up as far as this matter is concerned. The considerations that were before the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Expenditure, which reported in 1985, were almost exclusively about the administration of this portfolio during the Opposition's period in government. The administration of the portfolio, I believe, was in the hands of the honourable member for Sturt (Mr Wilson), who sat on that Committee in a semi-judicial position despite the fact that matters that were being considered by that Committee went to the question ultimately of his administration. The performance of the Opposition at that time gave it a sufficient degree of embarrassment for it to determine then that it would no longer proceed with it. We are talking about a committee report which is now supposed to be urgent that was dealt with in this Parliament three years ago, about administration of matters by the Opposition when it was in government. We are supposed to regard this as a relevant matter for consideration. At the time the matter was dealt with by the Parliament a couple of points were made quite clear: the Committee had obtained legal advice about the matters that were raised before it. That legal advice suggested that some matters ought to be referred to the Australian Federal Police for investigation. They were referred to the Federal Police for investigation. Mr Tuckey —No, they weren't. Mr BEAZLEY —Some matters, not all of them, were referred to the Federal Police for investigation and the Federal Police found that there was nothing further to proceed with. The other matters-- Mr Sinclair —Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. I am concerned at the assertion the Minister has made. He is suggesting that evidence before a committee of this Parliament has been referred to the Federal Police. As I understand our Standing Orders, they prevent the disclosure of any evidence before any committee of this place. If that is so, I suggest that that is a very serious breach of Standing Orders of this place. We seek to lift any veil on those proceedings, albeit some of them affected the matters that took place during our term in government. I suggest that the Minister needs to direct himself specifically to his concerns in that area. Mr BEAZLEY —The right honourable member knows very well what the response of that situation was because he debated it in Parliament at the time and that matter was covered during the debate in Parliament. So he should not come in here with his bogus respectability on that particular subject. The fact of the matter is that the Committee chose, as any committee is entitled to do, to seek what help it needed to arrive at its conclusions. The right honourable member should not come into this place with that sort of nonsense. Of course a committee is entitled to seek what help it needs in arriving at its conclusions. In this instance it did choose, as I understand it, to seek the assistance of authorities and, in the other instance, sought the assistance of Mr Coombs. As I understand it, Mr Coombs, QC, looked at some seven matters that were referred to him by the Committee and did not say that a prima facie case had been established on any of them, but did say that it was appropriate for the Committee to look at those matters further. The Committee did choose to look at those matters further and it came to a series of conclusions that were put down in this place. They were available for debate in this place and were the subject of a minority report, but the Opposition chose to take that no further. We suddenly find it reappearing at this point for one reason and one reason alone-a pathetic stunt. That is what has come forward from members of the Opposition on this matter at this time. It is part of a pathetic stunt to try to distract attention from their own known difficulties and to attempt to open out other matters that have been quite adequately covered by the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs (Mr Hand). There are many reasons why we do not think it is appropriate to suspend Standing Orders on this matter that go beyond simply matters related to these subjects which were canvassed appropriately at the time. They go to the matter of the protection of the sensible conduct of committee business in this place. The committees operate with a considerable degree of authority from this Parliament. We all from time to time have concern about natural justice related to our committees and not all of us are fully convinced on all occasions that our committees do operate in a way that is consistent with normal principles of natural justice. Therefore we tend to be extremely careful, if we are wise, on our committees about how we handle the evidence that is presented to us. Committees quite sensibly seek for many reasons to take some evidence in camera. Sometimes it is in order to be able to tease out facts and sometimes it is to protect the reputation of other individuals against bogus allegations which cannot be sustained, but a great deal of damage can be done to persons involved. All these matters are considered by committees when they decide to hold evidence in camera. We in this Parliament have always, wisely, left it to committees to determine when to recommend to this Parliament that matters held in camera should be revealed publicly. In fact, committees very rarely do that for the very sensible reason that they seek to protect their business in order to advise the House properly on matters that come before them. To walk away from that places us in several difficult situations. It threatens to call into doubt the viability of the operations of parliamentary committees. We vest parliamentary committees with enormous powers. They have the authority, like this House if it so wishes, to act in a star chamber manner. We are able to do that. However, we attempt to exercise some form of self-restraint. The Opposition today is effectively inviting us to vest star chamber powers in committees, against the committees' own recommendations. Do honourable members opposite think for one moment that, if a committee believed that it could usefully release in camera evidence in a way that protected people's right to natural justice, it would not have recommended that? Of course it would have. As I said at the outset, these matters went to investigations of the administration of a portfolio set up by the Opposition. Mr Tuckey —Then what are you worried about? Mr BEAZLEY —I know that the honourable member for O'Connor will find this difficult to comprehend, but a few of us on this side of the House actually have some respect for principles of natural justice. I know that he finds it extraordinarily difficult to come to grips with this because he operates in this place with the full possibilities open for star chamber processes. That is his mode of operation. He finds himself in some degree of difficulty when he confronts us and suggests that we should behave in the way he normally conducts himself in this House. We are prepared to recognise that he has a psychological problem with projection but, at the same time, we do not feel that we necessarily need to have visited upon us the way in which honourable members opposite seek to conduct their business here. We, on this side of the House, believe in due processes. In select committees anybody-this is not totally undesirable-should feel free to unburden himself of anything he happens to think. I have served on parliamentary committees and know that a fair bit of what is presented to them is bogus, nonsense and often libellous. That is fine. Parliamentary committees are entitled to receive from the electorate a full range of opinions, views and allegations on any matter. But a prudent parliamentary committee determines when a reputation is likely to be unjustly damaged and uses that as one of the criteria for determining when evidence should be taken in camera. I recollect-I may stand corrected on this-that while there may have been arguments from the other side of the House over whether all matters had been appropriately investigated, there was one matter on which all sides agreed. There is no suggestion, in the record, as far as I can see, that in camera evidence should be made public. Three years ago, when Opposition members had the opportunity to sit down and deliberate on this, they had various views on how the matter should be handled, but their views did not include the view that in camera evidence should be made public. They had a degree of principle in the position they were adopting at that time, but that degree of principle seems to have deserted them today. The honourable member for O'Connor (Mr Tuckey) has come into this House with a series of bogus arguments. The real reasons for his coming in here were revealed in his argument because he did not raise a single matter associated with any of the matters before the Expenditure Committee but other matters that had been the subject of recent consideration by the Senate. That is what the honourable member for O'Connor was talking about-other matters raised by the Senate. This reveals the true reason for his coming in here and being prepared to suspend natural justice associated with people who appear before committees. We reject this nonsense out of hand. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mr Millar) —Order! The Minister's time has expired. Question put: That the motion (Mr Tuckey's) be agreed to. The House divided. (Mr Deputy Speaker-Mr P. C. Millar) Ayes . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Noes . . . . . . . . . . . 75 —— Majority . . . . . . . . . 20 —— Adermann, A. E. McArthur, F. S.Aldred, K. J. McGauran, P. J.Andrew, J. N. (Teller) MacKellar, M. J. R.Beale, J. H. Macphee, I. M.Blunt, C. W. Moore, J. C.Braithwaite, R. A. Nehl, G. B.Brown, N. A. Porter, J. R.Burr, M. A. Pratt, M. P.Cadman, A. G. Prosser, G. D.Cameron, Ewen Reith, P. K.Cameron, Ian Robinson, IanCarlton, J. J. Rocher, A. C.Cobb, M. R. Ruddock, P. M.Cowan, D. B. Shack, P. D.Dobie, J. D. M. Sharp, J. R.Downer, A. J. G. Shipton, R. F.Fife, W. C. Sinclair, I. McC.Fischer, Tim Smith, W. L.Fisher, Peter Spender, J. M.Goodluck, B. J. Sullivan, K. J.Hall, Steele Taylor, W. L.Halverson, R. G. Tuckey, C. W.Hawker, D. P. M. Webster, A. P.Hewson, J. R. White, P. N. D.Hicks, N. J. (Teller) Wilson, I. B. C.Hunt, R. J. D. Woods, R. L.Jull, D. F. Wooldridge, M. R. L.Lloyd, B. Baldwin, P. J. Jones, BarryBeazley, K. C. Kelly, R. J.Bilney, G. N. Kent, L.Blanchard, C. A. Kerin, J. C.Blewett, N. Kerr, D. J. C.Bowen, Lionel Klugman, R. E.Brown, John Lamb, A. H. (Teller)Campbell, G. Langmore, J. V.Charles, D. E. Lavarch, M. H.Charlesworth, R. I. Lee, M. J.Chynoweth, R. L. Lindsay, E. J.Cleeland, P. R. McHugh, J.Cohen, B. Martin, S. P.Courtice, B. W. Mildren, J. B.Crawford, M. C. Milton, P.Cross, M. D. Morris, AllanCunningham, B. T. (Teller) Morris, PeterDawkins, J. S. Mountford, J. G.Dubois, S. G. O'Keefe, N. P.Duffy, M. J. O'Neil, L. R. T.Duncan, P. Price, L. R. S.Fatin, W. F. Punch, G. F.Fitzgibbon, E. J. Saunderson, J.Free, R. V. Sawford, R. W.Gayler, J. Scholes, G. G. D.Gear, G. Sciacca, C.Gorman, R. N. J. Scott, JohnGrace, E. L. Scott, LesGriffiths, A. G. Simmons, D. W.Hand, G. L. Snow, J. H.Harvey, E. R. Snowdon, W. E.Holding, A. C. Staples, P. R.Hollis, C. Theophanous, A. C.Howe, B. L. Tickner, R. E.Humphreys, B. C. Uren, T.Jakobsen, C. A. West, S. J.Jenkins, H. A. Wright, K. W.Johns, G. T. Question so resolved in the negative. Radio Licence Fees Bill Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mr Millar) —I inform the House of the following nominations of members to the Joint Select Committee on Corporations Legislation: Mr Ronald Edwards, Mr Kerr and Mr Lindsay have been nominated on behalf of the Prime Minister, and Mr Peter Fisher and Mr Smith have been nominated on behalf of the Leader of the Opposition. Bill returned from the Senate with amendments. Ordered that the amendments be taken into consideration in Committee of the Whole House at the next sitting. Bill presented by Mr Kerin, for Mr Willis, and read a first time. Mr KERIN(Werriwa-Minister for Primary Industries and Energy)(4.15) —I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. This Bill marks a further phase in the Government's policy of extending greater choice in radio and television services to the people of Australia. It implements the first stage of the national plan for metropolitan radio services which will provide more commercial FM radio outlets in mainland State capital cities and establish AM networks for parliamentary broadcasting and radio for the print handicapped (RPH). The plan, announced by the then Minister for Transport and Communications, Senator Gareth Evans, on 9 August this year, addresses several interlocking issues. These are: the general desire by existing AM licensees to convert to FM; the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) wish to extend its JJJ youth network and to provide for parliamentary broadcasting in a cost effective manner which does not disrupt ABC programming; the need to expand and improve radio for the print handicapped services; and the desirability of reforming the existing system of allocating frequencies for commercial purposes and deriving an appropriate return to the community from the commercial use of a public resource, namely the FM radio spectrum. The national metropolitan radio plan involves two stages. Under the first stage eligible commercial AM licensees will be invited to lodge bids for the right to convert from their existing AM frequencies to FM frequencies. The two highest eligible bidders in each capital city will be selected to convert to the FM frequencies. A condition of eligibility for the tender process will be that the successful tenderers must transfer their AM transmission facilities and sites to the Commonwealth for use by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for parliamentary broadcasts, and by public licensees for radio for the print handicapped purposes. I intend shortly to invite applications for a public radio licence serving print handicapped listeners for the first vacated AM channel in each mainland State capital. The second stage of the plan will involve invitation for tenders for two new commercial FM radio licences in each mainland State capital. I intend to bring forward legislation in the autumn sittings of 1989 to implement this second stage. This will provide time for more detailed consultation on the process proposed for stage 2. It also will allow these steps to be considered in the context of the review of the Broadcasting Act currently being undertaken by the Department of Transport and Communications, and the current inquiry by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Transport, Communications and Infrastructure into the role of the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal. Two of the central aims which this Government has consistently pursued in its broadcasting policy have been to maximise diversity of choice in radio and television services and to limit concentration of media ownership and control. These objectives are being pursued through a significant expansion of existing services and through the introduction of new, competitive services. In television, the policy of equalisation is bringing new commercial television services to regional areas. We are also well advanced in providing additional commercial radio services in regional areas. The Australian Broadcasting Tribunal has made decisions on new FM commercial radio licences in Newcastle, Geelong, the Gold Coast, Gosford, Shepparton and Moree. Two supplementary FM licences are on air in Canberra. Tribunal inquiries are under way in Ipswich, Geraldton and Townsville, and will soon begin in Mildura, Hobart, Lismore, Mackay, Renmark, Darwin, Albany, Kempsey and Nowra. The program up to the end of 1990 will bring new commercial radio services to some 4.2 million people. I will soon be announcing a further phase of the program for 1991. In public radio, at least six to eight new services are being introduced each year while the ABC continues to expand its services with the development of the second regional radio network. Consistent with this policy of extension of services, the national metropolitan radio plan should increase the diversity of radio services available to listeners in the mainland State capitals. In conjunction with the existing one-to-a-market ownership limit, the entry of new operators into the industry will further diversify the ownership of radio stations. Tender Procedures The Bill empowers the Minister to invite applications from existing metropolitan commercial AM licensees for conversion to FM. Applications will be submitted to the tender board of the Department of Transport and Communications. Applications will include sealed bids and a range of other material detailing the nature and value of the AM transmission facilities which will be provided to the Commonwealth in part satisfaction of that bid. The transmission equipment will need to meet technical standards set by the Minister and the interest in the transmission site will need to be sufficient to ensure continuing delivery of parliamentary and RPH services. The equipment will be valued by the Department and the site by the Australian Valuation Office, with facility for reference to commercial arbitration in the event of disputes. Bids will be subject to a confidential reserve price established by the Minister. A secure procedure will be followed to ensure that the reserve price remains confidential. After the closing date, the Tender Board will examine the applications and reject any which do not meet the prescribed conditions, and provide the Minister with a ranking of applicants whose bids exceed the reserve from the highest bidder down. The Minister will offer FM frequencies to the two highest bidding applicants, with the highest bidder having its choice of preferred frequency, subject to normal planning considerations. Where the successful applicant defaults, the next highest bidder will be offered a frequency. In making offers to the successful applicants, the Minister will advise the date by which the fee as bid must be paid and the AM facilities transferred. The Minister will be empowered to re-call tenders if satisfied that there has been collusion in tendering. Radio for the Print Handicapped RPH services have been operating unsatisfactorily for some years outside the broadcast band, on low power and with sub-standard equipment. This legislation empowers the Commonwealth to acquire transmission sites and associated AM equipment from existing commercial licensees in part satisfaction of their bid for conversion to FM. The Commonwealth will then lease these facilities to RPH groups at a nominal rent. I will invite applications for a public radio licence to serve print handicapped listeners on the first vacated AM frequency in each mainland State capital. The tender procedure for conversion of AM commercial licensees will ensure that the sites and facilities tendered are adequate to provide an acceptable signal across the metropolitan areas. The Government had previously intended that RPH services would be provided on FM frequencies. However, the technical characteristics of AM are more appropriate to the predominantly spoken word RPH programs and the availability of vacated AM frequencies and facilities from the conversion of AM commercial stations provides an excellent opportunity to improve the quality of existing RPH services in mainland State capitals. The only disadvantage is that AM transmitters are more expensive than FM to operate. The Government will therefore provide a grant of $100,000 per year to meet this extra cost. In Canberra and Hobart frequencies are available on the FM band and will be allocated in 1990. A capital grant of $600,000 will be provided in 1990-91 to assist the establishment of these two new RPH stations. Parliamentary Broadcasts For many years the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has met its legislative obligation to broadcast parliamentary proceedings. This has been at some cost to the ABC in the development of coherent radio programming and also in building up its audience. This legislation will facilitate the use by the ABC of the sites and facilities of the successful tenderer for the second frequency in each city for the establishment of a parliamentary broadcasting network. The new and permanent network for parliamentary broadcasting will replace the interim parliamentary broadcasting network which is presently being established through the use of the ABC's standby transmission facilities. Following the complete transfer from Radio National to the interim network, the ABC will be able further to develop Radio National as a high quality news and talk service. The Extension of the ABC's Youth Network An important part of the national plan is the extension of the ABC's JJJ FM service from Sydney to the other capital cities. This initiative links with the Government's recent establishment of the Australian Contemporary Popular Music Development Company. The youth network will be financed by the ABC from its existing resources and requires no legislative amendments. Financial Implications This Bill has no direct financial consequences, because the formal obligation to pay the fees it introduced will be imposed under the Radio Licence Fees Act 1964 through amendments introduced in the accompanying Radio Licence Fees (National Metropolitan Radio Plan) Bill 1988. In conclusion, I believe this Bill creates new opportunities for commercial radio operators in the mainland capital cities. The ability for some AM stations to convert to FM will help to redress the imbalance between commercial operators using the AM and FM bands. The Government hopes that this will lead to a more dynamic approach to programming, resulting in a more diverse range of services to the community. Commercial broadcasting has shown a capacity to meet changing circumstances. In recent years, the level of competition has increased markedly with the introduction of new commercial radio services, particularly on FM. Competition is likely to intensify as AM stations convert to FM in stage 1 of the plan and later with the establishment of two additional commercial stations. The listening public should welcome the addition of new commercial FM services as testified to by the success of existing commercial FM stations. I table the explanatory memorandum to this Bill and commend the Bill to the House. Debate (on motion by Mr Downer) adjourned. Bill presented Mr Kerin, for Mr Willis, and read a first time. Mr KERIN(Werriwa-Minister for Primary Industries and Energy)(4.26) —I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. The Bill formally imposes the obligation to pay the fee on conversion from AM to FM broadcasting by large city commercial radio licensees determined in accordance with the tender process introduced in the Broadcasting (National Metropolitan Radio Plan) Bill 1988. It is purely a machinery Bill and all the relevant policy elements are covered by the accompanying Broadcasting Bill. Financial Implications The first stage of the national plan, implemented in this Bill and the accompanying Broadcasting (National Metropolitan Radio Plan) Bill 1988, is expected to produce net revenue of $79.9m over the five years from 1988-89 to 1992-93, with an ongoing annual additional cost of $0.2m. This comprises revenue from tendering for AM-FM conversion, partially offset by the costs of retaining vacated AM sites and facilities for parliamentary and radio for the print handicapped networks and some small additional capital and recurrent outlays. A $0.6m capital grant will be provided in 1990-91 for the establishment of FM RPH stations in Canberra and Hobart. The Appropriation Bills provide for an ongoing annual subsidy to RPH of $100,000 to meet the additional cost of maintaining AM rather than FM facilities, and an increase in the grant-in-aid for RPH from $25,000 to $125,000 per annum. They also provide for additional departmental administration expenses of $400,000 in 1988-89. An additional $100,000 will be required in 1989-90. I present the explanatory memorandum and commend the Bill to the House. Debate (on motion by Mr Downer) adjourned. Bill presented by Mr Kerin, and read a first time. Mr KERIN(Werriwa-Minister for Primary Industries and Energy)(4.28) —I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. This Bill and the associated Levy Collection Bill will provide the basis for the establishment of triticale research funding arrangements. The triticale industry will join other small emerging industries unable to support their own independent administrative arrangements in developing a research capacity under the auspices of the Australian special rural research fund. The Bill is to provide for the imposition of a levy on triticale produced in Australia for the purpose of funding triticale industry research. The associated Triticale Levy Collection Bill 1988 will provide the machinery for collecting the levy. Expenditure of moneys raised through the levy will be matched dollar for dollar by the Commonwealth. Administrative and organisational arrangements for the research scheme will be provided by the Australian Special Rural Research Council pursuant to the Rural Industries Research Act 1985. The triticale industry is a relatively small industry but has the capacity to expand its domestic markets and possibly to develop significant export markets. Industry research to date has been funded by a voluntary levy on the industry with some Commonwealth funds from the Australian special rural research fund. The industry has established research programs in several States but those programs have rested on a precarious funding base, with no capacity to expand to meet the needs of an emerging industry. Recently these programs and funding have proven inadequate to cover the range of issues the industry needs to address to develop as an efficient and competitive industry on the domestic market and in a hostile world market. The Commonwealth supported program is intended to provide secure arrangements for an expanded research effort into production and beyond that into areas such as economic and marketing research. The legislation provides for an initial levy rate of $1 per tonne of triticale. Provision exists for the rate to be varied by regulation up to a maximum of $2 per tonne. Provision is also made for any recommendations arising from consultation between the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy and the triticale industry organisation to be taken into account prior to any adjustment to the operative rate of the levy or leviable weight. Amounts equal to the levy will be paid into a separate account established for the purpose in the special research fund. This will be accommodated by a provision in the accompanying amendments to the Rural Industries Research Act 1985. The Commonwealth's matching contribution will be up to a maximum level equal to 0.5 per cent of the average gross value of triticale production. It is expected that initially the levy will raise about $160,000. The Special Research Council will therefore have scope for an annual triticale research program approaching $300,000. The commencement date of this legislation will be a date to be proclaimed. It is intended that the levy be imposed on triticale produced in the 1988 harvest. A full year research program under the scheme cannot begin until 1989-90. However, the actual level of expenditure on research will be determined by the Special Research Council and it is possible some research could be funded in 1988-99. I commend the Bill to honourable members and present the explanatory memorandum to this Bill. Debate (on motion by Mr Downer) adjourned. Bill presented by Mr Kerin, and read a first time. Mr KERIN(Werriwa-Minister for Primary Industries and Energy)(4.32) —I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. The purpose of this Bill is to provide the machinery necessary for collecting the levy imposed by the Triticale Levy Bill 1988. This Bill should be read as one with the Triticale Levy Bill 1988, and is to come into operation on the same day that the levy Bill becomes operative. The Bill specifies the liability of purchasers and receivers under the scheme, outlines penalties for non-compliance and provides appropriate powers of enforcement. There are no financial implications other than those covered in the second reading speech for the Triticale Levy Bill 1988. I commend the Bill to honourable members and present the explanatory memorandum to this Bill. Debate (on motion by Mr Downer) adjourned. Bill presented by Mr Kerin, and read a first time. Mr KERIN(Werriwa-Minister for Primary Industries and Energy)(4.34) —I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. The purposes of this Bill are: (a) to provide for an improved organisational and administrative framework under the Rural Industries Research Act 1985 (principal Act); (b) to enable the expenses of collection and administration relating to relevant levies to be recovered from the Australian special rural research fund; and (c) to remedy minor defects in regulations under the principal Act. The main organisational amendments will enable: (a) new levies to be added to existing rural research schemes without having the effect of creating new councils and new trust funds; (b) matching Commonwealth contributions for any statutory levies paid into the Australian special rural research fund; and (c) the amalgamation, reorganisation and winding up of councils and trust funds. The first two of those amendments will have imminent application under the Australian special rural research fund in relation to the triticale industry. Bills for triticale industry levy imposition and levy collection were introduced with the Rural Industries Research Amendment Bill 1988. Amounts equal to triticale levies received into Commonwealth revenue will be paid into the Australian special rural research fund to be used for the purposes of research and development relating to the triticale industry. The Government will provide funds on a matching basis up to a maximum contribution of 0.5 per cent of the triticale industry's gross value of production, in the same way as it provides matching contributions to existing rural research funds. Negotiations are well advanced for the addition of other small industry research levies. There is no immediate application contemplated of the new provisions enabling the amalgamation, reorganisation and winding up of councils and trust funds. The new provisions would allow, for example, a smaller fund to amalgamate with a larger fund for economic purposes. The amendments would also provide, in that event, for the smaller fund, and council, to be wound up and the money in that fund, relevant levies and research agreements to be transferred to the larger fund. Where such an amalgamation takes place, levies raised from each industry involved and the Government's matching contributions will continue to be for the purpose of funding research for that industry. The amendments enabling new levies to be added to existing rural research schemes without having the effect of creating new councils and new trust funds will not apply in relation to the barley and wheat trust funds and councils. This exclusion from the Bill had regard to the need to consult with the State research committees for barley and wheat before including them in such an amendment and the current examination of the feasibility of a grains research and development corporation which could include both barley and wheat. There are three main amendments to the administrative framework. First, there is a clarification of the form for the annual research and development program that councils are required to submit to the Minister for approval. The new form will provide for essential information, without unnecessary detail, to be included in a council's annual program for the Minister's consideration. Approval of individual project expenditure will continue to be the responsibility of councils. Secondly, councils will be able to replace a partly completed five-year research and development plan with a varied plan to cover a new five-year period. Under existing arrangements, a council's plan, or varied plan, relates to a fixed five-year period at the end of which a new plan is prepared for a further fixed five-year period. The new arrangements will provide councils and State research committees with more flexibility in their planning systems, particularly in incorporating changing industry and market circumstances. Thirdly, the existing legislation requires the approval of councils or State research committees for the bulk of expenditure under sections 9 and 36 of the principal Act. However, some expenditure relating to a council, or State research committee, for example, administrative expenses and investment management expenses, can be made currently without the approval of the council or committee. This is clearly undesirable. This legislation will require council or State research committee approval for all such expenditure that relates to it. The Australian special rural research fund (ASRRF) was established to support small and infant industries. It has been funded from appropriation sources. There has been no attached industry levy. The legislation provides for small industry levies to be credited to ASRRF. When the triticale levy imposition and levy collection Bills currently before the House become law, the triticale levies will be attached to the ASRRF. In line with Government policy, the principal Act is being amended to enable the expenses of collection and administration of relevant levies to be recovered from the ASRRF. A number of minor defects have been identified in the regulations under the principal Act. These are being remedied by provisions in the Bill. This Bill will contribute to effecting Government policy on rural research funding. The Bill facilitates matching Commonwealth funding of rural research under the Australian special rural research fund, but of itself has no budgetary implications beyond those announced in the May 1988 statement on primary industries and resources. As I have said on many occasions, rural research is a high priority of the Government. This is partly reflected in the Government's commitment to increase Commonwealth matching contributions to rural research to a maximum of 0.5 per cent of the gross value of production for each of the industries concerned. Commonwealth matching funding for 1988-89 is budgeted at $65.4m. I commend the Bill to the House and present the explanatory memorandum to the Bill. Debate (on motion by Mr Downer) adjourned. Debate resumed. Mr MACPHEE(Goldstein)(4.39) —I was saying before the suspension of the sitting for lunch that it is most regrettable-indeed, scandalous-that the Privacy Bill 1988 has come before us for debate today when it was introduced only yesterday. Normally we expect at least a week's opportunity to study legislation. Even since getting halfway through my speech before the suspension of the sitting for lunch I have come across other material which I have not had an adequate opportunity to digest. I will have to give it to my good friend Senator Peter Baume to examine when the Senate deals with this legislation next week. Amongst the material I have found on this matter is an examination of the previous Bill, upon which this Bill was based, by an academic named Maeve McDonagh at La Trobe University, published in the Legal Service Bulletin of August 1987. It is a devastating criticism of the failure of the Government to protect the privacy rights of individuals from the Government's desire for more and more information about people. I have not had an opportunity since discovering this article to compare the 1986 Bill with this one-they are both massive pieces of legislation-but one suspects that the haste with which this Bill was prepared has left it with many of the deficiencies that are highlighted in this publication. It is a devastating condemnation but we will have to wait for a senator-Senator Baume, no doubt-to find the faults in this Bill, if the faults remain, as I suspect they do. I do not see evidence of the Government having taken account of the example of other countries, such as Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark and France, which have defined certain categories of information about individuals which may not be stored. For example, in Belgium, information may not be stored concerning racial origin, sexual orientation, political and religious beliefs, trade union membership and sickness insurance. In each of the countries I have mentioned a range of items is excluded. I believe that it is very important for our well-being that we examine what we have asked government agencies and allowed private agencies to collect about people and decide that some of what is now collected ought to be expunged and not collected again. I see no evidence of the Government being aware of those kinds of problems. The New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties has pointed out, too, that under clause 15 of this Bill information privacy principles 1, 2, 3, 10 and 11 apply only in relation to information collected after the commencement of the Act. That may be appropriate in respect of principles 1, 2 and 3 but not, I would have thought, in respect of principles 10 and 11. I ask the Minister who is to respond to this debate to explain why principles 10 and 11 apply only to information gathered after the commencement date of operation. It seems to me to be a major deficiency. I would like briefly to turn to the interim guidelines in schedule 2 concerning the collection, storage, use and security of tax file number information. As they stand, they are certainly an important step along the way to what we in opposition would like to see and what we believe the public should have. Guideline 1.1 states the Parliament's clear intention that the tax file number should not become the basis of a national identification scheme. Guideline 1.2 reinforces the prohibitions on unauthorised cross-matching of tax file numbers with personal records of individuals. That is important. Also, the guidelines prescribe that the collection of tax file number information should be carried out in a way which minimises the opportunity for unlawful recording of tax file numbers and, under the storage guideline, an effort is made to ensure that access is confined to those with a need to know and is not available to all staff of an employer or a financial institution. Having said that, I fear that the guidelines, especially as they relate to the private sector, are deficient, but I shall come back to that. To deal briefly with the Bill itself, on the positive side, it is important in the light of the remarks I made at the outset of my speech this morning that clause 27 enable the Privacy Commissioner to undertake research into and to monitor developments in data processing and computer technology to ensure that any adverse effects of such developments on the privacy of individuals are minimised. That is exceedingly important because the rate at which technology is developing can mean many invasions of privacy quite uncontemplated by any act of this Parliament or any administration of the Privacy Commissioner. Financial resources have to be made available to the Privacy Commissioner to enable him to be able to undertake the research and monitoring of developments referred to in clause 27. Clause 28 is a very desirable clause. It enables the Commissioner to examine the records of the Commissioner of Taxation to ensure that the Australian Taxation Office is not using tax file information for unauthorised purposes and is taking adequate measures to prevent the unlawful disclosure of the tax file number information which it holds. There are some obviously desirable steps in this Bill, but I have some concerns about whether it goes far enough. One illustration is in part VIII of the Bill, which gives effect to certain recommendations made by the Law Reform Commission. I think I said this morning that that Commission reported in 1976. In fact, it was commissioned to inquire into privacy in 1976 but did not report until 1983. In paragraph 828 of its report entitled Privacy, the Law Reform Commission summarised the action for breach of confidence as providing: a civil remedy for use or disclosure of information which is not publicly known and which has been entrusted to a person in circumstances imposing an obligation not to use or disclose that information without the authority of the person from whom it has directly or indirectly been obtained. This Bill incorporates that recommendation, but again, as my colleague the honourable member for Menzies (Mr N.A. Brown) will say in the committee stage of the debate, it does not go far enough to give a right of action to individuals. I was talking before lunch of the relevance of privacy impact statements. In effect, we are asking the Commissioner for such statements. The Commissioner will require a greater job description than this Bill gives, and will probably require greater powers than this Bill provides. Nevertheless, it is an important first step. But it has a long way to go before it becomes a fully fledged privacy law. The first of the information privacy principles relates to Commonwealth agencies having a lawful purpose for collecting personal information. Apart from the onus which we are placing on the Privacy Commissioner, this Parliament has an obligation to consider carefully each purpose which it makes lawful and, I believe, to examine each purpose which it has made lawful in the past. It is most important in this age of technology that we examine what we are asking of people, why we are doing it and what use we are putting it to. Perhaps the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, or the Senate Standing Committee on Regulations and Ordinances should have a privacy impact study function added to its responsibilities. I will put that thought to some of my Senate colleagues. I am glad that the Bill recognises the special nature of medical research and epidemiological research in particular. I am also very glad that the Privacy Commissioner can and should make random audits of agencies, including the Commissioner of Taxation, so that they examine their databases to ensure that adherence to the information privacy principles is maintained. It is also commendable that the Parliament may review and disallow determinations of the Privacy Commissioner that an agency has adopted a practice in breach of the information privacy principles contained in this Bill. If agencies are going to breach the principles, we should have the final surveillance of that. The balancing of public interest considerations is always complex, and it is proper and wise for the Parliament to have surveillance over and the ultimate responsibility for those decisions. It will help us to develop an increasingly stronger law of privacy. The interim guidelines to which I have referred look like a reasonable beginning, but it is again wise and proper for the Bill to give the Parliament the obligation to review the permanent guidelines and to disallow them if it sees fit. I hope that whoever is appointed as Privacy Commissioner will welcome personal contact with members to get insights into problems and to undertake a more liberal interpretation of this and the associated legislation, which otherwise is quite narrowly drawn. The private sector remains the problem area. There is not enough information available to us about the private sector. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mr Millar) —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. Mr GEAR(Canning)(4.49) —The Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill being debated in the House today continues this Government's proud record on taxation. Many people will remember that, prior to 1983, there was a feeling in the community that there were two sets of standards as regards taxation: those for people of substantial means who were able to choose whether they paid tax; and the poor old mug, the pay as you earn taxpayer, who took up the slack because some of the former chose not to pay tax. Some of the things that the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill does not do are very important. For instance, there is no compulsion to use the tax file number and to carry a card. The simple fact is that if a person does not use the tax file number in the way it is intended, tax will be taken out of income at the top marginal rate, plus the Medicare levy. So the tax is still collected one way or the other. I believe that in the wider community there will be general acceptance of the principles behind the tax file number and that people will volunteer that information to bodies such as banks and other financial institutions. Also, there will not be any databank. In Western Australia a number of letters have been sent to the editor of the local newspaper trying to draw comparisons between this legislation and the Australia Card. Of course, no databank is intended. It is interesting to note that the Australian Taxation Office has used a tax file number since 1936. I believe that the integrity of that tax file number is very high because the Taxation Office does not release that sort of information. As a result of the legislation before us today, no more information will have to be delivered to the Tax Office. It is rather surprising to the person in the street just how much information the Tax Office gets. For instance, the amount of interest paid on every savings account in Australia is furnished to the Tax Office, and has been for quite some time. I remember taking part in a parliamentary committee inquiry in Melbourne and an executive of one of our large banks talked about what was termed the good old days when 20 trucks used to roll up to the main branch in Melbourne and take away reams of information from that bank to the Taxation Office. Of course, that exposes the deficiency in taking 20 truckloads of information from just one bank in Melbourne, let alone all the other banks and financial institutions that also make available to the Taxation Office all of the information that is required of them. The simple fact is that it is an impossible job to match all of that information against what a taxpayer has furnished in his statement. What the Bill does is to bring the Taxation Office into the 1980s. It allows it to use technology that would simply enable computers to match numbers attached to each of the statements that are given to the Taxation Office with the statements furnished by taxpayers. As the saying goes, honest taxpayers have nothing to hide. I believe that the vast majority of Australians fall into that category. For that reason, I believe that the measure should be supported. Another thing that the Bill does not do is to link this information with any other government agency. For that reason it can be seen to be very secure. The Taxation Office is the only beneficiary of the Bill before us. A very important point that must be stressed is that the Bill will not increase taxes: it is not a tax increasing or revenue Bill. All it does is give the Taxation Office the power to collect tax more efficiently. By collecting tax more efficiently, there will be a shift in the tax burden. It is a desirable shift because it makes those people who are not paying tax pay it and it gives relief to the people who have been taking up the slack-the poor old mugs out there who are honest enough to put everything on their statements and for years have been carrying the can, so to speak. For that reason alone, the Bill deserves support. The Opposition's position on the legislation is to be commended. In supporting the Government's recommendation to support the tax file number, the Opposition has increased public recognition of the fact that some Opposition members at least do care about what happens to the Taxation Office, although I am moved to say that that is not unanimous, certainly within the Liberal Party. I quote from an article which appeared in today's West Australian: The State Liberal individual rights spokesman, Mr Hassell, said the decision of his Federal colleagues was both wrong and politically incompetent. By way of explanation, Mr Hassell is not well known on this side of Australia, but back in the early 1980s he was a member of a government that brought in the 54b legislation in Western Australia which restricted individual rights. Under the legislation introduced by the government of which Mr Hassell was a Minister, it was unlawful for more than three people to meet in the streets of Perth without a permit. As well, later on in his career as Minister for Police Mr Hassell used the 54b legislation to smash through picket lines at Noonkanbah, which was a very damaging thing morally to the Aboriginal people of north-west Australia. One can see that in those days the present State Liberal individual rights spokesman did not care too much about individual rights. But we must make allowances because he is a born-again civil libertarian and is now trying to protect what he deems the individual rights of some people. The article continued: Referring to the Federal MPs, he said: I am sorry that they compromised themselves by negotiating with the Government over the associated privacy legislation. Privacy is important. But it is not the main issue. Australians should not be made accountable to the Commonwealth Government through a computer data bank. The Western Australian Liberals at least show their ignorance and opposition to this move, unlike the Liberals here. I believe that in the Party room yesterday a number of speakers were against the legislation. I believe that those members came from Western Australia where, it seems, they have a fanatical opposition to legislation of this type. One wonders why. It seems to me at least that they remember the last days of the Australia Card with some relish and believe that they played some major role in the activities of that time. It seems to me that the imminent election in Western Australia may have something to do with it. Mr Hassell and his colleagues in Western Australia-I could refer to another spokesman there, but as he is not well known I will not do so-seek to have the Liberal Party in Canberra oppose the legislation for nothing more than grubby political ends. What they are seeking to do is to deny this Parliament the raising of $2,200m in taxation from people who are not currently paying it just because they believe that it will enhance their prospects at the coming State election. In today's debate the Australia Card has been mentioned on a number of occasions and comparisons have been drawn between this legislation and the Australia Card. I have said that in Western Australia at least people seem to think that there is some political advantage in opposing the tax file number, notwithstanding the fact that the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) has said that he would be willing to reintroduce the legislation and even fight an election on it. Just to put into perspective the role played by the Liberal Party on the Australia Card issue, I refer to an article which appeared at page 9 of the Sydney Morning Herald of 5 October 1987. The article was written by Mr Simon Davies of the Australian Privacy Foundation and it sought to set out how his foundation led the charge against the Australia Card. In it he referred to the role played by the Liberals. He said: The Liberals proved to be less than adequate campaign partners. Although Mr Howard had personally assured me the foundation could count on his party's co-operation all the way, when asked to help with the underwriting of $25,000 needed for campaign purposes, he refused, saying `the Liberals are in the business of promoting themselves, not other people'. One can see there the motives behind the Liberal Party's involvement in the anti-ID push: self-promotion, without worrying about the principles and taking its share in the fight against the Australia Card that Simon Davies talked about. There is nothing in that article about the fact that the Liberals believed it was the right thing to do; it was self-promotion. Those are the words of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Howard). The article goes on to state: The Nationals were marginally more helpful. Senator Ron Boswell rang the foundation at the outset of the campaign seeking assistance for a private member's bill for a referendum on the card. At least Senator Boswell tried to involve himself in a meaningful way in the fight against the Australia Card. The article continues: But Senator Boswell was blocked by shadow cabinet and his bill was usurped by the Liberals. When my disappointment was conveyed to Wilson Tuckey, he responded, `Boswell will do what he's bloody well told or we'll toss him'. There we have it. The fact is that when it comes to the part played by the Liberal Party in the anti-ID card push it really was a pimple on the backside. It really did come in after the whole movement got rolling and tried to attach to itself some recognition of the fact that it fought against the Australia Card. Mr Downer —Get back to the Bill. Mr GEAR —The honourable member asks me to get back to the Bill. I will. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mr Millar) —Order! The honourable member for Mayo, although not strictly in order, virtually pre-empted the intentions of the Chair. The Chair has been rather tolerant of the honourable member for Canning as he has been at the very best peripherally relevant. I would like him to address himself more seriously to the Bills. Mr GEAR —Certainly, Mr Deputy Speaker. The legislation before us today does not raise taxes. It cannot be claimed that in any way it inhibits the privacy of members of the public. The Government has gone out of its way to negotiate the privacy aspects of this legislation. Even the matters contained in the Bill have been discussed with a number of groups, including the Opposition, which have a deep interest in this area. We have consulted widely. We believe that by consulting with those groups, including the Opposition, the Bill is better for it. As I said before, I think the role of the Opposition in Canberra, as distinct from the Liberals in Western Australia, is to be commended. It shows that when a government and an opposition get together on a piece of legislation as important as this the legislation can go through the Parliament in a much more meaningful way than if we were to fight about it and start the old slanging matches which are usually a feature of debates on legislation before this House. I would also like to refer to the role played by the Commissioner of Taxation. In addressing an audience in Brisbane he referred to the fact that the legislation before us today was essential. In his view, if tax is to be collected more efficiently a tax file number is necessary. I believe that the Commissioner of Taxation was expressing not only his true feelings but those of the Australian Taxation Office in saying that the tax file number would allow him to do his job more efficiently and to release staff to carry out functions such as company audits, which are labour intensive, rather than checking through records at random to see whether they can match up information supplied by taxpayers with information the Taxation Office received from other sources. I do not think the attack made on the Commissioner of Taxation by the Leader of the Opposition did the Leader of the Opposition any justice because the Commissioner of Taxation was really expressing a view that is widely held not only within the Taxation Office but throughout the wider community. As a back bench member one can gauge reaction to a lot of legislation before the Parliament by the number of contacts one gets either by telephone or letter or by looking at the letters in the newspapers. Certainly from my experience there have been no objections to this legislation. No letters have been written to me about it. I have received no phone calls. I have seen the odd letter in the papers but we always get those. There will always be opposition to moves made in this House to increase efficiency within government departments. In the wider community there is a general acceptance of the Bill and the aims for it. At the outset I said that this legislation continues this Government's proud record on taxation. Honourable members will remember that some of the things we have done in terms of fringe benefits, capital gains tax, substantiation and withholding tax have made the collection of taxation much more efficient. I believe that the Bills before us today go one step further. In due course they will allow taxation relief to be provided for those people who have always paid their tax and who have always been honest. For that reason, I commend the Bills to the House. (Quorum formed) Mr IAN CAMERON(Maranoa)(5.09) —I am pleased that so many members of the highest taxing Government have come into the House to hear my speech on this particular subject, which relates to imposing and collecting more taxation in what was once a great country. Dr Charlesworth —Queensland is all right. Mr IAN CAMERON —Queensland is not too bad, but under the present Labor Government we are looking at record taxation and record expenditure. We are also looking at record interest rates, record borrowings, and record balance of payments deficits-not credits, but deficits-which is very sad for us. Of course, the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill 1988 and the Privacy Bill are quite involved pieces of legislation. With the computer age, I suppose we could argue that this means that we will have even more numbers placed on our backs. Dr Charlesworth —Forehead-up here. Mr IAN CAMERON —Well, forehead or feet-wherever you like to put a number, these days we seem to have numbers stamped on us. Of course, the intention of the legislation is to make it easier for the Australian Taxation Office to carry out its duties. I do not believe that the legislation will result in the collection of any more revenue, although the Taxation Office says that it will, but it tends to forget that people who are not paying tax either will stop working altogether, which is what they normally do, because under these arrangements-- Dr Charlesworth —We should not do it then? Mr IAN CAMERON —That would be right. I would probably argue that. As an employer and someone trying to get Australia moving again, I would argue that the whole exercise is probably a damn waste of time. Those who knock around Australia know that some casual workers are paid a cash wage that they are not taxed on. As soon as this legislation is brought into force and the tax is taken out, the employer will not be prepared to pay the extra money involved in employing such people, and they are not going to get work. It is as simple as that. The dole in Australia is so high that it pays people not to work. The first thing I would do is abolish the dole. I think that is a disgrace, and it is one reason why-- Mrs Kelly —Is that your policy? Mr IAN CAMERON —That is true. This legislation has been introduced to try to pick up more taxation revenue from those people. It just will not work. The total tax take will not increase. All the Government will do is move one set of circumstances into another area. In actual fact, 99.9 per cent of employers use wage payments as a tax deduction because that is part of the cost of production. If producers are no longer paying out those wages, obviously they will not have that tax deduction and, therefore, their profits may go up or go down. In most cases those employers need the employment. If they are not able to employ such people, the production that is badly needed in this country does not eventuate and the balance of payments deficit, which is running at $1 billion a month, continues to stay down the mine. There is no sign of the J-curve. I have been a member of this House ever since the Treasurer (Mr Keating) came to office when he reckoned that there was a J-curve on the way. Mr John Brown —So have I. Mr IAN CAMERON —Brownie, where have you been? Did you have a win at the Melbourne Cup? I bet you lost every cent. I bet you do not pay a cent tax on your winnings either, you rascal. This legislation will catch up with you. If there is one person in this House this legislation will catch up with, it is the honourable member for Parramatta, with all his untaxed racing earnings. He will have-- Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Hon. J. D. M. Dobie) —Order! The honourable member will come back to the Bills before the House. Mr IAN CAMERON —Mr Deputy Speaker, I wish to inform the House that not only do we have some new taxation legislation before us today and have seen the Labor Government impose iniquitous capital taxes, but we are now seeing the assets testing of isolated children. Mr Deputy Speaker, you spent many years of your youth in Dirranbandi. You know what it is like to live in isolation. You understand that people living in inland Australia have to send their children to boarding school to get a proper education. However, what do we see the members of this Australian Labor Party doing? We see them now applying and extending the assets test to children who have to have an education, and they wonder why we on this side of the Parliament are screaming about this particularly iniquitous sort of taxation. Of course, they scream all the time for equity in the system. Of course, this taxation Bill is designed, so they say, to achieve a bit more equity into the system. Yet we saw a report in today's Australian of how the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy (Mr Kerin) is pouring buckets on the National Farmers Federation (NFF) for having the audacity to discuss the Government's tax proposals. Mr Peter Fisher —Blackmail. Mr IAN CAMERON —It is absolute blackmail of the farmers of Australia. We have seen the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy threaten to delay the introduction of the income equalisation deposits (IED) scheme, which is at least a way of achieving more equity in the tax system. As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, it is essential for primary producers to have some form of levelling effect in their taxable incomes because of the nature of primary industries. One year primary producers have a massive income and the next year they have none at all because of seasonal and market variations. The IED scheme which was introduced by the Liberal-National Party Government in the Fraser days was withdrawn by this Labor Government. Of course, the Government has now seen the bad effect that that has had on rural producers. I see some members of the Government's rural task force sitting in the chamber. They have travelled around the place and no doubt many farmers have indicated to them the need to reintroduce the IED scheme under the tax regime of the Labor Government. Yesterday we met with delegates of the NFF. When we met Wally Peart, a member of my electorate, the Chairman, John Allwright, and a number of other members of the NFF at lunchtime today, they expressed very strong views about the Government blackmailing them by threatening to extend the introduction of the IED system if they do not toe the line on the sorts of tax policies that the Government wants. I just say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to honourable members opposite: when the day comes that we cannot have a frank discussion about what sort of taxation system we should have, God help us all. I think it is a very poor effort on the part of the Government when the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy, of all people, is telling the farmers that they cannot have the reintroduction of an IED scheme unless they do such and such. Many farmers are desperately waiting to try to spread out their incomes. Not only have we not had the re-introduction of IEDs, but most primary producers also pay provisional tax. In a good year they must pay a massive amount of provisional tax. In actual fact, many primary producers get to the stage where they just do not have the funds to pay the provisional tax and they have to borrow money to do it. I have mentioned that this Bill will not increase the overall gross domestic product (GDP) of the nation. Somehow or other-I do not know why-this Government continues to make it harder for people to do business. I spoke some time ago on the depreciation allowance legislation, the purpose of which was to rip $1 billion out of business in Australia, yet this Government wonders why we have a balance of payments problem. The Treasurer comes in here and bemoans that situation and wonders why we are seeing record investment overseas by Australian corporations. The only reason they are investing overseas is that they are paying too much tax in Australia. They can see that it is not beneficial for their stockholders for them to continue to invest in this country. What do we see? We see an outcry from people about overseas investors coming to Australia. If this Government put a decent tax regime in place and made it more interesting and easier for business to get on with the job of creating employment and increasing production, we would not see the disastrous balance of payments figures. We would not see companies such as the Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd and Elders-IXL seeking to invest vast sums of money worldwide and not wishing to re-invest their funds in Australia-where they should be. There is no incentive in the tax system for them to do that. Until the Labor Party is heaved out of office and the coalition is returned to government, at which time we can reintroduce some decent tax incentives into the system, we will see the Taxation Office continuing to try to find ways of raising more revenue, because it is not getting it through an increase in the size of the cake. The GDP is not growing at the sort of rate it should be. As a result, the Taxation Office will continue to scrape around to get $200m or $300m here, or $200m or $300m there, through all sorts of new tax legislation-pages and pages of it. This time around we have a tax file number. We have always had one, of course. All taxpayers have had a tax file number since the 1930s. Everybody who is paying tax today has a number. All that will happen is that the Taxation Office will extend the use of that number. The honourable member for Menzies (Mr N.A. Brown) has done a fantastic job in convincing the government on the Privacy Bill, which accompanies the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill. They will come into effect at the same time. After many weeks of negotiation and after longwinded discussions in our Party room we decided to support this legislation- under great pressure, I can assure honourable members. It took me a long while before I was prepared to support it. I am here today speaking in support of the amendments that we have put forward. The honourable member for Menzies has done a fantastic job in seeing that some of the inequities that the Labor Government had written into the legislation have been withdrawn. The fact is that it is not compulsory for an employee to present his tax file number. I wonder about that fact, but that is the way it is. As usual, all the compulsion is back on the employer, as in the case of the fringe benefits tax. I thought that under our system of employment it was the responsibility of the wage earner to declare and pay his own taxation. The Tax Office and the Treasury have developed this creeping extension of forcing the employer to do all the tax collecting for them. In other words, each and every employer in this country-that includes every farmer and me-is now an arm of the Taxation Office. We are just tax agents now. We are out there doing the work for all the employees whom we may employ from time to time. It is not compulsory for them to declare their number to the employer, but if they do not it is compulsory for the employer to tax them at the current top rate of 49c in the dollar, plus the Medicare levy, which at present is 1 1/2 per cent. Who knows what it might be after the next May statement or the next Budget. The costs of running this so-called free hospitalisation or free medicine scheme that we have continue to skyrocket and, no doubt, the Medicare levy will increase. I spoke to members of the Taxation Office this morning. Apparently all group certificates will have to have a tax file number on them. This will make it easier for the Tax Office with its massive computer system, its $700m worth of computers, to track one cash transaction across to another. Perhaps honourable members could argue that that is a good thing. I do not think that those people who have a tax number have anything to fear. The legislation is being tightened to force us to take the tax from people whom we employ. As I said earlier, unfortunately all that will do is drive people on to the unemployment queues. It is also compulsory for people receiving unemployment benefit to declare a tax file number. I think that is good. I cannot for the life of me understand why pensioners, unmarried mothers, and all sorts of other people receiving pensions should be exempt from this system. Mrs Kelly —Do you want to stop them getting pensions too? Mr IAN CAMERON —Can you explain what will happen when we turn 60 and retire? We have a number, but will we have it scraped off the record? Is that your intention? I hope it is. We all have a tax file number. Once I become a lone parent, for instance, and start picking up a pension, will you wipe my tax file number? Are you prepared to do that? Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Hon. J. D. M. Dobie) —Order! The honourable member will address the Chair. Mr IAN CAMERON —Mr Deputy Speaker, I am asking the Minister for Defence Science and Personnel (Mrs Kelly), who is at the table, whether she is prepared to do that. There are a few questions I would like to ask under this legislation, and that is one of them. It seems to me that there is no provision in the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill to have our tax file numbers wiped once we become pensioners. Of course, 30 per cent of the Australian population are already pensioners. God knows what we will end up with if this crew stay in office for another 10 years. We will end up with half the population receiving one sort of pension or another. This Bill exempts those people. It also exempts most children, not all children. Children earning a wage over $94 a week or whose bank accounts earn interest over $420 per annum will have to have a tax file number. I ask the Minister: What happens in the case of a family trust? Do the children of that trust have to have a separate tax file number if they open their own bank account? I notice that the scribes in the officials area are busily writing things down. I hope that they put a few of these questions back to the Minister at the table. The Minister shakes her head and laughs. She will have a chance to answer some of these questions I put to her. I hope that she has some pretty smart answers because I do not think she will be able to answer them, if the truth be known. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member will come back to the Bill before the House. Mr IAN CAMERON —The Government makes one set of laws-I have here a book of explanatory notes of about 100 pages-and all it does is open up a whole lot of other ramifications and ifs and buts about what it might do with the legislation. I would also like to ask another question about stocks and shares. Today the Taxation Office is able to trace the owners of stocks and shares through companies that are registered. I just wonder why it is that we have to put our tax file numbers on these things. I know that we will have to use our tax file number for investments, interest from banks, building societies and credit unions. We will also have to use our tax file number for investments from government and semi-government organisations, companies and solicitors' trusts. Again, pensioners are exempt, for some strange reason, from declaring that they have anything to do with these companies. I find that rather strange, but that is the way the legislation is drafted. In particular, I would also like to point out to the House, having spoken to the Tax Office this morning, that I think it is going to be very difficult for people, particularly those who live in rural Australia, to find sufficient people to employ once this legislation becomes law. I point this out to the people who do not know that. There seems to be different dates involved as to when operation of the scheme will start. From November 1988 those starting a new job or changing jobs will need to quote their file number on an employment declaration to their employer, while file numbers will be quoted for all new accounts opened or investments made on or after 1 July 1991. There seems to be a whole range of start off dates. I put it to the Minister at the table that we should have a standard start off date for the introduction of all these new regulations that are being imposed upon the taxpayer once this Bill becomes law. I have much pleasure in supporting the amendments that have been put forward by the Opposition. I remind the House that it is a far different story from what was in the legislation a few weeks ago. Although a lot of people do not support the extension of the tax file number, I think that the people of Australia ought to be thankful that they do have a good Opposition in Canberra, that we have been prepared to stick it to the Government in the last 10 days and that we have a whole lot better legislation than we would have had if we had sat back and done nothing. Mr SAUNDERSON(Aston)(5.29) —I rise to support the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill and the Privacy Bill. I do so with some satisfaction. Before I actually talk in terms of the contents of the tax file number, I would just like to comment on a couple of issues that have been raised by members of the Opposition. The previous speaker, the honourable member for Maranoa (Mr Ian Cameron), raised some of the issues relating to the disquiet and perhaps the division in the Opposition over this question. Certainly members of the Opposition have attempted to put forward that in some miraculous way they have turned legislation which was inherently bad into something that was good and that what brought about their support for the tax file number was the fact that they have taken care of the privacy issues. One has only to read the Australian to find out that it is really not as simple as that. In fact, we find that there was a grudging acceptance by the Opposition and that there was a sullen sense of inevitability in the Opposition. The article states: Support of the Bill flowed from the political difficulties of opposing the legislation once the Government had made substantial amendments, and concern that the Opposition could be portrayed as a ``friend of the tax cheats'' if it did not support the measure. It goes on to say: . . . Howard's stand on the position left the leadership ``with its neck sticking out'' and the party room had little choice but to protect the leadership. We then turn over to read the back part and see what the rest of the Liberal Party thought about it. We find that there was a bit of a backlash once the party structure out in the sticks found out about it. I quote: The national president of the Young Liberals, Mr Cam Tinley, said the ``grassroots . . . are fed up with members masquerading as Liberals . . . It seems that he does not have any qualms about being called a friend of the tax cheats. He will be urging all the Young Liberals around the country to use their preselection votes to dump those who support the Bill. We should get away from this notion that in some way the Opposition has become an opponent of the tax cheats. We have to remember that during the Opposition's seven years of government under Malcolm Fraser, with the present Leader of the Opposition as Treasurer, the only growth industry was tax avoidance. Unemployment was growing, industry was being destroyed and for seven years the coalition Government, under Malcolm Fraser, sat around and allowed the tax cheats to make millions and millions of dollars at the expense of the community. The general community, the average pay as you earn taxpayers and honest taxpayers in other tax groups, were absolutely fed up with the way that the opportunist Opposition, when in government, allowed the tax cheats to thrive and to grow and to make millions of dollars at the taxpayers' expense. Honourable members opposite are now forced to accept the legislation simply because they know that if they try to go out into the community and say, `Hey, we knocked off the tax file number-support us' the vast majority of people will say, `We're not going to support you. We're absolutely fed up with you supporting tax cheats'. That is why the Opposition supports the Bill. Sure, it has had some amendments accepted. I will not discredit all of its amendments to the Privacy Bill but some of them have made the tax file number system less efficient than it might have been. I still think that the Government has done the right thing in agreeing with the Opposition so that we can at least have a system which will continue the crackdown that we have been carrying out on tax cheats. Nearly three years ago the Parliament set up a joint select committee to have a look at the then proposed Australia Card. I was a member of that committee. We carried out an extensive public inquiry throughout Australia. One of the satisfying things about this debate today is that we are now looking at the introduction of a tax file system, which was the recommendation of the majority report of that committee. Mr Ian Cameron —We have a tax file system. Mr SAUNDERSON —As the honourable member knows, that tax file number was a recommendation. A proposal on how it could be introduced was the basis of the majority report. There was certainly some concern in the community and in the Parliament about the Australia Card proposal. Ultimately, those concerns were proven to be of such magnitude that it was correct that the Australia Card not proceed. In fact, that was the majority view of the report at that time. Nevertheless, all the members of that committee from all of the parties agreed that tax avoidance was an ongoing problem, that there were clear deficiencies in the existing tax system, and that it was basically difficult, if not impossible, for the Australian Taxation Office to operate efficiently without some improved means of matching information. An argument put forward by the Opposition was that tax avoidance was something new; that it had grown because all of a sudden there was tax creep in the tax system. We know that that is absolute nonsense because, if we look at some of the figures made available by the Tax Office during that inquiry, we see that even in 1986 tax evasion in Australia was running at about $6 billion to $7 billion a year. It was a problem not unique to Australia but one of varying magnitude throughout the developed countries. The major difficulty that the Tax Office had was not necessarily obtaining information but being able to match that information to material which would enable it to properly apply income to the individuals that earned that income. A study was recently done by the Tax Office in, I think, the Sydney area. It concentrated on employment in the hospitality industry and the cleaning industry. Group certificates that had been issued were looked at. It was found that 25 per cent of the group certificates issued to people in some hotels had fictitious names or addresses. In one hotel, the percentage of incorrect group certificates was as high as 68 per cent. Clearly, in some of those instances there was collusion between the employer and the employee in a deliberate attempt to avoid paying tax and probably to avoid applying proper award conditions. In other instances, the employer had done his or her best to obtain the information but had not been able to satisfy the Tax Office. The use of tax file numbers in this area and in the area of banking will close down the avenues for opportunities to avoid tax. It will not totally eliminate tax avoidance but it will make it much more difficult for people to operate if they do not have a tax file number. That is the key to this process. No-one is suggesting that an improved tax file number and a system which requires a person, in certain circumstances, to provide that number is a perfect system which will eliminate tax avoidance and cut out the so-called black economy but there is no doubt that, coupled with other legal mechanisms, it will begin to close the net and make it much more difficult for people to operate outside the legal system. A good example of how that can work was the use of the withholding system in the building and related industries. The Opposition, when in government, introduced the legislation but never enacted it. When it was finally enacted under our Government, it was found to be effective. It brought into the tax system people who had been able to operate in a cash economy environment without paying tax. When that system was applied, they could no longer operate effectively without paying some form of punitive withholding tax. Effectively, they had a choice of either getting out of the industry or becoming legal. Thousands of them in fact came back into the tax system. To a great degree, the industry has been somewhat cleaned up. The use of the tax file number will assist that. I think the shadow Treasurer, the honourable member for Kooyong (Mr Peacock), made the point that there were a number of matters that honourable members opposite had to acquaint themselves with before they would support the Bill, one being whether there was a cost benefit in the tax file system. Obviously, he has not bothered to read the original report of the Joint Select Committee on an Australia Card; otherwise he would have known that the cost benefits were clearly stated there. It did not matter that he was one of those who, in their opposition to the Australia Card, kept quoting the report and saying that the tax file number was the way to go and that that was the majority view. Clearly he had not bothered to read the report, because if he had he would have found quite concise information put forward by the Taxation Office following, I might say, a request from me and the Committee to provide some information on the basis of an enhanced tax file number being used as a means of improving the tax collection system. In running through that information, the Tax Office laid out how it would be able to raise money and what it would cost. Clearly the cost was significantly less than the amount of money that could be raised. At that time the Taxation Office would have expected to raise some $290m a year for a much smaller introduction cost. The other important thing about the tax file system was that it could be introduced in a much quicker way than any other form of identity system. So it had two things going for it: first, that it could be introduced quickly and, secondly, that it would concentrate specifically on the issue of tax avoidance. Mr Ian Cameron —We have a tax file system now. Mr SAUNDERSON —The honourable member for Maranoa says that we already have a system, and that is correct. But obviously he has not read the report either, because if he had he would find in it a quite detailed examination of the difficulties that exist with the current system. The Taxation Office indicated that it had no security measures in issuing the current tax file numbers and that in some instances there was no cross-referencing of individuals who may have available to them a number of tax file numbers for different purposes. Thus, there was no way to measure the full income that might be available to individuals. The honourable member would not have raised that point if he had bothered to read the report, which was issued some two years ago. He has certainly had time to read it. It is good to see that the Opposition is supporting the Bill, even if it is reluctant to do so. I think all Australians will be much happier when this system is introduced, not just because they will immediately see a tangible benefit, but because they will have some greater comfort in knowing that those who are not prepared voluntarily to pay their fair share in the burdens of running this country will at least be brought to task. The only other thing I would like to say is that I find some disquiet in the way that the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Howard) took the Commissioner of Taxation, Mr Boucher, to task and made an implied threat about the continuation of his job. It is a great pity that the Opposition should take some exception to the fact that a public servant has been very vocal in his support for an improved taxation system. The fact is that Mr Boucher has openly argued for a more effective system and he has called for help from the legislators to give him a more effective system. That has resulted in the Opposition saying, `You appeared to be supporting a system which we did not necessarily want to support. We do not think that was right and therefore we cannot guarantee your continued employment if we come to office'. I think that is a great tragedy. I would have thought that the Opposition, like the Government, would have been concerned about efficiency and effectiveness in government. I think it is a great pity that when a high ranking public servant is prepared to stand up and say, `The system I have to operate with has deficiencies and the only people who can fix them are the legislators; I need your support to help give me a better system so that the whole of the Australian community can benefit from it', the Opposition then says, `We do not like your saying that because it does not suit us at this time. Therefore we cannot guarantee your ongoing employment'. That does nothing for a more efficient and dynamic public service. It simply means that we will find a more compliant public service sitting back and saying nothing, giving no advice and not letting the community know what it believes is wrong or good with the system and then leaving it simply to the Government to sort out. I think this matter clearly shows that sometimes the legislators, whether they be on our side of politics or on the Opposition's side, do not necessarily have the right answers. We ought to encourage public servants, particularly senior public servants, to let us know whether they agree or disagree with options that are put forward by us, rather than threaten them and say that their jobs may be done away with if there is a change of government. This should be more openly encouraged, in my view, rather than discouraged. I support the Bill. I believe that the view of the majority of the Joint Select Committee on an Australia Card has been vindicated by the introduction of this system. I hope that we will see the speedy passage of the Bill to allow the timetable that has been planned by the Government to be implemented as soon as possible. Mr SPENDER(North Sydney)(5.47) —The two Bills before the House, the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill and the Privacy Bill, are, as is known, supported by the Opposition. The shadow Treasurer, the honourable member for Kooyong (Mr Peacock), and the shadow Attorney-General, the honourable member for Menzies (Mr N.A. Brown), have set out the reasons why we support those Bills, although of course it is known that in the process of coming to support those Bills we examined them very carefully because we were deeply concerned about some of the things they did in their original form. We support the Bills basically because we believe everyone should pay his fair share of tax and at the same time privacy should be respected. These two considerations are not necessarily considerations that match easily together, because when we say that people should pay their fair share of tax, we then have to ask: What are the measures that should be adopted in a civilised society that believes in the rule of law, to make sure that people do pay their fair share of tax? How do those considerations match up to our concerns about the protection of privacy and civil liberties? I can give you a guarantee, Mr Deputy Speaker, that all tax owed by citizens in this country could be collected. We could pass laws that would make that a guaranteed outcome, but this country would then not be a place that any of us would want to live in. The truth of the matter is that we have to put up with some abuses of systems, whether they be the social security, tax or other government provided systems, as part of the cost of living in a tolerable and decent democracy. As I and other speakers have said, the Opposition supports the legislation. I wish to say something about the legislation and the reason why we support it, and I also wish to say something about two other issues: first of all, the great burden of tax that has been imposed on this country by this Government; and, secondly, the astounding incompetence of this Government, as demonstrated by the way in which it went about framing the legislation now before the House. And this, we recall, is the Government which was praised by the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke), as he looked at the somewhat bedraggled objects sitting on his front bench, as the best, the brightest and most luminous that the country has ever seen. Let me go first of all to the tax file numbers Bill. At Question Time today we had from the Treasurer (Mr Keating)-he must have been at a bad moment; he must have been in a fugue-an admission that, as a result of discussion that had taken place between the Government and the Opposition, in the tax file numbers Bill `probably we have produced a better Bill'. Let me just turn that around and put it explicitly. What the Treasurer was saying is that the Opposition has improved his legislation. There is no doubt about that; and the shadow Treasurer has outlined the reasons for that and how it came about. Let me address very briefly the way in which the tax file numbers Bill works. It sets up a procedure which enables the matching of tax file numbers against situations where income should be declared. Let us just run through those situations. It deals with the non-declaration of income from interest bearing investments in banks, building societies, credit unions, government and semi-government bodies, companies, solicitors' trust accounts and unit trusts. It deals with the non-declaration of dividend income and with non-declaration of employment situations. The way in which the Bill will operate when it is an Act of Parliament is such that, effectively, one will have a choice: one will be able not to declare one's tax file number and then wear a heavy penalty, or one will be able to declare the tax file number and then open the relevant financial affairs to the Commissioner of Taxation. Under the system which we have, aided these days by computers-which have quite transformed the business of tax gathering along with the business world itself-there will be a far greater ease of matching sources of income for taxpayers because the tax file number will be the matching code in each case. We support the legislation because we believe it will bring about benefits and we believe that the amendments which we have forced the Government to accept as the price of our support of the legislation will protect the privacy rights of individuals. I move on to say something about the Treasurer's second reading speech. This gets down to the issue of the burden of income tax in this country. When one sees what the Treasurer said one is reminded that this Government, when it comes to humbug, propaganda, hypocrisy and straightforward misrepresentation, has few peers in contemporary democratic history. The Treasurer, in his second reading speech, said: Today people much more readily comply, simply because lower rates make compliance less of a burden. If one knew nothing about the realities of the world, one would believe that the tax burden in this country had in fact been reduced under this Government and that this was a low taxation government. Mr Kerin —It is by OECD standards. Mr SPENDER —The Minister at the table is saying that it is low by Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) standards, but what he does not say is whether it is low by historical Australian standards. The short answer is that it is not. Dr Charlesworth —More people are working and there is less unemployment. Mr SPENDER —Here we have a mindless interjection from one whose mind is always in neutral. He says that more people are working. I say to my friend that that has nothing to do with it at all. Since the Minister at the table has raised the matter of the OECD, I go first of all to what that organisation said in its most recent economic survey of Australia. This gives one some idea how the taxation burden in this country has historically increased. Later I will give a few figures which show precisely what has taken place under this Government. What did the OECD say? On page 59, addressing the question of the vertical equity of the new system, it said: First, progressivity of the tax scale just before reform was very different from the situation two decades before. While only one per cent of taxpayers faced a marginal rate of 46 per cent or more in fiscal year 1954-55, the proportion had risen to almost 40 per cent in fiscal year 1983-84. That is an increase from one per cent to 40 per cent over that 20-year period. It continued: A top marginal rate of 66.7 per cent in fiscal year 1954-55 began at 18 times earnings, while a top marginal rate of 60 per cent in fiscal year 1983-84 cut in at 1.6 times average earnings. The report went on to say: Second, the increased tax burden before the introduction of the new system had led to greater incentives to avoid tax at higher incomes, thereby reducing the effective progressivity of the tax system. Of course, it needs to be recalled that all the major general anti-avoidance measures were introduced in the time of the Fraser Government. That report points to the increasing burden on taxpayers and the greater number of taxpayers who are now paying tax at the highest marginal rates. I remind honourable members again that in fiscal year 1954-55 only one per cent of taxpayers faced a marginal rate of 46 per cent or more, whereas the proportion had risen to almost 40 per cent in fiscal year 1983-84. What do the figures tell us? I have some figures: selected indicators for 1981-82 and for 1986-87. The sources of these figures are the taxation statistics of the Commissioner of Taxation for 1981-82 and income tax statistics from the Budget Papers for 1986-87. These figures show us that in 1981-82, the last full year of the Fraser Government, 285,396 taxpayers earned more than $28,000 a year taxable income and paid tax at the rate of 46c in the dollar or more, that is, they had entered those brackets. Some 285,000-odd were on the 46c or more marginal tax rate. One would think that the figure would be less. After all, this Government constantly tells the world that its tax collections are less and that it is effectively a low taxing government. In 1986-87, the number of taxpayers with a taxable income of over $28,000 and who were on a marginal rate of 44.25 per cent-remember the earlier figure of 46 per cent; this one is about the same at 44.25-had increased from the 285,396 figure to 1,290,867. That is an increase from 285,000 in round terms to 1,290,000 in round terms. That is one of the great achievements of this Government! Is it any wonder that people out there in the community-which is never visited by the Treasurer or by the Prime Minister-are hurting because they are paying more tax? They have less disposable income; they are less well off; and, incidentally, they are paying for motor cars anywhere up to 100 per cent more than they were at the time when this Government came to power. It takes them far longer today to finance the purchase of a motor car out of their earnings than it did when this Government came into power. They are now facing mortgage rates and costs of housing which are far greater than comparable rates at the time that this Government came into office. Let me just refer the House to some other sets of figures which, again, are very revealing. According to a table headed `Income tax and average earnings: 1966-67 to 1987-88', in 1982-83 a taxpayer with a dependent spouse and two children paid 14.1 per cent of his total earnings in tax. What was the estimate for 1987-88 under this brilliant Government with this brilliant Treasurer, this brilliant Prime Minister, and this brilliant front bench? We have seen some exhibitions of the brilliance of this front bench in the last few weeks. The figure is 18.1 per cent. The proportion of total earnings paid in tax by such a taxpayer has gone up from 14.1 per cent in 1982-83 to 18.1 per cent in 1987-88. The marginal rate on the last dollar earned for the same taxpayer with a dependent spouse and two children was 30.67 per cent in 1982-83 and 41.2 per cent in 1987-88. Effectively this Government has made that taxpayer pay around 25 per cent more of his disposable income in tax than he had been paying in 1982-83. Let me say something about the privacy legislation itself. That legislation is a tribute not to this Government but to the shadow Attorney-General, the honourable member for Menzies. The Privacy Bill is made tolerable as a result of the amendments put by the shadow Attorney-General and accepted by this Government. The legislation in its original form would have been unsupportable. It was shoddy and slipshod with gaping holes in it and did not even contain an obligation on the part of the Privacy Commissioner to hand down privacy guidelines. Let me run through the achievements of the shadow Attorney-General, since I think they should be put on the record. First of all, the Bill in its original form provided that the Privacy Commissioner may issue guidelines on the collection, storage, use and security of tax file number information. The legislation said `may' not `shall'. We did not believe that that was right. Indeed, the Government does not believe it was right because it accepted the amendment. We recommended that `may' should be changed to `shall', and that was accepted, which means, of course, that the Privacy Commissioner will have an obligation to issue guidelines. Next, there were no actual guidelines or rules set down in the Bill for the tax file number. The Opposition took the view that the Bill must set out in actual terms the rules that the Government believed were adequate for keeping privacy over the tax file number. This view and our schedule have been accepted. Can one imagine this Government coming to the people and saying, `Look, we are going to have guidelines or rules but we are not going to tell you what they are; we are going to tell you some time in the future, but not now' and asking us to pass that kind of legislation? What collection of ministerial dopes put this together? Let me deal with the exemption of information from privacy principles on the ground of public interest. The original Bill allowed agencies to apply to the Privacy Commissioner for an exemption from following the principles on the ground of public interest. The only supervision of this process was an appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. This was entirely unsatisfactory and, in effect, gave a Federal agency the scope to ignore privacy principles enacted by the Parliament. The Opposition said that if the Privacy Commissioner made such an exemption it should be disallowable by the Parliament, which was accepted. No complaints against interference in privacy could be made for the first six months of the operation of the Privacy Bill. We thought that was wrong. We put up an amendment which was accepted. We believe that the way in which powers to enter premises were drafted was inadequate and wrong. Again, the shadow Attorney-General put up amendments which were accepted. We thought that the duty of the Privacy Commissioner to report to the Parliament was too narrow and that he should report to Parliament on at least some of his major activities. Effectively, what we said about that was adopted. The other amendments were covered by the shadow Attorney-General in his speech at the second reading stage. I want to make one last point. A lot was said by previous speakers about the Commissioner of Taxation. The Commissioner has wide powers. Let us understand that great powers of the kind that he has have to be exercised with wisdom and restraint. The proposal put forward by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Howard) is designed to secure just that. Anybody who has anything to do with the world knows that powers under the Income Tax Assessment Act have been abused. Powers of that width can easily be abused. There must always be a balance between, on the one hand, the collection of revenue and, on the other hand, the fair treatment of citizens. And that is what we are determined to secure. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Hon. J. D. M. Dobie) —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. Dr CHARLESWORTH(Perth)(6.08) —The tax file number legislation which is before us today is, of course, being supported by the Opposition. But, if one reads today's newspapers, it is very clear that it is reluctant support. Indeed, a front page article in today's Australian headed `Howard tax file backers reluctant' states: A grudging acceptance of the need to back Opposition Leader, Mr Howard, forced a Coalition party room meeting in Canberra yesterday to support the Federal Government's proposed upgraded tax file number and privacy legislation. The article goes on to talk about the dissatisfaction that exists on the other side of the House. Clearly there is great division among honourable members opposite. Further on, the article states: West Australian members of the joint party room were particularly strident in their opposition to the upgraded tax file number, reflecting strong sentiment in that State about the issue. The article goes even further and we read: The national president of the Young Liberals, Mr Cam Tinley- who was a Senate candidate in the last election- said the `grassroots of the party are fed up with members masquerading as Liberals at their preselections and then supporting left-wing policy in the safety of the party room'. `I will be urging Young Liberals around the country to use their preselection votes to dump those who supported the Bill,' he said. Of course, there is widespread dissension and great concern in the Opposition about this legislation. The honourable member for Kooyong (Mr Peacock) suggested in his contribution that the Opposition has excised the obligation for taxpayers to be required to quote their number. He saw this as a great achievement. If taxpayers listening to this debate wonder what has been achieved for them by the honourable member for Kooyong, I can tell them. They will be able to do something that was not an offence under the legislation. As a result of the Opposition's productive efforts, the obligation no longer exists-not that it existed in the original legislation-for a taxpayer to disclose his tax file number. For that privilege, any interest or money he may receive will be taxed at a rate of 49c in the dollar, plus the Medicare levy. I think a substantial victory has been achieved for those people who will be wondering what has been done for them! The honourable member for Maranoa (Mr Ian Cameron) continued to talk about what a big taxing government this Government was and how in fact this legislation would add to the tax burden-a rather spurious argument, I am sure all would agree. Of course, any government is going to be the biggest taxing government this year, just as next year's government, of whatever complexion it is, will be the biggest taxing government then. That argument is very facile. It amazes me as I sit in this place year after year to hear it used again and again. This legislation provides for the use of the tax file number to identify taxpayers and, as such, will provide an increased integrity for the system. It will mean greater efficiency for the collection of taxation so that every taxpayer in the country can understand that the system has integrity and that everybody is paying his fair share. The specifics of the Bill are supported. Indeed, honourable members on the other side have been saying in this debate that it is fair that every taxpayer should pay his fair share. Their concern is about the intrusive nature of the tax file number system and what it might mean. How intrusive is this? I have no objection to my tax file number being known. Indeed, for the information of anybody who is listening, it is 621 826 602. Perhaps I should now fear that, that information having been disclosed, I will be subject to all sorts of unusual and bizarre scrutiny. Of course, I do not think that is the case. Mr Kerin —You have just lost your privacy. Dr CHARLESWORTH —I may have lost my privacy, as the Minister suggested, but I certainly do not believe that that is the case. If we are to talk about civil liberties and individual liberties, the argument which has been most strongly projected by members of the Opposition, it amazes me that two hours ago in this place they were arguing that in camera evidence produced for a standing committee of the Parliament should be released to the public. One minute they are debating whether the privacy legislation is strong enough and the next minute they are saying that in camera evidence given by witnesses to a committee should be released. I find it unbelievable. Those who talk about civil liberties and individual liberties often quote the philosopher John Stuart Mill. More than a century ago he found it impossible to defend the notion of individual liberty. He suggested that, except for the right to private thought-I think that is without question-there is no civil liberty. As soon as a private thought is expressed, it acquires the potential to injure others and therefore may be unacceptable in an ethical sense. The conclusion that he came to was that government intervention is often justified, that just as often as it is justified it is improperly evoked and that sometimes it is improperly condemned. I think that is a very valid conclusion. The sorts of decisions that we in this place are making all the time relate to individual liberties. Legislators throughout this country are making decisions as to the public good and whether the public good is advanced by those decisions and whether individual rights and liberties are interfered with. All sorts of legislation is passed in this place and others in respect of those issues. In Victoria, legislation that said people had to wear seat belts was at the cutting edge of road safety legislation in the world. That legislation relates to how one should use one's seat belt when sitting in a car. Education programs have been shown to have an effect on people's wearing seat belts, but nothing has been more effective than that legislation and its enforcement. It is very often inconvenient for people, but we pass and accept legislation which infringes our individual rights as we drive along. Yet we hear bleatings and concerns in places such as this that we should not have similar considerations in the area of taxation. We pass legislation which says that people coming into Australia through Customs can be searched. While such legislation is inconvenient and some of us may disagree with the way it is enacted, we accept the intrusion as a cost of living in our society and for the protection that is provided by such a search. I doubt very much that the giving away of one's tax file number is a mammoth intrusion. If it means that all those people who are paying their fair share will pay less-and clearly the sums would illustrate that large sums of taxation revenue are avoided by people who are engaged in tax avoidance practices-there is a benefit for them in this legislation. Certainly, there will be a plus in the future. We have discussed privacy legislation in this debate. A very meaningful and measured contribution was made by the shadow Attorney-General, the honourable member for Menzies (Mr N.A. Brown), who, it is acknowledged, has been responsible for some significant improvements in that legislation. It is important to understand that there is a great deal more to be done in the area of privacy. None of the measures in this Bill touches upon the private sector. I dare say that most members of this House and the vast majority of the people of Australia have a credit card which they use for identification and financial purposes. When they obtained that credit card a great deal of information would have been provided by them over which we have no control and over which they have no control and in relation to which there is perhaps a necessity for a greater enforcement of privacy legislation in this country. The provisions of this Bill involve general government information and the tax file number. A number of guidelines are laid down relating to complaints, investigations, conclusions and the storage, collection and recording of information about the tax file number and general government information. I think that within that legislation we have the embryo form of substantial privacy legislation which may in the future go a great deal further. While we accept the right to privacy, we in this place have continually to balance the right to privacy against considerations which are important for the social goodwill and for the fair and equitable collection of taxation. Indeed, that is what this measure is about. The honourable member for Kooyong gave us the normal story. We have heard it all before. He says, `We do not have a substantial policy with respect to economic management; we plan to spend less but we are not going to tell you where we will cut expenditure; we want to loosen monetary policy and we will drop interest rates as a result; we will give you big tax cuts but we do not want you to spend the money because demand is a bit too strong, so you'll have to save more; and we are going to fight inflation as well. We do not have an incomes policy but we know that incomes should be increased. However, every time a case comes before the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission we will oppose any wage rise'. Unfortunately, all of those things do not mix. It is only this Government that has put some credibility into taxation policy. It is this Government that lowered the rates. In spite of what the honourable member for North Sydney (Mr Spender) said, we would still be left with a rate of 60c in the dollar if the coalition were in government. In spite of what the honourable member said, it is harsher penalties and lower rates that have improved compliance with taxation laws. This Government has closed many of the loopholes. One has only to look at the capital gains tax, which equates capital gains income with employment income. We have only to look at the fringe benefits tax and the entertainment tax introduced by this Government, which have improved the progressiveness and the equity of taxation measures. For two or three years in the old building we listened time and time again to the former member for Denison saying that the restaurant industry would collapse if we introduced an entertainment tax, yet year after year we see increasing employment and increasing efficiency in that area. In the corporate sector, by lowering the tax rates, by having tougher enforcement and fewer concessions and by moving the double taxation on dividends, income and genuine profits are encouraged, which was not the case under the previous system. I wish to quote from a magazine which is not, I might say, a purveyor of socialist philosophy by any stretch of the imagination-that is, Australian Business. In the 2 November edition John Gilmour, under the heading `It pains one to praise the World's Best Treasurer too much, but credit where credit is due', wrote: Successive governments-particularly those tired Tories who postured as supporters of free enterprise-created a tax monster that penalised profit but encouraged speculation. Further, he said: It pains this page- he was talking about his column- to give too much credit to the World's Best Treasurer. He said that with tongue in cheek. We all understand that. The Minister for Primary Industries and Energy (Mr Kerin), who is at the table, understands it. He continued: But the Keating taxation reforms have won . . . They have eliminated double taxation on company dividends, enabling small companies to plough profits back into their enterprises without penalty. They have ended the preference for speculation by placing capital profits on a similar footing to trading gains. They have indicated a sympathy for business by providing companies with the best tax rate available. They have created a climate for enterprise. This Government is about economic growth and enterprise. We have encouraged income and discouraged speculation. If one looks at fiscal policy and asks the Opposition what it intends to do, one finds that in the last Budget total outlays increased by 4.1 per cent in nominal terms. That represents a fall of some 2 per cent. If one adds that to the figures for the previous years-1986-87 and 1987-88-one finds a fall in outlays of 5 per cent over those three years. It is the first time in 30 years that we have had three years of outlay falls. Indeed, outlay expenditure is now down to the sort of percentage level that we saw in the early 1970s. There has been a significant decrease in outlays and a significant contribution to fiscal policy by this Government. However, when we ask the Opposition what it would do we find that it would do nothing. When we talk about wages policy time and time again the Opposition says, `We believe we should oppose wage increases'; yet in the same breath it bleats about the fact that net disposable income of some workers has fallen. In an ideal world I am sure that we could produce the panacea that we seek, but when it comes to handling the levers and making the decisions, this Government has had to grapple with those questions. This tax legislation is a further step on the way to making the tax system equitable. It is necessary for us to do so. One has only to look at the results of the recent tax amnesty to see that a large number of people are not complying with the law as it is. The amnesty was determined after census statistics were compared with groups lodging tax returns. It was estimated that some 360,000 taxpayers had not, for various reasons, declared their income in past years. As the amnesty draws to a close, we find that some 290,000 new tax files have been found. Many of those taxpayers will receive refunds, but a large percentage of them have outstanding taxation debts. That will be a further source of income for the Australian Taxation Office and a further source of equity for those people in the community who have, over a long period, been paying their fair share. It is just a further example of the fact that we must be ever vigilant in the area of taxation. Yet at the same time the Opposition denigrates and criticises the Australian Commissioner of Taxation who, as a public servant, is doing his job, following the law, trying to be vigilant and trying to determine and collect a fair share of the taxation revenue. I find the Opposition's action the utmost in hypocrisy. The tax file number system is not something new. It has been with us for 52 years. The enforcement of the tax file system-the strengthening of the tax file system-which will be the outcome of the passing of this legislation and the privacy legislation that goes with it, is something that is well overdue. It will mean that ordinary taxpayers will pay their fair share and will receive their fair benefits. It will increase compliance. One has only to look at the figures which have been produced in a table which is before me, which suggest that in some countries the hidden economy amounts to as much as 50 per cent, to know that there is a great need for increasing the compliance with and the integrity of the taxation system. This legislation has my utmost support. I am sure that once it becomes law we will see an even greater integrity in the system. Mr CADMAN(Mitchell)(6.26) —The members of the Australian Labor Party who are speaking today in favour of the tax file number are those who were most fervently in favour of the Australia Card. Those people are using the speeches that were used on the occasion of the introduction of the Australia Card and are claiming the same things for the Government's proposals to collect more taxation. The Australian community and the Opposition rejected the Australia Card proposal. At that time we said that we would support a discrete proposal within the taxation system which protected privacy. Today we have before us the Government's proposals that meet, broadly, the Opposition's principles. I must say that they were amended substantially by the Opposition. It is only through the activity of the Opposition regarding the tax file numbering system that we are to pass legislation which, to a fair degree, reflects the principles laid down by the Opposition at the time the Australia Card was introduced. Government members put the proposition forcefully to the Australian community that the Australia Card was the only system whereby we could have a safe taxation collection process. The Australian people rejected that strongly. The Australia Card Bill was rejected because it did not have adequate safeguards for privacy. It was opposed not only by the Joint Select Committee on an Australia Card which examined the proposals but also by many supporters of the Australian Labor Party. In addition, a large number of non-partisan groups emerged in the community to fight the legislation. Former Senator Ryan and the Minister for Community Services and Health (Dr Blewett) finally conceded that there could be concerns with fraudulent use of the card. This is this brilliant Government's second best effort. Even so, these brilliant proposals have had to be heavily amended and then accepted by the Government. The privacy provisions were grossly inadequate. Those guys in Caucus accepted a proposal to allow the taxation system, under the tax file number, to rip for six months before there were any privacy provisions or any protection whatsoever. They accepted and agreed to that. The protections for the Australian community were grossly inadequate. Mr McGauran —If not non-existent. Mr CADMAN —As my colleague says, if not non-existent. Not only were the provisions of introduction inadequate but also the guidelines that were necessary for the person who was supposed to protect the privacy of the Australian community were also non-existent. They were not even proposed to be tabled at the time of the introduction of the legislation. I pay tribute to the shadow Attorney-General-the honourable member for Menzies (Mr N. A. Brown)-for his careful enthusiasm in pursuing this matter and the results that he was able to achieve. There are aspects of this legislation that are of concern. It will be interesting to see how they are achieved and how the implementation is achieved on the ground. The submission by the Australian Taxation Office to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs was enough to concern anybody. Poor estimates and generalisations damaged the claims of that office to have changes made to improve the Australian tax file number system. Sitting suspended from 6.30 to 8 p.m. (Quorum formed) Mr CADMAN —The House is debating the tax file numbers legislation. This afternoon we have had a limited number of Government members speaking in support of this measure. It is typical of this Government that it should use a number of strategies to squeeze more tax out of the Australian people. This is the second attempt of this sort that the Government has made. It tried to introduce the horrendous Australia Card, which was unanimously rejected by the Australian people. The Australian people would not contemplate such a measure. The Government backed off because it was fearful of the electoral consequences of the Australia Card. The Opposition believes that everyone must pay his tax dues, no more and no less. After a number of changes were indicated by the Government, we agreed that there should be a tax file numbering system with proper privacy protections. A number of amendments proposed by the Government and the Opposition are before the House this evening. The Opposition has been concerned about a number of things, including the submission of the Australian Taxation Office to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. After much probing that submission indicated that the likely revenue gains to the Tax Office by 1994 would total $337m. Even with the use of the unique identifier, as proposed in the tax file numbering system, approximately 70 per cent of the interest which is currently untaxed will still be untaxed. The Australian Taxation Office admits this. The Opposition is also concerned about the administration of the prescribed payments tax, which is a requirement for contractors and sub-contractors. It is a process whereby piles of paper are acquired by the Tax Office. This paper gathers dust in warehouses and no reconciliations are done by the Australian Taxation Office to see whether people are paying the appropriate amount of tax under this system. The only reconciliations that are done under the prescribed payments system are the ones done in the Taxation Office when taxpayers are called in. We believe that there is a similarity between the tax file numbering process and the prescribed payments tax. Reconciliations will not be done but much paperwork will be foisted upon the Australian taxpayer. What is the Government up to? What is its real agenda in all of these tax measures? The Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) has said a number of things. In May 1983 he said: There is a responsibility on every member of the Parliament and every member of the community to see that the opportunity opened up by the success of the Summit is not frittered away. The spirit of shared sacrifice and restraint and the determination to take the steps needed to achieve recovery must be carried into effect in all areas: In wages and industrial relations; in the policies of business throughout the economy; and through the policies of government. I commend this vital national enterprise to each honourable member and the nation we represent. That was five years ago. What has been achieved since then? The level of sacrifice in the Australian community has produced the highest taxing government in Australia's history. That regime has been administered under the bushranger from Bankstown. Let us look at how the average Australian is faring under that sacrifice promised by the Prime Minister in 1983. At the moment the average tax rate is 26.9 per cent, compared with 22.9 per cent five years ago. The amount of tax paid per week by the average Australian five years ago was $85 compared with $140.50 now. The single income family paid tax of $65 per week five years ago and it is now paying $119 per week. Five years ago bank interest rates were 12 1/2 per cent; they are now pushing 15 per cent. Average repayments on homes five years ago were $350 a month compared with $666 a month now. This is coming out of the pockets of the average Australian. This is the sacrifice the Prime Minister spoke about five years ago. The people are really sacrificing. The real disposable income of an Australian family with two dependent children was $23,419 five years ago. In July 1988 it was $21,139. There has been a real fall in disposable income during the period of sacrifice under the Hawke Government. That sacrifice was established at the summit called by the Prime Minister. The net tax payable five years ago by a family with a dependent spouse and two dependent children was $2,998. It is now $6,206. There is the sacrifice. Again, it is a case of sacrifice and more sacrifice. The average Commonwealth outlay per year since the Hawke Government has been in office has been $68.5 billion. Under the Fraser Government it was $37 billion. That represents nearly a doubling in outlays by the Government in that five year period. All of this has been promised for the sake of forthcoming tax cuts-the promises of the last Budget; the expectations of the Australian Council of Trade Unions; the desperation of the Australian community suffering with smaller disposable incomes and high interest rates. The Government has said that the tax file number must be a critical part of that. The Opposition has said that the Government can have its way, can have a tax file number with proper privacy provisions, and we will see what sorts of tax cuts we can expect. Can the Government deliver? Will it be able to provide the tax cuts? There appear to be some doubts at this stage in the minds of the Treasurer (Mr Keating) and others in the Government. There was an expectation created in the last Budget because the Treasurer promised that he was setting the stage for major personal income tax cuts-not just tax cuts, but major personal tax cuts. Those were the words used by the Treasurer in the last Budget. What is the Australian community looking at now? It is looking at the sacrifice, the restraint, the new taxes, the tax file number, and the effort of the Australia Card. What are we going to see? Let me remind the House of some of the new taxes. We have had the assets test-a brilliant invention for pensioners-and all the difficulties of getting that system to work and the stress and trauma caused by it. We have had the capital gains tax. I would like to inform the House that in my electorate I have first time home buyers with blocks of land which are now too expensive to build on. They have been forced to sell that land and to downgrade their expectations to land in other suburbs or to lower priced blocks of land on which to build their first house. They are being forced to pay capital gains tax on that first block of land. Great effort! This Government with its high interest rates and high taxes is so equitable to everybody! What about the substantiation process that opens up the avenue of reverse onus of proof for the Australian Taxation Office? What about the fringe benefits tax? What about, of course, the make-the-rules-as-you-go process and the test-them-in-the-court-if-you-have-the-funds attitude of the Australian Taxation Office? The Government is saying, `Trust us and we will turn the corner'. The corner never comes. That is the problem. We never seem to turn the corner. The latest publicity strategy of the Government to ingratiate itself with the Australian community will be to congratulate it for its restraint and sacrifice. Those are the proposals. There will be positive attitudes of congratulations of the Australian community for sacrificing to the degree it has. The corner never comes. The deferral of tax cuts and the delay in the new incomes test proposed by the Government are just examples of the way that it can change its promises and break its promises. It is very interesting to track back the record and to read from a speech in 1981: What a price the Australian community has had to pay for the implementation of such a bankrupt strategy: the costs inherent in the potential goods and services which have been foregone as a result of production levels being consistently depressed below capacity; the economic, social and psychological costs of persistent and massive unemployment; the emergence of shortages of skilled labour and the need to rely increasingly on immigrant skills; and the erosion of the living standards of the average wage earner. In relation to this last point, it is worth highlighting the fact that, as a result of an increased tax burden, higher health costs, rising interest rates, and continued high inflation, the typical family on average earnings is at present $8 a week worse off in terms of spending power compared with the situation in 1975-76. Those were the words of the Prime Minister in 1981. He could be describing the failures of his Government. Of course, the only difference is that that real fall in disposable income for the average Aussie family is not $8 a week but $56 a week now. That is what the Government has cost the average Australian family in higher health charges, fewer job opportunities, higher interest rates, and a high taxation regime. Those words of the Prime Minister in 1981 are coming back to haunt him. He accused a moderate government, with lower interest rates, lower taxation levels and higher disposable incomes, of destroying the opportunity for the average Aussie. What has happened to date? There is more tax, a corner that never comes, and a Treasurer that said he had set the stage for major personal income tax cuts. The Treasurer himself has spoken many times of restraint. He has forced restraint on all sorts of people, including pensioners, whose pension increases he delayed. He has talked about that, but he is now backing away from his commitment to major cuts in personal taxation. We are discussing the tax file numbering process tonight that is to supply extra funds. Let us see whether it delivers. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. Mr LEE(Dobell)(8.16) —Having heard the terrible circumstances outlined by the shadow Minister for immigration and ethnic affairs, the honourable member for Mitchell (Mr Cadman), one would think that Australia was almost in a depression and that Australians were so much worse off. He forgot to mention that since 1983, when this Government was elected, 1.2 million more Australians have jobs than when those opposite left government. Of course, Mr Acting Speaker, as you would be well aware, those extra jobs have come about because ordinary wage and salary earners, through the unions and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), have exercised wage restraint. That has not been easy for the union officials concerned. It has not been easy for the rank and file trade unionists, who have had great difficulty in making ends meet when purchasing their groceries at the supermarkets. They know that the fact they have exercised restraint through their union councils and through the decisions of the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission means that today 1.2 million more Australians have jobs compared to 1983. The figures cited by the honourable member for Mitchell perhaps suggest that people living in my electorate, for example, have suffered wage restraint. That is true. However, there are more people in my electorate today who have jobs than there were in 1983. That is something which he totally overlooked. The honourable member for Mitchell also suggested that this Government was responsible for the decline in living standards and that, if only Australians would elect the Opposition to government, suddenly everything would be fixed up. Of course, one thing he did not mention was the Opposition's attitude to wages. The Opposition, through the current Leader of the Opposition (Mr Howard) and its other spokesmen on incomes policy, has opposed every wage increase for ordinary wage and salary earners for the last 10 years. The Opposition does not say that John Elliott and other executives should have their remuneration restrained. The Opposition believes that, because these people are part of the private enterprise system, in order to create the right incentives for them to make profits they should earn millions of dollars a year. But the Opposition has opposed every application for wage increases for the last 10 years. The Opposition says that we are responsible for a decline in living standards. Yet every time this Government knocks out an agreement with the ACTU for a moderate wage increase the Opposition says that wage earners should get nothing; they do not deserve any increase; and that they should not have had any wage increases for the last 10 years. What would the living standards of ordinary Australians have been if honourable members opposite had been successful in having no wage increases paid to ordinary Australians over the last 10 years? I can tell them that the real disposable incomes of ordinary Australians would have fallen by a lot more. The other comment made by the honourable member for Mitchell was that pensioners have been singled out for special treatment by the Government. I am getting a bit sick and tired of members of the Opposition suggesting that they are the answer to the difficult circumstances in which some pensioners live. I remind any pensioner who is listening to this broadcast tonight, or any pensioner who has the opportunity of being in the public gallery tonight, that in 1975, when the Whitlam Government lost office, pensions stood at 25 per cent of average weekly earnings. That was when Malcolm Fraser was elected. When Malcolm Fraser, lip quivering, lost office in 1983, pensions had fallen from 25 per cent of average weekly earnings to only 22.7 per cent of average weekly earnings. That is a real decline in disposable income for pensioners. Since this Government was elected, pensions as a percentage of average weekly earnings have risen from 22.7 per cent when Fraser left office, to 24.5 per cent today-within a whisker of 25 per cent, which is our long term target for the level of pensions. That is something which I know many pensioners understand because they remember what it was like under the Liberals-the 50c a week increase which was given to them by Bill McMahon and the other Liberal Prime Ministers. They know what the Liberal record is. I turn now to the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill which is before us tonight. Of course this legislation provides for the introduction of a tax file number system, something for which those of us on this side of the House have been campaigning for more than three years now. When the campaign started we were fighting for the Australia Card, which was something which we believed would have enabled us not only to fight tax avoidance and tax evasion, but also to cut down on social security fraud and to prevent illegal immigrants from misusing the services which are available to people living in Australia. Members of the Opposition had a great win! They were able to defeat the Australia Card due to the fact that regulations could be disallowed by a vote of the Senate-a great victory for members of the Opposition, but not a great victory for the ordinary Australian taxpayers who today are paying more tax because those social security cheats are still out there cheating and the illegal immigrants still have not been found. But I have to say one thing about members of the Opposition: I commend them for the fact that they have been prepared, in a spirit of compromise, to reach agreement with the Government to introduce the tax file number system. The tax file number system will allow this Government to crack down on those people who are not paying their fair share of income tax. It is long overdue. Of course, we are all aware of the so-called black economy where people are able to work under false names and, in some cases, pay no tax and, in other cases, pay less tax than they should. Unfortunately, there are some areas of the economy where it is very common for people to work under false names and not pay their fair share of tax. We should remember that every time one of those people does not pay a dollar of tax which he or she should, ordinary wage and salary earners have to pay an extra dollar to make up for the dollar which that tax cheat has not paid. I wish to outline to the House a few press clippings which I have recently collected on the question of tax avoidance. These, of course, refer not only to the introduction of the tax file number system, but also to the attitude of the Australian Taxation Office to those high income earners, those working in the black economy, and also to companies. The first clipping is from the Sydney Morning Herald of 13 September. It is headed, `Blitz on cheats, warns tax chief', and states: The Tax Office is to examine luxury lifestyle assets such as boats, racehorses, expensive cars and flats as part of a special crackdown on tax evasion by the rich. The Tax Office will also target the building, cleaning, clothing, road transport, market gardening, fruit picking and shearing industries for investigation when the tax amnesty expires at the end of October. The article goes on: A small initial audit program last year had brought to book 25 barristers who were now being pursued for an average of $60,000 each in extra taxes and penalties. This audit has found 1,500 tax evaders, which would mean $6.9 million in revenue. I repeat: $6.9m from 1,500 taxpayers-people in that very high bracket who have been avoiding paying their fair share of tax. I am right behind the Commissioner of Taxation in chasing a fair share of tax out of those people. The article continues: Mr Boucher- the Tax Commissioner- said the Chatswood tax office had recently uncovered 'major rorts' in the cleaning industry in the North Shore area. . . . . When one employer asked his staff to produce identification, 427 of them quit on the spot. From that one exercise, 3,648 tax cheats-an average of 693 cheats per firm-will be brought to justice, Mr Boucher said. It was not just employees who were evading their tax responsibilities. Employers not only helped employees by arranging false bank accounts for them, a number were themselves padding payrolls and claiming deductions for wages paid to fictitious employees and, of course, pocketing the money without declaring it in their own tax returns. We have discovered that some cleaning firms are employing some ethnic people lured with the promise of immediate work, and most times new identities. These firms usually pay them below award wages under fictitious names. I am afraid to say that often when these people try to leave or change the arrangements they are blackmailed by their bosses, who threaten them with exposure and deportation. Mr Boucher said on one occasion a tax officer, investigating a major cleaning business, tried to interview a Spanish cleaner working in the men's toilets, but the man said he did not understand. When the tax officer started to speak Spanish, according to Mr Boucher, the cleaner was so surprised that he fell into the urinal with his hands on his head. The cleaner did speak good English and was working under a false name. The Tax Office in the North Shore area has certainly found that in the cleaning industry and the hotel and the club industries there are large numbers of people working under false names. I believe that the Tax Office does have a responsibility to track down those people who are working under false names to make sure that they pay their fair share of tax. As I said before, every time someone in the cleaning industry does not pay a dollar of tax because he or she is not following the rules, ordinary wage and salary earners have to pay one extra dollar to make up for that dollar. Two other articles which I wish to quote on this issue of taxation concern some comments made by Mr Boucher that he was prepared to take whatever action is necessary to make sure that companies pay their fair share of tax. This article is again from the Sydney Morning Herald. It is headed `Keating hits at business tax rorts', and states: The Treasurer launched a scathing attack yesterday on business leaders for taking an attitude to tax which was `conceptually squalid', `astounding' and displaying `a lurk mentality'. Mr Keating said he had told the Tax Office to `come down like a ton of bricks' on companies which were `rorting' the system. The Government has given Australia a decent tax system for the first time ever, and it is not now going to be polluted by an attempt by lesser people to intimidate the Tax Commissioner in the carrying out of his statutory responsibilities. Mr Martin —Was it the Leader of the Opposition? Mr LEE —I welcome the interjection from the honourable member for Macarthur. Yes, in fact, it was the Leader of the Opposition. I will quote from a report in the Canberra Times of 23 September of comments made by the Leader of the Opposition. It is headed, `Howard criticises Tax Office head'. It states: The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Howard, stepped up his attack on the Taxation Office yesterday, claiming that some small-business people had been threatened with `jackboot raids' by tax officials. He also sharply criticised Taxation Commissioner Mr Trevor Boucher, accusing him of using belligerent language and adopting a threatening pose which threatened to break down any trust between the business community and the Tax Office. If the Tax Commissioner can make sure that people working in the black economy and people who are not doing the right thing are made to pay a fair share of tax, I certainly do not have any problems at all with the Tax Commissioner adopting a belligerent pose when he is dealing with some businesses which are taking part in the sorts of rorts which I have mentioned tonight. As I said before, I welcome the fact that the Opposition is supporting the tax file number system. We all know that in their heart of hearts, the majority of those opposite would have been quite happy to introduce the Australia Card if they had been in government. In fact, the shadow Minister at the table, the honourable member for Gilmore (Mr Sharp), was on record at the start of the Australia Card debate as having made comments in his own electorate that the Australia Card would have been a great idea. Certainly one of the National Party members, perhaps the honourable member for Gwydir (Mr Hunt), suggested that thumb prints would have been a good addition to the Australia Card. The point I simply make is that the introduction of the tax file number system will allow the Tax Office to catch those who are working under false names and who have bank accounts, again under false names, and are not declaring interest which has been earned. I think it is important that we recognise that in the legislation there is protection for the elderly. Having an electorate with more age pensioners than any other electorate in Australia, I have to say that I studied this part of the legislation very carefully. In fact, any person who receives an age pension or a similar entitlement from the Department of Veterans' Affairs will not be required to have a tax file number and be involved in this sort of scheme. This is something to be welcomed because many elderly people would simply be confused by the introduction of a new form of identification system such as the tax file number. This compromise in the legislation will work well. As I said, I support the legislation. I commend the Opposition for agreeing to the Government's proposals in the spirit of compromise. Some honourable members opposite have suggested that they have had a great victory because the tax file number will be optional whereas we were going to make it compulsory. In a sense it is optional. But it is optional on the condition that people are prepared to pay tax of 49c in the dollar. I would not exactly call that optional. I support the legislation before the House and I commend the Government and the Treasurer (Mr Keating) for introducing it at this time. Mr PORTER(Barker)(8.31) —The Labor Government's proposal to implement an upgraded tax file number comes at a time when the Government's credibility on the issue of the protection of individual rights is at an all time low. The Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill follows the Government's attempt to push through its identification card proposal, which constituted the most significant erosion of individual rights and liberties ever undertaken by an Australian Government. In the face of unparalleled community opposition, the Government nevertheless intended to press on with the implementation of the ID card. The nation was saved only when we found a fatal flaw in the legislation introducing the ID card. The Government does not come to this debate with clean hands. The ID card was proposed at a time of rampant welfare fraud caused by the Government's administrative inefficiency. At that stage, the Government was running an open door welfare policy which encouraged fraud and the flouting of the proper eligibility criteria for benefits. Instead of trying to clean up its slack administration, the Government attempted to divert attention from it by introducing the ID card legislation. Having lost that round, it then had to focus on the real problem which, of course, was its administration. While there has been some tightening up of the administration of the eligibility criteria for benefits, the Government still has not done enough. Only yesterday the Auditor-General's report into the Department of Social Security criticised the failure of the Department of Social Security and the Commonwealth Employment Service to follow rigorously the administration procedures set down for the application of the work test criteria for unemployment benefit. I know that the Department has been unbelievably slow in following up cases in which people on unemployment benefit are offered work and then voluntarily give it up, in many cases after only a few hours at work. Yet those people still remain on benefit. In nearly all cases they are voluntarily unemployed and should be taken off the benefit. I urge the Government to clean up its act and ensure that only those who meet the relevant eligibility criteria for welfare benefits obtain the benefits. It is not only against this background of Labor's attempt to introduce the all intrusive ID card and its acknowledged administrative inefficiency that we have been asked to consider this extension of the tax file numbering system; it also comes at a time when the nation is suffering from the most massive tax grab ever. Never before have we seen so many new taxes introduced-capital gains tax, fringe benefits tax, entertainment tax, the Medicare levy, the new sales taxes imposed on beer, wine, flavoured milk, computer software, orange juice and so on. New taxes have been imposed on Australia Post and Telecom Australia. Taxes have now been automatically indexed and many concessions to taxpayers have been removed. After five years of Labor the result is that personal income tax collections are up 107 per cent, company tax collections are up 136 per cent, and sales tax collections are up 147 per cent. Mr Sciacca —You won't let us catch the tax cheats. Mr PORTER —What an extraordinary interjection. That is why the taxes have doubled or trebled in the last five years. That is the talent that we have on the Government benches. We have had all these increases in taxation from the biggest taxing Treasurer this nation has ever seen. Little wonder that when he introduced this tax file number Bill and asked us to trust him, we did not. We do not believe him and we do not trust him. This is why the tax file number Bill and the Privacy Bill have been subjected to the most intense scrutiny from the Opposition and why the Bills have come to this chamber with so many amendments. Looking at the history we see that the Government attempted to introduce an ID card and failed; we see welfare fraud because of slack administration. The Government tried to divert attention from this to the ID card; it failed in that. It has attempted to tighten up welfare fraud but still has not done enough; it has increased taxes at a faster rate than ever before in this country; and now it wants to introduce a tax file number proposal. I will briefly recall the evolution of the tax file number proposal. I think that the House will then understand our suspicion of the Government and the Australian Taxation Office in this issue. When the Government proposed the ID card, it was as a result of pressure from the Opposition that a joint select committee was established to review that proposal. That committee reported and, as is now well known, the majority of that committee opposed the Government's proposal. I quote from page 147 of the report of the Joint Select Committee on an Australia Card under a section headed `Conclusions and Recommendations': 4.52 These conclusions and recommendations are supported by a majority of the Committee comprising Mr James Porter, MP (Deputy Chairman), Senator Janine Haines, Senator Christopher Puplick, Mr Charles Blunt, MP and Mr John Saunderson, MP. Honourable members will see that the majority of the Committee was made up of representatives from all parties; that is, Labor, Liberal, National and Democrats. It went on: 4.53 Having considered the Government's proposal for a national identification system, as well as alternatives such as the use of photographic cards and the extension of the use of the current tax file system, the majority of the Committee rejects all proposals for the issuing of identity cards, with or without a photograph. The House will recall that the Government did not accept the report of that Joint Select Committee. It was only as a result of public pressure and a flaw in the Bill that the Government backed off. That Committee recommended an extension of the tax file numbering system. Page 148 of the report states: 4.57 The majority of the Committee unequivocally rejects the Government proposal for an ID system. It proposes the following outline for the extension and upgrading of the tax file number system . . . A number of actions to be taken in extending the existing tax file numbering system are then outlined. The idea for an extension of the use of the tax file numbering system struck me during evidence which was given to that Joint Select Committee from the Australian Taxation Office. It was when we were discussing the difficulties that the Tax Office had in matching the flow of information provided to it from companies, banks and other financial institutions that I realised that if the tax file number was attached to the individual records that were provided to the Tax Office, it would be better able to match that information flowing to it with taxpayers' income tax returns. In response to questions which I asked on 24 February 1986, the Tax Office wrote to the Committee and said: Tax officials who gave evidence before the Joint Select Committee on 24 February 1986 were asked by Mr J. R. Porter MP whether further information could be supplied in relation to three matters. The third involved a consideration of the scale of net revenue gains which would accrue if taxation file numbers were used in lieu of the Australia Card. It went on to state under the heading `Tax File Number Revenue Gains': At one end of the scale, if we followed the Australia Card identification requirements before allocating tax file numbers (and purified existing records on that basis), we would expect to achieve similar revenue gains to those under the Australia Card option without a photograph-with similar staff and equipment costs. In other words, the Tax Office was saying that if we had exactly the same proof of identity procedure and the issue of a tax file number to every Australian citizen or resident, then we would garner about the same revenue. I remind the House that the revenue estimated under the Australia Card proposal for undeclared interest, for example, in a couple of years time would be $283m. So it was saying that we could get the same revenue by using the extended tax file numbering system, using the same procedure as the Australia Card to issue the number and by issuing everyone with such a tax file number. The Office went on to say: At the other end of the scale, the use of the existing tax file number with its very low integrity would produce relatively little extra revenue. Having regard to the existing level of reporting and checking for interest and dividend payments, the addition of a tax file number could be expected to improve our ability to process and match the information received with tax returns lodged. That is just the point we were making. It said: However, this would not seriously affect those evaders who use false names or invalid file numbers. The increased revenue gain is estimated at between $6 million and $9 million. So the Tax Office was saying that an extension of the tax file numbering system to prescribed investments, on the basis of the issue of existing tax file numbers, would raise only an extra $6m to $9m. On the one hand we were told that if we had the Australia Card proof of identity for the issue of the tax file number, we would gain $283m, but if we just continued with the existing tax file numbering system and required those numbers to be annexed to all interest bearing deposits and so on, we would get only $6m to $9m. The Australian Taxation Office was then pressed further, because we believed that they were rather pessimistic revenue outcomes. It was clear that the Australian Taxation Office was pushing the Australia Card down our throats as fast as it could, and it was trying to put us off an extended tax file numbering system. The issue was pursued nevertheless, and further information was provided to the Joint Select Committee on an Australia Card. It is indicated at pages 290 and 291 of our report that it was possible, but the Tax Office kept impressing on us the difficulty of extending the tax file numbering system. Spread throughout its responses to us were comments such as, `This, of course, is a daunting task'; `It is our strong preference that a file number be allocated to all persons'; and `It would, of course, be unmanageable if a significant number of people were to wait just before the date for use of a file number to apply for the issue of a number'. It continued to raise these objections to an extension of the tax file numbering system, said it would really only work if we extended it to everyone in the nation and that if we did that we would get $238m. But the Australia Card was rolled and the Government has now considered that the only option is to accept the original recommendation of the Australia Card Committee. The really surprising thing is that the revenue estimated to be collected is very near that which was estimated to be collected from the Australia Card. But we do not have the tax file number being extended to everyone in the community. We do not have new tax file numbers being issued to everyone who has already got one, although there will be a purification process. We have a large number of exemptions under the new system and we have a very restricted use of the tax file numbering system to areas where information is already being provided to the Tax Office from banks and companies paying dividends and the like. It is those authorities that will have to attach a tax file number-in other words a very limited use of the tax file number. What is the estimated revenue? The Australian Taxation Office told the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, which is looking at the tax file number proposal, that it expected extra revenue mainly from undeclared interest in bank accounts would be $204m. That is only just less than the amount expected to be obtained by the introduction of the Australia Card, only a little less than that expected to be obtained, from the estimates given to us by the Australian Taxation Office, from the extension of the tax file number system to everyone in Australia-for all the uses under the Australia Card proposal. It is extraordinary that at long last we have an honest answer from the Tax Office, after it did everything it could to put us off and after telling us during the Australia Card debate that the extension of the tax file numbering system was nowhere near as good as the Australia Card. The revenue projections we now have are nearly the same as with the Australia Card. Clearly the role of the Australian Taxation Office, in endeavouring to push the Government line on an Australia Card, and in now being backed into a corner with the Government and having to support the tax file numbering system, does not please me one bit. I would prefer the Tax Office to give to the Australian people and their representatives-this Parliament and the committees appointed by it-honest information and estimates based on the best evidence available to it. We do not want politically biased evidence being provided to this Parliament or to the people of Australia from the Tax Office. We want the facts. We have had a long history of incompetence in the Tax Office, highlighted by a number of reports which have indicated the inefficiencies and the need for an improvement in its administrative arrangements, which we sought to assist in remedying by improving the ability of the Tax Office to match the flow of information to it. Thus, I find it disgraceful, as a member of a parliamentary committee of inquiry, to have been put off by the Tax Office by low revenue estimates at the time when the Australia Card was still in the offing, and now to be encouraged by much higher estimates when the tax file numbering system is the only option. I am glad the Government has been forced to accept the recommendations by me and others to improve the ability of the Tax Office to match the flow of information to it from banks and other financial institutions with income tax returns by the addition of a tax file number. That really is the extent of this legislation. We are saying to employers, banks, other financial institutions and companies, `When you supply information to the ATO, do not just provide the name and address; give the tax file number which will be provided by your employees or clients'. I do not see a problem with that as long as we guard against any unreasonable extension of this legislation. The last thing we want is a de facto ID card. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mr Blanchard) —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. Mr SCIACCA(Bowman)(8.51) —The honourable member for Barker (Mr Porter) talked about the ID card and the fact that it was defeated because of a technicality. He tried to draw an analogy between the ID card legislation and this present legislation, the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill. Of course, the fact is that they are not analogous. There are many differences between the two Bills and, frankly, in my view, the ID card legislation was not the sort of legislation that everybody should have been against, anyway, because in fact we now have the system of identification which the Australia Card legislation would have set in place. In any event, the honourable member for Barker said that this Government had doubled and trebled taxation. He did not tell us, of course, that under this Government the top marginal tax rate has come down from 60 per cent to 49 per cent. He ought to go back to school and learn arithmetic, because in my book a reduction from 60 per cent to 49 per cent certainly does not amount to a doubling or trebling of the tax rate. I also say to him that, if he considers that there is a lack of talent on this side of the House, he had better look at himself, because he is the one who has been relegated to the back bench. At least some of us have moved from the back bench and are going towards the front. (Quorum formed) I was getting a bit concerned. I do not know what I said that upset honourable members opposite. I support the Bill. One of the most notable achievements of this Government has been its determination to stop the insidious effects of the tax avoidance industry. Until this Government was elected, it was common knowledge that if one had enough money to buy the best of legal advice and was able to get the best Queen's Counsel from Sydney and Melbourne-that is where they normally come from-it was only a question of setting up an elaborate tax avoidance scheme and one could get around paying legitimate taxation. The Government's introduction of such measures as the capital gains tax, the fringe benefits tax and the assets test has gone a long way towards ensuring a fairer tax system. We all remember the cries from the Opposition-in many cases the friends of the tax avoidance industry-that these measures would not be accepted by the public. But, of course, not only has the general public fully accepted these measures but also there is absolutely no doubt-I repeat: no doubt-that, in the unlikely event that honourable members opposite would be elected as a government, they would retain the same measures that we have instigated. We had the guts to put them into place. Honourable members opposite would not have had the guts to do it because they would have upset some of their friends in the tax avoidance industry. For far too long the bulk of the tax burden has rested on the shoulders of honest people. Pay as you earn taxpayers have never had the opportunity of avoiding tax. Others have decided that it was only correct that they should pay their fair share and have not involved themselves in questionable taxation practices. On the other hand, there are many unscrupulous people in the community who will go to any lengths to ensure that they pay little or no tax. In the main, these people use such devious means as false names, the non-declaration of income, or the failure even to lodge tax returns. This legislation will go a long way towards stamping out these practices by increasing the efficiency of the Australian Taxation Office's income matching system. I fail to see how anyone can legitimately object to this legislation. And whilst I notice that the Opposition has finally, and probably most grudgingly, agreed not to oppose the legislation, I find it incredible that the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Howard) and the shadow Attorney-General, the honourable member for Menzies (Mr N.A. Brown), had to fight tooth and nail to get the coalition to agree not to oppose it. It is obvious that there are still many honourable members opposite-we just heard from the honourable member for Barker; he was obviously one of those who were against it-who are still prepared openly to support tax avoiders. I find that quite sad. In fact, if today's disgraceful performance at Question Time is any indication, it seems that there are many frustrated Opposition members who are not all that happy about the fact that they were rolled in their own party room. Mr Martin —Again. Mr SCIACCA —Yes, again. The Tax Office's income matching program at the moment relies on names and addresses to match details contained in taxpayers' returns. Of course, the upgraded tax file number system will make it much easier for the Tax Commissioner to know exactly what is happening and to be able, through the Tax Office computers, to match income returns with such things as interest notifications from banks, et cetera. By providing tax file numbers rather than names and addresses for income matching, this legislation will substantially improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of the Tax Commissioner's income matching procedures. There is nothing new in this procedure. It has been used by the Tax Office since 1936. The extended use by the Tax Office, however, will simply improve the chances of detecting tax cheats and will apply equally to individuals, trusts, partnerships and companies. The present income matching system, because of the lack of information available to the Office, is resulting in some 30 per cent of income reports received by the Tax Office not being matched at all. This legislation will ensure that each taxpayer is declaring all income and paying the correct amount of tax. This is not an attempt by the Government to introduce an alternative to the ID card system, but rather a genuine attempt to put yet another nail in the coffin of tax avoiders. Slowly but surely we will get them all, difficult as that may be. Mr Lavarch —Quite so. Mr SCIACCA —As the honourable member for Fisher says, quite so. As long as we are in government, we will do something about getting the tax cheats. It is estimated that over the next 10 years some $2.2 billion of revenue will be returned as a result of this legislation. This shows just how large the problem is with tax avoiders and with people who are prepared to cheat the tax system at every available opportunity. Whilst I believe that this legislation will go a long way towards catching those dishonest people who take particular pride in avoiding tax, I believe that it will be virtually impossible to cast a net wide enough to catch everyone who is defrauding the system. Of course, I refer here to the cash economy. I think we are all aware of the assiduous nature of those who involve themselves in the cash economy. They think they are being very clever and smart in avoiding paying tax. But let them be warned that, while this Government is in power, all reasonable measures will be taken to stamp out this most unsavoury practice. This legislation goes at least some way to trying to address that problem. The recent tax amnesty, which resulted in tens of thousands of people coming forward and lodging returns, is evidence of the fact that in the past some members of the community have scoffed at their obligations in this area. Indeed, it is common knowledge in the community, particularly in the small business community, that some small business proprietors keep two sets of books, one for the Taxation Office and another that the accountant keeps under his drawer, or that they keep under their drawer, to be used to explain to a prospective purchaser what the business is really worth. We have heard that time and time again. Mr Lavarch —Like Terry Lewis. Mr SCIACCA —Yes. As I say, it is common knowledge that that is in fact the case. These books are used to establish the real value of a business-particularly, as I say, small businesses such as take away food shops, fruit shops, and so on. Proprietors always seem to be able to say, `Look, it is worth $100,000. The figures show that it is worth only $20,000 but, believe me, it is worth $100,000'. Whilst no accurate figures can be attributed to loss of income from the tax revenue in this area, I am sure that any estimate of loss would have to be in the hundreds of millions and perhaps even billions of dollars over a short period. What annoys me the most about these willing participants in the cash economy is that, by defrauding the Tax Office, they are not so much being smart and clever but are forcing the honest citizen into paying much more than would normally be the case. I have no doubt that, if everyone paid the correct amount of tax, the burden on honest taxpayers could be substantially reduced. Again, while no accurate assessment is possible, there is little doubt that tax rates could be almost halved if everyone was honest in his dealings with the Tax Office. The Australian newspaper editorial of 15 October 1988 makes the following very good points: It is no secret to either the average Australian taxpayer or the Tax Commissioner that a large number of Australians fail to pay their fair share of tax. The so-called `black economy' is rife. Few tradesmen-be they plumbers, electricians, builders, mechanics or gardeners-will not offer a discount for a cash payment. Likewise professionals such as dentists, accountants, architects and- heaven forbid!- even lawyers will offer trusted clients very favour-able rates should they agree to pay in discreet bundles of now untraceable cash. And, of course, criminals such as drug dealers rarely deal in anything but cash. There is also a disturbing number of Australians who are not averse to helping themselves rather lavishly from the public purse through either bogus or multiple claims for either unemployment benefits or various pension payments. The editorial goes on to say: Australian taxpayers have been waiting far too long for their promised tax cuts. This legislation should enable Mr Keating to gather enough in his coffers to actually fulfil his promises. Mr Downer —Three hundred million dollars? Mr SCIACCA —It will be a lot more than that over a period. A number of respected editorials have applauded the upgraded tax file number system. A number of columnists have done so as well. Claude Forell wrote the following in the Melbourne Age of 19 October 1988. That is my tax-file number and I don't much care who knows it. Why should I? If I had the same number on my Medicare card, passport and driver's licence, I might even remember it. I see no need to conceal my identity or pretend to be someone else. My tax is paid up. I have not been moonlighting. My modest savings are not invested under false names. I am not cheating social security. My credit is good. No debt collectors are chasing me. I am not a maintenance defaulter. I am not hiding from the police or bailiffs. It is my telephone number I would rather keep private. Why should any law-abiding citizens or honest taxpayers get into a fuss about the Federal Government's upgraded tax-file number scheme? To them, the collective benefits will far outweigh any minor individual inconvenience. He goes on to say: The tax-file number system is not intended to increase the total tax burden but to ensure that it is more equitably borne by catching or deterring some of those who have contrived to evade their fair share. It is possible to quibble about the estimated yield and costs. But experience has shown that tightening of the tax rules and making their application more effective tends to net more in revenue than the Government ventures to estimate. Towards the end of his article he says: In a modern computerised and credit-sodden society such as ours, government and businesses have already accumulated a vast volume of personal data about almost everyone. As citizens, we have already lost the choice of being nonentities. The extended use of tax-file numbers will not give the Tax Office any more information than it is entitled by established law to know, and this knowledge will not be shared with any other agency. Honest citizens have nothing to fear. They have much to gain if those engaged in tax rorts are made to pay their dues. The measures introduced by the Government, of which the privacy legislation is part, will ensure that the Tax Commissioner at least has a vehicle available to him to be able to strengthen the income matching procedures so as to catch the tax cheats out there in the community. It is not the whole answer, but at least it will go a long way to doing something about this insidious problem of tax avoidance. I commend the Bills to the House. I am very happy that at least the Opposition, even under pressure, has come along and been prepared to support the legislation. I hope that the Australian Democrats do the same in the Senate so that the support is unanimous. Mr DOWNER(Mayo)(9.08) —I would like to make just a few remarks on this important piece of legislation in the context of my role as shadow Minister for small business. I know that out in the community it is the small business people who are, above all, the most worried about this piece of legislation. As the honourable member for Bowman (Mr Sciacca) illustrated in the speech that he has just made and as I will be explaining during the course of my speech, they have good reason to worry because of the attitudes of many people on the other side of the House. The honourable member for Bowman spent a good deal of time levelling accusations at the small business community, saying that they were tax cheats. Mr Sciacca —Only the crooks. Mr DOWNER —And crooks, apparently. This is the sort of standard that the small business community has had to accept from the Australian Labor Party. It is not surprising that, when important pieces of legislation like this are introduced, the small business community does not trust the Labor Party. The honourable member for Bowman interjected that small business people are crooks. That really explains why small business is so deeply concerned about this Government. This Government is antipathetic to small business and we have had that evidence in just the last two or three minutes in this place. Of course the tax file number system has been massively controversial. It has been massively controversial because of the breakdown in trust, the breakdown in good relations, between the Government and the Australian Taxation Office on the one hand and the small business community on the other hand. The small business community sees the Treasurer (Mr Keating) and the Commissioner of Taxation as a threat to its livelihood, as people who are antipathetic to what is without any doubt the locomotive of the Australian economy-small business. There are three basic aspects to the difficulties that small business has, and has increasingly, with the Labor Government and the Tax Commissioner. The first, which is by no means the responsibility of the Tax Commissioner, is the enormous tax burden which has fallen on the small business community over the last 5 1/2 years. We have seen increases in personal income tax for the average small business; we have seen the imposition of a whole raft of new taxes-the fringe benefits tax, the non-cash fringe benefits tax, the capital gains tax and so the list goes on-and we have seen small business ignored when the Government reduces the company tax rate and takes away accelerated depreciation provisions. Such changes do not benefit the small business community. It does not benefit from cuts in the company tax rate. The growth in the taxation burden on the small business community-it has been a very rapid growth-understandably creates a feeling or antipathy between that locomotive of the Australian economy and the Government. Secondly, the small business community, I think with some justification, feels singled out and harassed by both the Australian Taxation Office and the Government. There was the disgraceful instance earlier this year when the offices of the Australian Small Business Association were raided by officers from the Australian Taxation Office and the membership lists of the Small Business Association were taken away. Legal, yes, but harassment it certainly was. It is that sort of thing which breaks down the relationship of trust that should exist between the Government and the Taxation Office on the one hand and the small business community on the other. There is a constant suggestion from the Government and from the Taxation Office that small business is guilty, that small business is responsible for all the tax rorts and all the tax cheating that takes place in Australia today. We have just heard it from the honourable member for Bowman. Again and again the Government attacks small business as being the manufacturer of tax cheating schemes. We know that tax cheating is going on in the community. Frankly, it probably always will in every democratic society, regrettable though that may be. I would certainly never condone it-I have far too much respect for the rule of law to do that-but where it has happened there is no reason to believe that small business is somehow culpable and that everybody else should get away scot-free. It is the continual harassment of small business that creates the distrust which makes the taxation system all the more difficult to operate. The third reason why the trust that should exist between government and the small business community has broken down is that many people in the small business community are individualists who feel very strongly about something that we on this side feel very strongly about-their civil liberties. It does not happen for us to be a glib phrase that `civil liberties do not matter very much'. For us it is not something that a few bureaucrats can sneer at, saying that civil liberties do not matter very much as long as we have lots of rules and regulations. For people in the small business community and people who have been brought up on a healthy diet of liberty as, fortunately, most people in this country have-under Liberal governments-many events in the last 5 1/2 years have given them good reason to fear the breakdown of civil liberties. We had a most unpleasant debate about the identity card, with all the implications that had for people's civil liberties. The fact that the identity card legislation was introduced and advocated by the Government, the fact that a government wanted to impose an identity card on the whole of this nation, understandably accelerated that climate of distrust. There has been the Bill of Rights issue, in the wake of which came the identity card. That, too, created a feeling of distrust-of Big Brother standing over people and telling them what to do, what to think and how to behave. Even if such considerations do not matter much to the Government or to people such as the Minister for Community Services and Health (Dr Blewett), who thinks that individual liberty is a bourgeois concept, they matter to ordinary people, and particularly to individualists in the small business community. When on top they see this quite random exercise of the powers of the Australian Taxation Office, following the harassment of small business meted out by the Australian Taxation Office, it is not surprising that they are suspicious of a proposal such as a tax file number. One cannot blame them for at least being suspicious. There has been a breakdown in trust between the small business community, which is the locomotive of this economy, and the Government and the Australian Taxation Office. That should worry members of this House, and, above all, the Australian Taxation Office and the Treasurer. I am sorry that it does not worry them, because I believe they feel rather gleeful about what they are doing to the small business community. So we are now to have the tax file number system, a scheme that scrapes past the test of acceptability because of the introduction of Opposition amendments. Nobody deserves more credit than does the honourable member for Menzies (Mr N.A. Brown), the shadow Attorney-General, for the excellent job he has done, as has the shadow Treasurer, the honourable member for Kooyong (Mr Peacock). Inevitably, the small business community will argue that at face value the tax file number scheme is the son of the identity card, but because of our amendments Opposition members can say with confidence that the scheme is certainly not the son of the identity card. In the first place there is no obligation on taxpayers to quote their tax file number. If they do not quote that number, they will pay the highest marginal rate but qualify for a refund at the end of the tax year. That more than anything counters the argument that somehow this is a measure that is related to the pernicious identity card that Labor tried to introduce last year. It is worth noting that it is an offence for an authorised person to require the tax file number to be quoted, and it is also an offence for an unauthorised person to request the tax file number. Again, if this were an identity card or a substitute for an identity card, the system would not work if it included those provisions. Also worth noting is the fact that financial institutions and employers do not have to require the tax file number. Many people in the community will not need a tax file number at all. That point is worth mentioning in the context of the argument whether this system is a substitute for the identity card. The 2,500,000 pensioners will not need a tax file number, nor will children under 16 years of age, and the list goes on. The tax file number will not be needed for loan accounts, such as for mortgages. It will not be needed for non-interest bearing accounts and existing interest bearing accounts where the rate of interest is less than $120 a year. People in that category include about 70 per cent of all account holders with building societies and credit unions. Investments in items such as real estate will not require the furnishing of a tax file number. At the end of the day an enormous number of categories of financial transactions will not require in any way a tax file number. In such instances the number will simply be irrelevant. It could not be used to collate information on somebody's finances or reused by other departments in the exchange of information about individuals. As I have mentioned earlier, what the Opposition has done in terms of strengthening the privacy legislation and the privacy guidelines will provide very significant protection to people who are concerned about the possible abuse of the tax file number. The point should be made that, according to the guidelines that the Government has produced and the Opposition has agreed to, the tax file number is not to be used as a national identification system by whatever means. Tax file number recipients shall not act in an unauthorised manner to use tax file number information as a means of matching personal information about a person. It is worth mentioning that guideline as well because it is extremely relevant. The Opposition has made a whole series of amendments to the Privacy Bill to strengthen it. When one looked at the original Bill one had every reason to be suspicious. For example, why was it that the Government's original Bill provided that the Privacy Commissioner `may' issue guidelines on the collection, storage, use and security of the tax file number information, but did not have to do so? It is extraordinary that the draft legislation contained the word `may'. We sought to amend that and the Government accepted our amendment. The word `may' has been replaced by the word `shall'. That is an extremely important change that the Opposition has made to this legislation. Originally in the Government's draft Privacy Bill no guidelines or rules were set down for tax file number information. Goodness knows why they were not contained in the legislation. Goodness knows what the Government had in mind by not including those guidelines or rules. The fact is that those guidelines have been specifically put in by the Opposition and they have been accepted by the Government. I think that a very good job has been done by those on this side of the House-in particular the shadow Attorney-General and the shadow Treasurer-in ensuring that we have a proper piece of legislation which protects the privacy of individuals, which ensures that it is not an identity card system in disguise and which, at the end of the day, may turn out to be a piece of legislation which is cost effective. But that remains to be seen. The Australian Taxation Office and the Treasurer boast that the measure will raise $2.25 billion over a 10-year period; that its introduction will cost $279.5m and that it will raise about $337m per annum. That remains to be seen. Those estimates sound terribly specific. However, when the Australian Taxation Office was asked in a Senate committee to give details of how it came to those figures, it found it extremely difficult to do so. Frankly, the details were never provided. It remains to be seen how cost effective the measure will be. If one takes the word of the Taxation Office at face value-I would not suggest that one should do that with the Treasurer-one would have to say that it will be cost effective. However, let us wait and see. At the end of the day let me say this: the small business community will remain concerned about this legislation, not because with the Opposition's amendments it is in itself an insidious piece of legislation which will destroy the civil liberties of ordinary Australians, but because its confidence in the Australian Taxation Office, its confidence in the Labor Government and its confidence, if you like, in the system has gone. It has lost that confidence. It does not trust the Tax Office and the Government. That is a very unhealthy state of affairs in this country because, as I keep repeating, the small business sector is the locomotive of the Australian economy. If the Government, through the Tax Office, the discretion of the Tax Commissioner or legislation introduced by the Labor Government, intends to harass the small business community, this country will be a very unhappy economic climate-an even more unhappy economic climate than it has today. This is an opportunity for the Government and the Tax Office to make a new start, to try to treat the small business community with a bit more respect, instead of marching around the country accusing, by implication, the small business community of being rorters and tax cheats and of being guilty before any evidence has actually been assembled against it. It is a very bad thing. It is very bad for government and for business. I hope that at the end of the day the Government will begin to learn the lesson that it must work in cooperation with the small business community and not continue to harass it. Mr O'KEEFE(Burke)(9.26) —I consider it a privilege to be present in the House tonight as a member of the Government which has introduced the Taxation Laws Amendment (Tax File Numbers) Bill 1988 and the Privacy Bill 1988 and to have the opportunity to follow the comments made by the honourable member for Mayo (Mr Downer). I intend to pick up some of the things that he said. I believe that in 1983, when the Hawke Labor Government was elected to office, a number of tasks were expected of it by the Australian community. Those tasks included the task of bringing Australians back together again, restoring employment, balancing the books and opening up Australia to the real world. The honourable member for Mayo mentioned that it is necessary for people to have confidence in the tax system and in the Government's administration of it. It is my belief that in March 1983 a very strong component of the vote of confidence which saw the Hawke Labor Government elected was a plea that the tax system be cleaned up and that confidence in it be restored. This legislation is a component-I believe it is a major component-of what has been an ongoing tax reform. It is one of the final and major pieces of tax reform to be put in place. The honourable member for Mayo in his contribution went on with the usual cant about small business. I have very close contact with large numbers of small business proprietors in my electorate. They have seen a couple of things happen. They have seen confidence restored in the economy and they have seen the rorts by the big fellows taken out. Most importantly, they have seen the removal of the double taxation of dividends for incorporated businesses. One of the very significant benefits that they know and understand-even though the honourable member for Mayo may not-is the real effect of the removal of division 7a tax and, in effect, the removal of double taxation. They have an incentive to retain profits within their businesses and use those profits to reduce their debt, increase their equity and invest in productive business ventures. Honourable members opposite should not continue the cant about the small business community. I say to them that the small business community is voting Labor. While they continue to make those sorts of speeches there is no prospect of the small business community turning to them. I feel for honourable members opposite. I read with some interest today's press reports of their Party meeting yesterday to discuss this legislation. It has always been clear to me that their hearts are not in it. Their hearts are not in a decent tax system-a system which makes people accountable for their profits. Their hearts have never been in it. Honourable members opposite set the show on the road when they set up the Costigan Royal Commission into the Activities of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union. They hoped that it would do over the painters and dockers. Where did it finish up? It finished up in a bottom drawer in the Crown Solicitor's Office in Perth. Where were members of the Opposition on those issues-the bottom of the harbour issues and all those other things? They were soft, because they were interested in a tax system which was soft around the edges, a tax system which was not enforced and was not complied with. Over the last five years we have seen a number of major reforms. Almost every one of those reforms was vehemently opposed by members of the Opposition-none more so than reforms such as the fringe benefits tax, the capital gains tax, increased powers to the Tax Commissioner to enable effective auditing of corporate activities, the shift of the self-audit system, and so on. All these measures were opposed because in the end it meant that the groups the Opposition listens to and represents were the ones who were most at the target. Yesterday in the party room the tax file number did not go to the vote, as I understand it. My best advice is that no-one wanted to seriously test it because of the question of the leadership. I can understand that. If the Opposition members were going to vote against their leader it would have been better not to have a vote. The fact is that their hearts are not in it. They have been forced to the watering trough on the tax file number. The reason for that is that they know they have run the privacy cant as far as they can. They know that, had they opposed this legislation, they were going to be roundly drubbed in the community as soft on tax cheats, soft on people who consider it their civil liberty to rort the system and rip it off others who are fair, honest and decent taxpayers. Members of the Opposition knew they were going to be labelled as soft, as they knew they would not be able to wriggle out of it, so they stuck with it. This is very good. It is delightful to see that the Opposition has come to the party on this legislation, albeit in the softest possible way. Let us look at the tax file number legislation. There has been a lot of discussion by the Opposition about the question of civil liberties and the massive gain it has had in winning amendments from the Government. The fact is that the Government considers the tax file number legislation a very important tool for the Tax Commissioner in carrying out his functions in a modern, computerised era. Something that may not be broadly known around the place is that each year all the major financial institutions send to the Tax Office a return which shows the interest payments that have been made to the holders of accounts. But what is not on that return is a tax file number. So the Tax Office has no capacity to match up the returns from the myriad of institutions with the information that is supplied on their own files-unless it does a person by person check, a random check, which at the moment is done manually. The tax file number will enable computer matching of those returns. That will throw out the accounts that are in false names, the accounts that have not been declared, and so on. No-one can come into this Parliament and bring forward any sort of legitimate complaint about giving the Tax Commissioner the ability to use modern, computerised techniques to improve the efficiency and fairness of his system. That was the situation the Opposition was faced with. If it was going to block this legislation, if it was not going to agree to it, albeit with amendments, it would have denied the Tax Commissioner an everyday, ordinary tool available in other countries and completely consistent with the move to computerise the administration of the system. Such an argument would not have held up, and members of the Opposition know it would not have held up. So whether their heart is in it or not-and I say their heart is not in it-the fact is that they are now saddled with it and the Tax Commissioner now has the capacity to do his job properly. That brings me to another aspect of the legislation. I mentioned that the Opposition's heart is not in all of this. We are seeing at the moment a concerted attack by members of the Opposition on the role that the Tax Commissioner is playing in the community at the moment. What is the Tax Commissioner doing that is causing so much distress? He is going out and doing his job. We appointed him to administer the tax system; we appointed him to audit and examine properly what is going on, and now we have introduced a substantiation system and in the process of doing so we have asked the Tax Commissioner to ensure that these provisions are properly examined and measured. What do we find? Because he is doing his job he now faces these concerted attacks. They will not hold up. They will not stick in the ordinary community. It is a great pleasure to speak on these Bills tonight and to support the introduction of the tax file numbering system which will give a tool to the Tax Commissioner which he should have been given a decade ago. Somebody, some administration, including the previous Government during its time in office, should have been prepared years ago to accept that the Tax Commissioner needed this ability to use computer matching techniques. But he was not given that ability, it was denied, and it has been denied over recent years and months by a consistent approach to block it. However, we have now reached the point where the legislation apparently will pass, and that is welcomed. The legislation is very much overdue. It is something that the Tax Commissioner and the tax system should have had available a decade ago. It is belated but it now means that the Australian Taxation Office will have available a much simpler method of ensuring compliance, and every Australian, especially Australians who believe the system, should be fair and apply to all wage and salary earners, will welcome the passing of this legislation tonight. I support the Bills. Mr KEATING(Blaxland-Treasurer)(9.38) —in reply-I express my appreciation to honourable members for participating in the debate on what I think is a fairly important measure in the history of the Australian taxation system. The tax file numbering system has been proposed to utilise, as my colleague the honourable member for Burke (Mr O'Keefe) said, the technology of computers to match information with the tax files of taxpayers so that the tax system can work more effectively without resort to manual matching, which has been very much the order of the day to this point in time. The information provided in the tax file numbering system will deal with salaries and wages, the unemployment benefit, interest income, dividend income, unit trust distributions and, where there is an interest component, solicitors' trust accounts. In covering such a range of income it is entirely reasonable to assume that our revenue estimates, which amount to $2.2 billion over the next 10 years but in some of the earlier years around $330m a year, are on the conservative side, given the way in which other changes to the tax system have produced increments to revenue. The whole purpose of this measure, amongst other measures, is to improve the integrity of the taxation system in general; to improve its efficiency and to improve its effectiveness. Since 1983, when the Government came to office, we have taken steps to make the tax system better-to better serve the national interest and to better serve the revenue demands of the Commonwealth and its expenditure. I think the change in that integrity is there for all to see. In the period in which tax reform has been undertaken, the Government has introduced a number of major structural changes to the tax system. The fringe benefits provisions taxed all benefits in kind, many of which were untaxed. In other words, the Government has taxed income taken as benefits, which in the main was formerly untaxed. It has also taxed income taken in the form of capital gains. Under the discretionary provisions in the former section 26 (a) much income went untaxed. The Government established a substantiation system so that deductions were subject to substantiation by taxpayers and could not be declared and treated as deductions without that substantiation. Deductions for entertainment expenses were abolished because of the difficulty of substantiating the purpose for which the expenditure had been incurred. I mention also the prescribed payments system, which we both established and extended during our period in office. Mr Peacock —You were wrong on negative gearing. Mr KEATING —The Deputy Leader of the Opposition talks about negative gearing. We were not wrong with negative gearing. We took negative gearing off after the capital gains tax had been introduced. One might argue that it could have come off earlier, but the fact is that where we provide a deduction of expenses incurred in the pursuit of income, when that income is taxed it is now taxed as a capital gain. All of those actions have changed the face of the Australian taxation system, so our revenue estimates for the period effectively have been doubled. In 1987-88 we expected $530m from the fringe benefits tax and we produced $881; from capital gains we expected $5m and we produced $400m; we expected $330m from the abolition of entertainment deductions and we produced $330m; we expected $105m from the substantiation provisions and we produced $350m; and we expected the prescribed payments system to produce $45m and we had an outcome of $45m. So the total outcome for those measures was in fact double the estimate that we had originally factored in. That means that the tax system is working more fairly and more progressively. The Government has been interested in increasing the effective progression of the tax system, but in so doing we have broadened the tax base and cut rates. In cutting rates we have seen a higher level of compliance with the tax system and that higher level of compliance means, per se, that there is more effective progression in the system. We have a nominally flatter scale but we have a more effectively progressive scale. While the progression might not seem as steep as was apparent with the nominal progression of the former scale, with the top marginal rate of 60 per cent, the fact is that it is more effectively progressive now. That is demonstrated by the revenue yield it is now producing. I think that all Australians can feel proud and satisfied by the fact that the tax system is much better, much cleaner, much fairer and more decent. In other words, many more people are paying their fair share of tax, thus relieving the burden on many others. This is the classic point about the high marginal rates of tax particularly. When some people avoid their tax, someone else carries the burden of the income tax system. It spills into higher rates of tax as the income base becomes narrower. What we have sought to do is to broaden the income base and, in broadening it, to reduce the severity and slope of that nominally progressive scale. That means that we have had more progression. I suppose one could argue that if we had a marginal rate of 100 per cent, the level of compliance would be very greatly diminished. If we had a marginal rate of zero per cent one would get 100 per cent compliance and wherever one reduces marginal rates between zero and wherever the rate scale is-wherever there is a movement between zero and 100 per cent-one would get an increase in compliance. Therefore, we have a natural inclusive compliance. We noticed in the last tax year that refunds were down by 25 to 30 per cent. In other words, at the end of the year when people were normally claiming deductions which were then subject to refunds, there was a 25 to 30 per cent reduction in those claims simply because people were more prepared to comply with the tax system than in previous years. These are all important changes which have also helped the morale of the Australian Taxation Office. A government cannot really say to a tax administration, `Go out and get the revenue, except for those people who take their income as capital or in kind as fringe benefits and those who claim deductions without substantiating them'. By removing the conceptual holes from the tax law we are now providing a decent base in tax law which is then subject to administration and can be administered by the Tax Office. We have lifted the Tax Office's resources-we have increased its staff by 40 per cent since 1983, lifted its program and system resources and given it the tools to develop a decent revenue service. When I say `decent', I mean one of international quality and international standing. The tax file number is such a tool. In other words, we are giving to the tax administration something which it can really use and which is really valuable to it. All of that means that we have a tax system now which has much greater integrity than probably at any time in the history of the Income Tax Assessment Act, which began in 1936. I know that practitioners in the tax industry, if I can use that expression, understand that the system has more integrity, that it is more effective and that it is more efficient than it once was. We are very pleased that the measure does have bipartisan support. From the time that I first gave an indication that we would develop a tax file numbering system and introduce the Bill-which occurred during the May statement of this year-there was a positive response from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, the shadow Treasurer (Mr Peacock), and also from the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Howard). The Opposition, from time to time, has had its doubts about this measure. We have tried to meet legitimate concerns-the ones which they raised I think were legitimate-and I have had a number of discussions about the matter with the shadow Treasurer. We have been able to settle most of the issues which they thought were a problem, particularly in relation to bank accounts and the freezing of accounts. We have moved to a withholding system in place of the former proposed measure. More recently we indicated yesterday we would accept amendments to give people the option of having to provide their tax file number or to have tax withheld on income in the categories that I mentioned earlier. They were proposed by the Opposition and I was pleased to accept those on behalf of the Government. I am very pleased that the shadow Attorney-General, the honourable member for Menzies (Mr N.A. Brown), was able to meet the Minister for Justice (Senator Tate) and reach a point of agreement about the privacy legislation which is part and parcel of this measure. Indeed, this Act will not be proclaimed without triggering the privacy legislation and vice versa. Thus, the privacy provisions which the Opposition regards as important and which, right from the start, we regarded as important-that is, establishing new offences punishable by substantial penalties for breaches of the privacy code within the Bill-are reasonable safeguards on a system which is intended not to have any inherent capacity to disturb the privacy of people, but essentially to serve to run the tax system, as the tax file number system does now. I think it must be understood that we have a tax file number system now. It is just that we cannot use that number for revenue information matching in the way in which we will be able to use it with this particular facility; that is, with a common number between the payment of income, be it wages or salaries, unemployment benefits, interests or dividends, and the tax file number of the taxpayer. This is, I think, one of the legitimate tools that the tax administration of this country needs. We could probably well have had it many years ago; but better late than never. It will produce its revenue harvest. I think some honourable members challenge the estimates. I do not think that there is much validity in the challenge. I think that they are conservative estimates. On the basis of our experience-that is, the revenue yield from the measures that I mentioned a few minutes ago-it is likely that we will do better in terms of the revenue from this measure than we are even suggesting with these estimates. So it is both a valuable and important change and it is important that tax changes of this variety that go to the heart of the administration of the system are ones which enjoy the bipartisan support of parties in the Parliament, and this does. The Government is pleased about that. We are glad to have the Opposition on board for these changes. Again, my thanks to my colleagues opposite, those who participated in getting support for the system within the Opposition parties. Question resolved in the affirmative. Bill read a second time. The Bill. Mr KEATING(Blaxland-Treasurer)(9.53) —by leave-I move: (1) Clause 2, page 1, lines 10 and 11, omit ``subregulations 54zed (1) and (2)''; substitute ``regulation 54zed''. (1AA) Clause 2, page 1, lines 8 and 9, omit subclause (1), substitute the following subclause: ``(1) Subject to subsection (2), this Act commences on the day on which the Privacy Act 1988 commences.''. (1A) Clause 2, page 1, at the end of subclause (2) add the following words: ``, being a day not earlier than the day on which the Privacy Act 1988 commences.''. (2) Clause 6, page 5, line 5, omit ``the approved form'', substitute ``a form approved by the Commissioner''. (3) Clause 6, page 7, line 3, omit ``1 November 1988'', substitute ``the first day of the phasing-in period for this Division''. (4) Clause 6, page 7, line 4, omit ``shall'', substitute ``may''. (5) Clause 6, page 7, line 7, omit ``shall make an employment declaration in relation to each'', substitute ``may make an employment declaration in relation to a''. (6) Clause 6, page 7, line 12, omit ``shall'', substitute ``may''. (7) Clause 6, page 7, line 15, omit ``1 November 1988'', substitute ``the day fixed by Proclamation as the first day of the phasing-in period for this Division''. (8) Clause 6, page 7, line 17, omit ``the Minister, by notice published in the Gazette,'', substitute ``Proclamation''. (9) Clause 6, page 10, proposed item 3 in the Table in proposed subsection 202d (1), omit ``or a deposit to which item 2 applies'', substitute ``, a deposit to which item 2 applies or a loan by a financial institution''. (10) Clause 6, pages 11 and 12, omit proposed sections 202db and 202dc, substitute the following section: Quotation of tax file numbers in connection with investments ``202db. A person who, at any time after the beginning of the phasing-in period for this Division, is an investor in relation to an investment to which this Part applies may quote the person's tax file number to the investment body in connection with the investment.''. (11) Clause 6, page 12, lines 14 and 15, omit ``a requirement that the person quote a tax file number to an investment body is satisfied'', substitute ``the person shall be taken to have quoted the person's tax file number to the investment body concerned''. (12) Clause 6, page 14, lines 24 to 26, omit proposed paragraph 202e (1) (a), substitute the following paragraph: ``(a) a child is an investor in relation to an investment to which this Part applies;''. (13) Clause 6, page 14, line 32, after ``body'', insert ``concerned''. (14) Clause 6, page 15, line 19, omit ``require'', substitute ``provide for''. (15) Clause 6, page 15, after proposed subsection 202ea (1), insert the following subsections: `` `(1a) For the purposes of this Part, a person who is being paid a pension or benefit referred to in subsection (2) shall be taken to have quoted his or her tax file number in an employment declaration given to an employer of the person if a statement is made in the declaration to the effect that the person is being paid such a pension or benefit. `` `(1b) A person who, as a person who is being paid a pension or benefit referred to in subsection (2), is taken, because of this section, to have quoted his or her tax file number in an employment declaration shall continue to be taken to have, because of this section, quoted the number in the declaration until the Commissioner gives a written notice to the person to the effect that the person is no longer entitled to exemption under this section. `` `(1c) The Commissioner may not give a notice under subsection (1b) until the person has ceased to be paid any pension or benefit referred to in subsection (2).''. (16) Clause 6, page 15, line 24, omit ``Subsection (1)'', substitute ``This section''. (17) Clause 6, page 15, lines 35 to 40, omit proposed subsection 202eb (1), substitute the following subsection: `` `202eb. (1) For the purposes of this Part, a person to whom this section applies shall be taken to have quoted his or her tax file number under Division 4 in connection with the investment if the investment body concerned is given a written declaration, made by the person, under subsection (2).''. (18) Clause 6, page 16, lines 16 and 17, omit ``at the maximum rate at which the pension or benefit is payable''. (19) Clause 6, page 16, line 27, omit ``at the maximum rate at which the allowance is payable''. (20) Clause 6, page 16, lines 30 and 31, omit ``at the maximum rate at which the pension is payable''. (21) Clause 6, page 16, lines 34 to 38, omit proposed paragraph 202ec (1) (a), substitute the following paragraph: ``(a) an entity that is not required to furnish to the Commissioner a return under section 161 in respect of a year of income is, at any time during that year, an investor in relation to an investment to which this Part applies; and''. (22) Clause 6, page 16, line 41, after ``body'', insert ``concerned''. (23) Clause 6, page 17, lines 15 to 30, omit proposed subsection 202ec (4), substitute the following subsection: `` `(4) Where an entity in respect of which a declaration under subsection (2) has been given to an investment body in connection with an investment becomes obliged under section 161 to furnish a return in respect of a year of income, the person who is the public officer of the entity for the purposes of this Act is guilty of an offence if: (a) the entity is, at the end of the year of income, still an investor in relation to the investment; and (b) the investment body is not, within 2 months after the end of the year of income, informed of the entity's tax file number or informed that the entity is obliged to furnish the return. Penalty: $1,000.''. (24) Clause 6, page 18, lines 25 to 27, omit ``becomes obliged, as an investor in relation to an investment, to quote his or here tax file number to the investment body under Division 4'', substitute ``is an investor in relation to an investment to which this Part applies''. (25) Clause 6, page 18, line 32, after ``body'', insert ``concerned''. (26) Clause 6, page 19, lines 21 to 23, omit ``becomes obliged, as an investor in relation to an investment, to quote the non-resident's tax file number to the investment body under Division 4'', substitute ``is an investor in relation to an investment to which this Part applies''. (27) Clause 6, page 19, lines 30 to 40, omit proposed subsection 202ef (1), substitute the following subsections. ``202ef. (1) For the purposes of this Part, an employee shall be taken to have quoted the employee's tax file number in an employment declaration given to the employer concerned under section 202c if income derived from the employment would be exempt from income tax because of Division 1a of Part III. ``(1a) For the purposes of this Part, an investor in relation to an investment to which this Part applies shall be taken to have quoted the investor's tax file number under Division 4 in connection with the investment if income derived from the investment would be exempt from income tax because of Division 1a of Part III.''. (28) Clause 14, page 28, lines 22 to 24, omit ``the investor is in breach of an obligation under Part Va to quote the investor's tax file number'', substitute ``the investor's tax file number is not taken, for the purposes of Part Va, to have been quoted''. (29) Clause 14, page 28, lines 26 and 27, omit ``the investor is in breach of the obligation because a provision of Division 5 of Part Va'', substitute ``a provision of Division 5 of Part Va that previously applied to the investor''. (30) Clause 26, page 34, lines 10 and 11, omit proposed paragraph 8wa (1) (a), substitute the following paragraph: ``(a) provision is made by or under a taxation law for the person to quote the number to the first-mentioned person;''. (31) Clause 26, page 34, proposed section 8wa, add at the end the following subsection: ``(4) Nothing in this section shall be read as imposing on a person an obligation to require another person to quote a tax file number.''. (32) Clause 26, page 35, proposed section 8wb, add at the end the following subsection: ``(2) Without affecting any obligation imposed by or under a law of the Commonwealth other than this section, nothing in subsection (1) shall be read as imposing on a person an obligation to do an act referred to in paragraph (1) (a), (b) or (c).''. (33) Schedule 2, page 39, omit the proposed amendment to regulation 11, substitute the following amendment: ``Regulation 11: Add at the end the following subregulation: `(3) Subregulation (2) does not apply in relation to a period in respect of which a company is obliged to prepare and give to the Commissioner a report under regulation 43c.'.''. (34) Schedule 2, page 41, omit proposed subregulation 43b (7) (Including the word and figures ``Penalty: $2,000.''). (35) Schedule 2, page 41, proposed subregulation 43c (2), after ``ended'' insert ``at or''. (36) Schedule 2, Page 43, omit proposed subregualtion 43 c(9) (including the word and figures ``Penalty: $2,000.''). (37) Schedule 2, page 45, omit proposed paragraph 54daab (2) (a), substitute the following paragraph: ``(a) is not an employee in respect of whom Part Va of the Act provides for the making of an employment declaration to his or her employer; or''. (38) Schedule 2, page 45, proposed paragraph 54daab (2) (b), before ``receives'' insert ``is under 16 years of age and''. (39) Schedule 2, page 45, omit proposed subregulation 54dac (2a), substitute the following subregulation: `` `(2a) Nothing in subregulation (2) affects the operation of section 202c of the Act in relation to the making by an employee of a separate employment declaration in relation to each of the employee's employers.'.''. (40) Schedule 2, page 47, omit proposed subregulation 54dap (1b), substitute the following subregulation: `` `(1b) For the purposes of subregulation (1a), an employee shall be taken to have quoted his or her tax file number in a statement under regulation 54daq if: (a) the employee is not an employee in respect of whom Part Va of the Act provides for the making of an employment declaration to his or her employer; or (b) had the statement been an employment declaration given to his or her employer under Part Va of the Act, the employee would have been taken, for the purposes of that Part, to have quoted the number in the declaration.'.''. (41) Schedule 2, page 49 after the proposed new Division 3b of Part VI of the Income Tax Regulations, insert the following amendment: ``Regulation 65: Add at the end the following subregulation: `(2) This regulation does not apply in relation to regulation 43b or 43c.'.''. Many of the amendments are as a result of the consultation that has taken place between the Government and the Opposition, as I mentioned a couple of moments ago, on this important piece of legislation. As I said earlier, I thank Opposition members for their participation in this process. The amendments the Government has agreed to accept are designed to guarantee that the tax file numbering system is completely voluntary. They ensure that taxpayers will in all circumstances retain the right to elect to have tax withheld at source rather than quote their tax file number. The Government has always recognised that this is an important element in the set of privacy safeguards which attaches to the tax file number system and these amendments will enshrine that principle in the legislation. Further, Mr Chairman, the Government agrees with the Opposition that the tax file number legislation should not commence before the privacy legislation. Accordingly we are moving an amendment to the tax file number legislation to ensure that it will commence on the same day as the privacy legislation that the Opposition generally supports. As I announced in my second reading speech to introduce this Bill, the Government is moving an amendment to ensure that people receiving any part of an age, invalid or other pension from the Department of Social Security or service pension from the Department of Veterans' Affairs will be exempt from the need to quote a tax file number to operate bank or similar accounts, buy shares, or have dealings with other financial institutions. A person in receipt of any part of an eligible pension, benefit or allowance will be taken to have quoted a tax file number to a financial institution or other investment body upon the lodgment of a declaration with the investment body. The exemption will not extend to people in receipt of sickness or unemployment benefits as there can be no reasonable expectation that the recipient will remain on the benefit permanently. Further to this announced amendment, the Government also proposes an amendment to the Bill to exempt people in receipt of any part of a qualifying pension or benefit from the need to quote a tax file number to an employer. The Bill presently exempts pensioners from having to quote a tax file number to the relevant department in respect of the payment of a qualifying pension or benefit. The amendment now proposed will extend that exemption to ensure that pensioners will not be required to quote a tax file number in connection with any non-pension or benefit employment income. Loans made to government bodies and bodies corporate are included in the investment provisions of the Bill and, as a result, tax file numbers are required to be quoted by the lender to the borrower who is required to submit annual reports of the amount of interest paid to the lender in respect of the loan and to report the tax file number of the lender. As presently worded, these obligations would also apply to cases where a financial institution makes a loan, such as a mortgage or overdraft, to a corporate or government customer. As such reporting is outside the objectives of the tax file number proposal, an amendment is also moved to exclude from the investment categories for which tax file number quotation will be required, loans made to corporations or government bodies by financial institutions. In this way, financial institutions will not be required to quote their tax file number when making loans to their corporate or Government customers. Two minor amendments are proposed in respect of annual investment income reports. The first will ensure that dividend and interest reports as required under the current regulations will continue to be required until the new requirements come into force. The second will make it clear that, as expressed to be the intention in the explanatory memorandum accompanying the Bill, annual reports in respect of investment income are first required in respect of investment income derived in the financial year ending 30 June 1992. Minor amendments are also moved to some penalties proposed in the Bill. Under regulations contained in the Bill, investment bodies that fail to comply with their reporting obligations will be subject to a penalty of $2,000. The effect of amendments now being moved by the Government will bring the sanctions for a failure to comply with the reporting requirements within the scope of the existing provisions of the Taxation Administration Act. Those provisions, which apply generally in relation to circumstances where a person fails to comply with requirements of a taxation law, incorporate increased penalties for repeat offences. Broadly, for a first offence the penalty is an amount not exceeding $2,000 and for second or subsequent offences the maximum penalty increases to $4,000. In the most serious cases there is the option under existing provisions for a third or subsequent offence to attract a penalty not exceeding $5,000 and/or 12 months imprisonment. As I said earlier, the Government deferred for some weeks the second reading debate on this Bill to give the Opposition time to talk with us on this Bill and the related privacy legislation. As a result, it became obvious that the commencement date of 1 November 1988 contained in the Bill for the first phase of the tax file number system could not be achieved. Accordingly, an amendment of the Bill is moved to enable this commencement day to be set by proclamation. Finally, some minor drafting measures are being made to ensure the original intention of the Bill. Again, I thank all honourable members for participating in the debate, including members on this side of the chamber. I thank honourable members on both sides of the chamber who participated in the various committees of review of the measure-there are now about four or five, so the measure has had a lot of scrutiny-for their support, for their interest in the measure and for their intelligent inquiry into the measure. Again, I thank my colleagues opposite for their support for the changes. The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN(Mr Blanchard) —Has the Minister two supplementary explanatory memoranda? Mr KEATING —There are two supplementary explanatory memoranda to the Bill which I have circulated. Mr PEACOCK(Kooyong)(10.00) —I have already spoken on this. I had received preliminary advice of the various amendments, not only the amendments which I discussed with the Government but also the consequential amendments. I have indicated the Opposition's view and I will not delay the House any further. I thank the Treasurer for his remarks. Amendments agreed to. Bill, as amended, agreed to. Bill reported with amendments; report-by leave-adopted. Bill (on motion by Mr Keating)-by leave-read a third time. Consideration resumed from 1 November, on motion by Mr Lionel Bowen: That the Bill be now read a second time. Question resolved in the affirmative. Bill read a second time. Clause 1 (Short title). Progress reported. Debate resumed from 1 November, on motion by Mr Peter Morris: That the Bill be now read a second time. upon which Mr Blunt had moved by way of amendment: That all words after `That' be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: `whilst not declining to give the Bill a second reading, the House: (1) notes the failure of the Government to achieve micro-economic reform in coastal shipping and the Australian waterfront; and (2) calls on the Government to immediately introduce a program to increase the efficiency of coastal shipping, including the introduction of ships from OECD countries and other measures to overcome the problems identified by the IAC in its report and the Business Council of Australia, in its action plan. Mr PRICE(Chifley)(10.04) —I was speaking earlier about a number of these Bills and concentrating my remarks on the Telecommunications Amendment Bill 1988. I would like to make a number of points. The Opposition has a constant knee jerk reaction towards privatisation. It really does not have a feeling for or an understanding of the trading enterprises under discussion. It tends to overlook what has occurred on the Government side. I am pretty proud, as are all Government members, that there has been a thorough ongoing review of every trading enterprise, be it the Commonwealth Bank, Australian Airlines, Aussat Pty Ltd or Telecom Australia. I believe that no government has had a better understanding of its trading enterprises and the things that need to be done. Some of these Bills reflect the tremendous amount of research and review that went into this process. Unfortunately, I do not believe that the same could be said by the Opposition when it was in government. In fact, I believe that it has done very little in terms of ensuring the long term survival and competitiveness of these organisations. I also mentioned previously remarks in another place by Senator Alston when he labelled the three-man committee that I was pleased to chair as the `Telecom Preservation Society'. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly place on record my appreciation for the work done by my two colleagues, the honourable member for Aston (Mr Saunderson) and the honourable member for Burke (Mr O'Keefe). We worked closely together as a three-man committee with the interdepartmental committee that had been set up to review Telecom, Australia Post, Aussat and the Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC). I believe that the May statement reflects a lot of that hard work, and a lot of the decisions that came out of it can be sourced back to that committee working closely at the coalface with public servants. I think it is fair to point out to the House that this is a unique process which, as I have said, has led to significant reform and has worked well, and I think it is one which both the Government and the Opposition would do well to consider for any further tasks. Indeed, I am pleased to say that one of the unfinished matters that we had-the development of the International Development Association-is now progressing quite well. I would also like to place on public record the role of Jane Smith, the private secretary of the then Minister for Transport and Communications, Senator Gareth Evans, who sat through all the meetings and all the briefings that we had, and certainly attended to all the people who came to see us. Jane played an invaluable part in the whole process. Unfortunately, whenever the Opposition says a kind word about some of these trading authorities it never really extends it to the staff. I also want to place on record the tremendous contribution that is played by many thousands of staff who work tirelessly and consistently for the organisations that are the subject of this cognate debate-the postal services, Aussat, Telecom, the Australian National Railways and OTC. I believe that they are all making an outstanding contribution. Indeed, with some of the changes proposed in these Bills and in further Bills, I believe that they will have an enhanced role and an opportunity to make an even greater contribution. In this review process I would also like to publicly place on record the role of the trade unions concerned in the review-people such as the Federal Secretary and officers of the Administrative and Clerical Officers Association, the Australian Postal and Telecommunications Union and the Electrical Trades Union of Australia. They always vigorously represented the best interests of their members and I think it is fair to say that they were not always entirely happy with the outcomes, but on balance, in a process of give and take, I believe that they have supported the changes. As I have said, they lost no opportunity to present vigorously the views of their members and to press for necessary changes. I think one of the interesting contrasts is the way in which this Government goes about changes, as opposed to the Opposition. In terms of seeking fundamental, important change for the survival of these corporations, this Government engages in widespread consultations with industry, with business and with the trade unions and, having collected all those views and all those inputs, brings down its reform package. Contrast that with the Opposition tactic of bludgeoning through any changes. I think the New South Wales Greiner Government is a good example of that. I support the changes that are in all these Bills, and especially the important change in the Telecommunications Amendment Bill with the introduction of a new board and the new role that that board will have. I think it is fair to say that the chief executive or the managing director, as the case may be, of an enterprise not only has responsibility for implementing the day to day running of the organisation, but by and large determines the policy and the strategy as well. This has been recognised and is certainly part of the amending Bill. The new board will clearly have responsibility for strategy and for long term policy, and the chief executive will have responsibility for its day to day operations. Incidentally, the chief executive's salary will now be free from consideration by the Remuneration Tribunal, but any new aspiring chief executive who is hoping to be appointed will have to stand international competition, in other words, the job is going to be advertised internationally. I think that is an important change and I hope it will secure the best quality chief executives available to the corporations, in this case to Telecom, but these remarks also apply to Australia Post. These Bills also contain provisions for changes in working conditions. But of course these have to be negotiated between the new boards and the relevant unions. The provisions of these Bills will not be proclaimed until such time as satisfactory negotiations have taken place and all parties have reached agreement. These are important Bills. I hope the House will support them. They represent the first stage of Bills that will be dealt with successively by the House that introduced the important government business enterprise reforms announced in the May statement, which I strongly support. Mr MOORE(Ryan)(10.12) —I want briefly to support the comments of the honourable member for Richmond (Mr Blunt), who made a very powerful speech on the subject of the conversion of government commercial operations to public companies. At a time when governments around the world are selling their business enterprises, this Government is doing the very opposite. It is undertaking some organisational changes to entrench them in the public sector. We support some of the managerial reforms and efficiency measures, such as converting the organisations into public companies, yet only to the extent that it makes these enterprises eventually easier to be privatised. Tinkering at the edges does not address the capital funding requirements of these enterprises, for no matter how successful and how profitable government enterprises are, ultimately to keep pace with the private sector and to maintain the market share, large calls will have to be made on the taxpayer shareholders. This is where the logic of running government business enterprises can come very unstuck. For example, the 1988 annual report of the Overseas Telecommunications Corporation (OTC) forecasts that by 1998, in 10 years' time, the company will require an additional $2 billion in terms of capital expenditure, and of this amount, 70 per cent can be funded internally, that is before taxation. Where does the remaining $600m come from? Either the taxpayer is slugged or, as is the recent practice of Commonwealth enterprises, it borrows large sums of money from overseas. I note specifically that both the OTC and the Australian National Line (ANL) are to be incorporated under the Companies Act. Although this smokescreen provides the impression that the newly formed entity will be bound in all respects by the companies legislation, the very opposite is the case. Government bodies may generally cooperate with the spirit of the law. They are, however, in no way subject to it. Furthermore, companies which take part in joint venture arrangements with government corporations are afforded similar protection. Despite the rhetoric of the Government and the flavour of the second reading speech, which suggests that these bodies strike out into the world of commerce, it needs to be remembered that they go very much as privileged players-market players who are protected by law, with their financial destination underwritten by the government, and in the case of both OTC and ANL operating without any real competition. As an example of this, Qantas Airways Ltd can acquire another airline and breach the takeover code without prosecution. Similarly, companies participating in joint ventures with government enterprises that breach the Companies Code are also afforded the same protection. This points to the fact that the Government should not be involved in business. I wish to enforce that point as it applies generally to the comments I made today about the Rothwells affair. In this case, section 291 allows the Commonwealth Attorney-General to launch an investigation. My media release of 2 November states: These are the dangers of involving Government in doing business. Regrettably, State Governments (including Victoria and W.A.) are some of the worst culprits. In both cases the State governments have involved themselves in commercial enterprises which have turned out to be very doubtful operations. In the case of Victoria, the Victorian Economic Development Corporation floundered and had to be absorbed into another area. If it were subject to the rigours of company law outside Crown shield, it would be subject to prosecution. The same thing applies to the activities of the Western Australian Government, where joint takeover offers were made which were outside the law, but because one was subject to Crown shield nothing occurred. The media release further states: These experiences make it crystal clear-no matter how tantalising a private sector deal may appear-Government must remain the referee, not the player. Mr Moore said that if the States insist upon entangling themselves in business deals, they should not be allowed to claim Crown shield. My advice to the States is to stay out of the private sector altogether. Taxpayers dollars must not be used on risky propositions. Using taxpayers' money in ways in which even the most reckless venture capitalist wouldn't contemplate is despicable. The public deserves to know if Rothwells is solvent, if their bookkeeping is in order and if there has been any other breach of the code. Allegations of issuing a false prospectus, that debts which fell due have not been met, that provisions for bad and doubtful debts have been understated must all be answered. I say this for a very simple reason that the honourable member for Gippsland (Mr McGauran) no doubt would understand. When the proposition was put forward that a rescue operation for Rothwells take place, the underwriters and the sub-underwriters were gathered on the basis of a State Government guarantee. Any person here who has been subject to an underwriting agreement would know that before one signs an underwriting or sub-underwriting agreement one calls upon the person offering the deal to offer the acceptor of the contract evidence that the accounts are in order. That is common practice. I presume that these events occurred because the people involved in the deal were prominent citizens who were well practised in the art of sub-underwriting. Part of that deal was a State government guarantee. That would have been the most valuable contribution to any sub-underwriting agreement. It would not have mattered what was in the accounts in reality; it was the State Government guarantee on which they would have put up their money. Time goes by, and those people have contributed to the capital of Rothwells. I refer to today's Australian Financial Review and the shareholdings that were taken up then and the shareholdings that were listed at the close of trading a couple of days ago, according to the Financial Review. Very few have reduced their shareholdings. They are still, in the main, there. The Western Australian Government is now saying that there is no State Government guarantee outstanding. What has happened? I claim that a false prospectus has been issued by the Western Australian Government, because all of a sudden these people who contributed towards Rothwells under the underwriting agreement, without any doubt on the basis of the State Government guarantee, put up the money. Mr Wright —Can you substantiate that claim? Mr MOORE —The honourable member should read this morning's Financial Review. Mr Barry Jones —No, from your own knowledge. Mr MOORE —Working on my own knowledge of what happens in the financial world, I will stand by what I am saying. Any underwriting agreement that I have made as an underwriter or sub-underwriter-and I have done a lot of it-would-- Mr Wright —We are aware of your expertise, but that is a pretty wild statement. Mr MOORE —My expertise is a damn sight better than that of the honourable member for Capricornia. Mr Barry Jones —But it is just a hunch. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER —Order! The Chair requests all members to direct their comments through the Chair. Mr MOORE —It is not a hunch. I am quite prepared to stand by what I have said in relation to what I have read in the newspapers. What has been said there is relatively common practice in relation to this matter. I am not privy to the accounts. I am not privy to the underwriting agreement. But I am prepared to bet that people would not have risked hundreds of millions of dollars in subscriptions to Rothwells other than on the basis of a State Government guarantee. Their money is still there. They still own the shares. But the State Government says that there is no longer a guarantee. These people are not fools. It is true that the State Governments says there is no guarantee, and it is true that there was a guarantee. I am saying now that, because of the changed circumstances, these guys are locked into this position in Rothwells on the basis of a false prospectus. I do not think there was a written prospectus as such, but certainly this has happened on the basis of a sub-underwriting agreement. Because of that, some very real questions have to be answered by those involved in this particular deal. Another prominent Australian ended up in gaol for precisely the same sort of deal. Far too often, as the honourable member for Gippsland would know, we have seen examples of Crown shield being used by State instrumentalities to protect themselves from the law. I refer to the Kern Brothers situation in Queensland. Two wholly owned State Government instrumentalities owned a substantial shareholding in Kerns. Kerns was subject to a takeover by another body, and the State Government Insurance Office came in and bought that body up, making the State Government, in two hands, owner of nearly 30 per cent of the capital. Under the Companies Code, that requires a takeover offer. Because of the Crown shield, nothing happened. Let us deal with Victoria, where the Minister for Science, Customs and Small Business (Mr Barry Jones), who is at the table, comes from. Let us look at the wonderful performance of the Victorian Economic Development Corporation! Mr Barry Jones —Now you are getting political. Mr MOORE —Oh, Barry. I am shocked. Under that particular fiasco, actions taken by that Corporation put it outside the law, and no action was taken. In respect of Western Australia, I have just pointed to actions which were taken by the Western Australian Government in concert, in the place of Bond, in relation to Bell Resources, and what is happening in this case. And what has happened? Nothing. At Question Time today I asked the Attorney-General (Mr Lionel Bowen), in the national interest, to take an action under section 291 (2) of the Companies Code-and he ducked it. In giving his reason for ducking it he said, `It is not for me; it is for the States'. Only three weeks ago before he went on the cruise around South America he said, `Only we, the Federal Government, can do it. We must take it all over because only we can do it. It needs one body'. When the Attorney-General had the opportunity to exercise some power, what did he say?-`Not me; it's for the States'. Mr Wright —What would you have done? Mr MOORE —It is not for me; I am not in government. Mr Wright —But you are the one who is making the allegations. Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mr Mildren) —Order! The honourable member for Capricornia will remain silent. Mr MOORE —It is time we addressed ourselves to some of these problems and recognised the problems that beset the operations of companies and corporations in these large areas. The smaller investor in Australia has been written out of it. The larger investors, particularly the Western Australian players, have been allowed to walk all over the private investor. That is regrettable because the long term future of Australia requires that all investors get a fair go. So without the money of all Australian investors we will not get the capital commitment that is necessary to develop Australia. I have always been a strong believer in a market that is free, informed and competitive. I have never stood at any stage for what has gone on in what I regard as certain stock market plays which have been done by one or two players. There have been many examples of it. I have seen in the last few months probably some of the worst examples that relate to State government interference in the market-place which has not acted in the best interests of all concerned. Mr Tim Fischer —I remember Bolte blocking Ansett. Mr MOORE —That is quite correct. The Ansett situation was another outrageous position. But that was not the only one. There have been a number of similar positions, as the honourable member for Farrer (Mr Tim Fischer) has said. Because of that, I want to add my weight tonight to what the honourable member for Richmond said. It is not only high time that the Federal Government's trading corporations were made into corporations, as an interim step, as these Bills do, but also I want to see that step carried on and the trading corporations to be placed on the market and to become fully competitive in every respect. Mr Wright —You would privatise everything? Mr MOORE —I did not say that at all. Mr Wright —It is a valid question. Mr MOORE —It is a valid question but not a very intelligent one. We have made it quite clear on the list we have put out. Later this month I will be producing a booklet which will show Government members clearly how corporations should be privatised, marketed, and how the setting up should be gone about, and the list that can be handled in relation to it. Mr Cleeland —Why haven't you got the booklet out now? It has taken you two years. Mr MOORE —Any dill would know that Australia has a relatively small capital market and that, because of that, it can only handle a certain number of floats within a year. If the Government wants to float the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and a few other instrumentalities in one year, it will probably take up the total savings within Australia in one hit. If the Government takes Australia's total savings at about $1 3/4 billion and floats the Commonwealth Bank and one other, it has the lot. The Government cannot do that without having an impact on the rest of the market. Mr Wright —Ultimately you privatise everything. That is what you are saying. Mr MOORE —No, I am saying that we have publicised the list upon which we would act in the first term of a Parliament. After that, we would see what happened. We must free Australian taxpayers from the obligation of supplying billions towards our major enterprises. If the Australian major enterprises are not given that capital injection, the Government will find that they will fail. Already, as a consequence of the Government's inaction, the Commonwealth Bank is slipping from the big elephant to the small elephant. It just does not have the capital requirement. I can quote the chairman that the Government appointed, Mr Besley, who said in his annual report `We need capital'. What is the Government doing about it? Nothing. I can quote the Chairman of Qantas Airways Ltd, Jim Leslie: `We need privatisation'. Because of that, the Government has failed Qantas. If the Government does not contribute the capital towards the Commonwealth Bank and Qantas, those companies will not be able to meet the competition that will be in front of them in the years to come. They are not the only ones. Look at Australian Airlines. The honourable member for Gippsland, as a frequent traveller-even down the Amazon-would know that people have to catch planes, and those planes-- Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER(Mr Mildren) —Order! It being 10.30 p.m., the debate is interrupted. I propose the question: That the House do now adjourn. Mr PROSSER(Forrest)(10.30) —We have heard discussions in recent weeks about the visit to Australia of warships from around the world, the naval salute to our bicentennial birthday celebrations, the spectacular naval review on Sydney Harbour and, of course, the problems particularly in Melbourne. I would like to take honourable members back almost 25 years to another more important maritime incident-one that many people would prefer to forget and, regrettably, that includes members of the Government. I refer, of course, to the horrific collision between HMAS Melbourne and HMAS Voyager off the New South Wales coast on 10 February 1964. Mr Tim Fischer —And they are still not even compensating them. Mr PROSSER —That is quite right. Although the collision occurred nearly 25 years ago, we owe it to the 80 men who lost their lives, and more especially we owe it to the 400 survivors of Australia's worst peacetime disaster, to see that justice is done. HMAS Voyager was sliced in two when struck by the bow of the aircraft-carrier Melbourne shortly before 9 o'clock on the evening of 10 February 1964. The Melbourne was carrying out night-time flying exercises with the Voyager in attendance. Two inquiries were held into the accident. The effects on the survivors were of little importance amidst the sensationalism and controversy that raged for years after. I am saddened to say that the Voyager disaster is still a story of injustice for the hundreds of crewmen who survived the horrors of that night. Although the accident happened in peacetime, for the men on the Voyager their experience was no different from those who suffered in the theatres of war. Yet the survivors were not eligible for repatriation benefits. They were given to believe that they had no right to sue the Commonwealth for damages. Apparently this belief stemmed from a decision of the High Court of Australia in 1964 in which Mr Justice Windeyer stated: The law does not enable a serving member of any of Her Majesty's forces to recover damages from a fellow member because acts done by him in the course of his duty were negligently done. It was not until 1982 that the Full Court dispelled that notion with the view that there was no policy reason why serving servicemen should be deprived of the ordinary rights of common law which protect members of the community. It was said that the Commonwealth should be liable for a breach of duty of care owed by servicemen to each other. This decision prompted many men to seek compensation from the Commonwealth which initially did not seek to rely on the statute of limitations as a defence. So prior to 1985 some servicemen were able to recover damages from the Commonwealth. But, it is on the public record that since November 1985 the heartless despicable action of the Commonwealth in relying on the limitation defence has denied justice to many survivors. In a recent decision of the Supreme Court of Victoria, Mr Justice O'Bryan made a pointed reference to the Commonwealth's actions. He said: This ruling is most unfortunate and reflects poorly upon the conduct of the Commonwealth of Australia. In our bicentennial year, this Government stands condemned for hiding its moral obligations behind a skirt of legal argument. For the sake of the cost of compensation, it has turned its back on ordinary Australians in need. Mr PRICE(Chifley)(10.34) —I want to talk about a union by-election which is occurring in New South Wales. I refer to the by-election in the professional division of the Public Service Association (PSA). The PSA is made up of some 55,000 members. The professional division is one of four divisions and has 14 members on the 86-member council which controls the union. To quote the Sunday Telegraph of 23 October 1988: The result will be important to the balance of power between the left and right wings within the union and could even hold the key to the election of the next ACTU president. The article goes on to suggest that the extreme left-wing progressives would support John Halfpenny as the next President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). The by-election will determine the control of the unions. The right wing reform team has 34 members on the council and the extreme left wing progressive team has 38. The reform group successfully mounted a legal challenge to the election that occurred in July 1987 and in May this year Judge Bauer ordered a by-election in the professional division. The challenge concerned the health professionals, who should have been in another division, and had a much larger than normal voter turnout, only 10 per cent of which voted for the reform group. The reform group is concerned at the fact that within 12 months the union has been transformed from having a cash surplus of $1.5m to a deficit of half a million dollars. The reform group has demanded-not unreasonably-an independent audit of the union's finances. This has been repeatedly refused. Unfortunately, feelings have run deep in this by-election and a leading reform member, Mr Jerry Ambroisine, has been assaulted by the progressive Assistant General-Secretary of the PSA, John Cahill. The assault has been reported to the police in New South Wales, but they have failed to take any action and are to be condemned. I deplore the use of violence and intimidation in such elections. The PSA is under attack from the Greiner Government, which has great antipathy for its members, whether they be professional or otherwise. The professional division will have the opportunity to decide who will control the union. I sincerely hope that it will carefully consider the leadership needs of the union and reject any rorting or rough-house tactics. I hope that its decision will provide the balanced leadership, the strategy and tactics required to meet the challenges ahead that are likely to occur under a conservative government which is determined to break union power and particularly to single out hardworking public servants. Mr WEBSTER(Macquarie)(10.37) —I wish to draw to the attention of the House what has been described in the media as the outback miracle vaccinations. This particular operation, which took place in central Australia, resulted from some work that had been done following the isolation of a very serious virus amongst the Aboriginal people in some areas of central Australia. The meningitis virus was isolated last Monday week. Medical teams from Urapuntja Aboriginal Health Service at the settlement of Utopia, about 300 kilometres north east of Alice Springs, decided to do something about the virus. Using State health funding and funding from the Department of Aboriginal Affairs they combined in a two-day effort to cover an area of 1,600 square kilometres to vaccinate all the younger children in that area who are likely to be affected. These teams of medical officers and Aboriginal assistants combined in a very fine effort, using four-wheel drive vehicles and travelling over some of the most difficult terrain in central Australia to make sure that this very dangerous virus was contained amongst the young Aboriginal people. I just want to draw that action to the attention of the House as being very commendable and very much in line with the Opposition policies to give a heavy emphasis to the great health needs of the Aboriginal people. Mr CLEELAND(McEwen)(10.39) —I rise tonight to advise the House of a project that is occurring in my electorate in the town of Euroa. I feel quite sure that the Opposition Whip, the honourable member for Indi, (Mr Ewen Cameron), will listen with interest in his office to what I am about to say because Euroa falls in what was formerly the Federal electorate of Indi and the honourable member and his family still live in Longwood which is adjacent to the town of Euroa. I know that the honourable gentleman still has a great interest in what occurs in that town. The project concerns the Euroa high school and involves the entire community of that town. As the result of a very small seeding grant, the school community-including teachers and parents, and members of the community not involved directly with the school-have constructed a mud brick building for music curricula purposes. The great value of this construction is that it has involved not only the students and the teachers but also the retired people of the town, who have come in to assist and offer their service to the community. The building itself, I might add-having seen it-is a wonderful example of what rural towns can achieve through the community spirit they have. As I said, the building is made of mud bricks, all of which were made by the students at the school. Professional help from bricklayers and builders was obtained by the school in the construction and much of the fitting out was done by the pupils. Of particular note is the fact that surrounding the central part of the building, just under the roof line, is a mural made from stained glass windows. Those windows were constructed with the assistance of an artists-in-residence grant to the school. Mr Wallace, who lives in the area of Violet Town just north from Euroa, together with the students built the whole mural in lead glass. The mural involves a story in lead glass pictures. The great value of the project was not just that the students became involved in the construction of the leadlight windows but that many of the parents who came to the school are now undertaking further instruction and are involved in hobby activities in leadlight glass. I congratulate Mr Wallace and all of the people involved in the leadlight glass project. I invite any honourable member who is travelling along the marvellous duplicated freeway which is the new Hume Highway, and which the Government is responsible for building, to divert from the highway to Euroa, because very shortly Euroa will be bypassed and the town will once again revert to a place which does not suffer the through traffic of articulated vehicles 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The town will benefit greatly from the work this Government has done on the Hume Highway. I am pleased that I will be there shortly on behalf of the responsible Minister to open that bypass. Mr Jenkins —Have you been invited? Mr CLEELAND —Yes, I have been invited to open it and I will be very proud to do so. More importantly, this sort of project is an indication of what can be achieved through community effort in schools. I might add that the teachers see this not just as a straight-out building project but very much as a means of developing the knowledge and skills of students and of teaching the students how to learn. To me, that is the most valuable thing that this project has done. The development of knowledge and skills is achieved through the students themselves working with engineers and builders, actually handing up and passing things over, hammering in nails and, as I said, building the mud bricks. I commend the school, the principal, the teachers involved and the broader community, who have together built a very fine school building for music purposes at an extremely small cost. Mr PRATT(Adelaide)(10.43) —I thought I would have had the opportunity to make a statement about misrepresentation by the honourable member for Dobell (Mr Lee). I did the right thing by contacting him today in the gymnasium. I take this opportunity to point out some basic facts and correct the misconceptions apparently held by the confused member for Dobell on, perhaps, the animals liaison service and his outlandish statements surrounding my by-election campaign and the fact that I made a-- Mr Lamb —Your election was outlandish. Mr PRATT —I hope it gets in Hansard, wimp. While out doorknocking, I was told by a concerned mother, now one of my constituents, that her teenage son was involved with drugs. Contrary to the wild assertion of the honourable member for Dobell that I had no proof, I was able to hand to the Adelaide Vice Squad not only the drugs but also the implements for the smoking of the same. They are called bongs, for the honourable member's information. I was also able to hand over some very good quality hash, which the Vice Squad was very keen to have. A most derogatory statement followed from the Deputy Premier of South Australia, Don Hopgood, who accused me of deceit, saying there were no drugs in schools. Since then we have followed the matter up with two headmasters, who declared that a shopping centre in Adelaide, in the north-eastern part of my electorate, was a centre for drug dealers. We have followed that up with two recent statements. I applaud, as I did in Adelaide, the Labor Albert Park member of parliament, Mr Hamilton, who called for the expulsion from schools of young drug dealers who are still operating. There was another statement in last week's News under the headline `Drugs rife in schools'. Last night the honourable member for Dobell said: When the police came across the person who was believed to have spoken to the honourable member for Adelaide, she said that she did not in fact make the allegations claimed by the honourable member for Adelaide. The fact is that the honourable member for Dobell and his cronies in the Bannon Government spoke to the wrong woman. I thought that they would have realised their error when the lady denied all knowledge of the affair-but no, they were convinced that I had manufactured it all. There was television proof and the drug squad followed up those inquiries. I followed the matter through with three things. We physically handed over the evidence to the police; we convened a drug forum in the electorate in Enfield which drew a packed house of concerned adults, and I have thrown my support behind the life education learning for life drug program, which has been mentioned by a couple of my coalition colleagues, and in relation to which the Treasurer promised to dredge up a response. I turn to my statement in the House last night when I spoke of the thousands of petitions that had been filed in the electorate of Hawker and certainly the electorate of Adelaide concerning several key issues. Today I filed over 250 such petitions in my name, including 73 from people living in the electorate of Hawker. Leaving the conventions of the House and as an act of goodwill, I shall not continue to berate the honourable member for Hawker for her omissions. I tried to contact her, but thought that it would be imprudent to bust in on a conversation in the non-members bar this evening to explain my actions. Mr Lamb —Have you been in both the gym and the bar tonight? Mr PRATT —Both of them, and I had to track down the honourable member for Hawker in the bar. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! It is improper to make those sort of allegations about members. The honourable member should withdraw. Mr PRATT —I withdraw. I went in there to-- Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member will continue with his speech. Mr PRATT —The Labor Government has scant concern for pensioners, retirees and veterans as indicated by its plan to renege on its responsibilities in handing over the repatriation general hospital system to the States at a time when the old diggers need it most. I seek leave to table a calculation. Leave not granted. Mr PRATT —As indicated by the Government's attempt to plunder the nest eggs of the elderly by extending the pension incomes test to market-linked investments, it has been a concern of pensioners and of concerned people in my electorate-- Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. Mr SCIACCA(Bowman)(10.48) —The honourable member for Adelaide (Mr Pratt) mentioned a subject in which I am very interested, the life education centres throughout the whole of Australia. The coalition parties do not have a mortgage on support for such centres. It is not only the coalition which has made representations for the tax deductibility of mobile caravan units. Government members will be continuing to follow up that matter, because it is a good program. I shall not deal in detail with that program tonight, but I wish to deal with the subject of smoking. As a person who smoked for many years and who has only recently given away those dreaded cigarettes-I sometimes have the odd cigar-I can say that it is probably one of the worst habits that anybody could possibly have, and there is no doubt about that. It is a drug which is probably as hard to give up as is alcohol-a substance which I do not imbibe very often at all. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition in Queensland, Mr Tom Burns, who is a State member in my electorate, recently handed me 50 letters from students of about 11 or 12 years of age in grade 6 at the Wynnum North Primary School, all pleading with the State and Federal governments to do something about cigarette advertising and stopping this very harmful habit at the time when it most counts; that is in relation to young children. A letter was sent by the teacher from grade 6, Ms Barbara Hart, to Mr Burns saying that the students had had a health lesson in which the dangers of smoking were pointed out. She asked a couple of students in her class to write letters of complaint. As it turned out, 50 students decided to write. In view of the seriousness of what smoking can cause, I have selected four or five of the better letters and I will read them to the House. One states: Dear Sir, We have decided that too many people are having heart attacks from smoking and now too many teenagers are starting to smoke. The teenagers don't know what's happening to them until they get older or they have an x-ray on their lungs. Would you please stop people under 16 from buying cigarettes? If police see a cigarette shop owner sell them please have them fined $100 dollars like in Victoria. Please stop cigarette companies putting up cigarette signs and raise the smoking prices. Your Sincerely, Troy Addley. Another letter reads: Dear Sir, Hello my name in Genaine. We've been talking about smoking in health lessons and I am very worried about teenagers smoking. Did you know in 1983, 16500 Australians died due to cigarette smoking and 40% of heavy smokers will die before reaching 65, compared with only 15% of non-smokers. Smoking KILLS- that word is underlined- so please try to stop some smoking ads on T.V., sports events and in the magazines. If you can do something do it please. Your sincerely, Genaine Colebourne. Another reads: Dear Sir, I'm worried about the health risks for children of all ages from smoking. I think smokes should be demolished for good because too many people are dying from lung cancer. We should not let our community let this go on. I agree with everyone else that the smoking ads and cigarette sports sponsorship should be banned. The price of smokes should be put up so teenagers can't buy cigarettes. Please try your best to stop the smoking advertisements. Another says: Dear Sir, I'm concerned about my future. About 20000 people die every year from disease caused by smoking. Adults who smoke 20 cigarettes a day pour one cup of tar into lungs each year. I think they should ban advertising. It seems as though the smoking companies don't care about our future. Yours sincerely, Kellie Bain. It is good to see that at least those things are being taught in school. I call upon the Queensland Government to do something about stopping shop owners from selling cigarettes to under-age children. I think it should follow Victoria's lead and fine them at least $100 for selling cigarettes to under-age kids. I say to all children: do not smoke. I speak from experience when I say that respiratory problems come from smoking and, by gee, have I got some respiratory problems at the moment. Mr McGAURAN(Gippsland)(10.53) —Only the most uninterested members of this House would not now be well acquainted with the crisis afflicting the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Only the most irresponsible would not wish to redress the situation, a situation which has seen the morale of CSIRO plummet and its effectiveness as the principal research institute in this country severely reduced. Yet honourable members may be interested to know that there is at least one occupant of the Government benches-a senior Minister-who regards CSIRO as something approaching a leech on the public purse. Mr Downer —Walsh? Mr McGAURAN —The honourable member for Mayo suggests the Minister for Finance. No doubt when consideration is given to internal memos within the Department of Finance he and his Department regard CSIRO as not worthy of sufficient public funds to continue its research efforts. However, I refer specifically to the Minister for Employment, Education and Training (Mr Dawkins) who, we understand from press reports, clashed bitterly with the Minister for Science, Customs and Small Business (Mr Barry Jones) during a Centre Left faction meeting earlier this week. Mr Barry Jones —How can you rely on a press report? Can you vouch for it? Mr McGAURAN —The Minister asks whether we rely on a press report. Does he deny that the Education Minister described CSIRO as having made no real effort to obtain private finance for research? Does he deny that he alleged that CSIRO should put less emphasis on rural research? Does he deny that the Minister said that only second-rate people complained about a lack of research funds because first-rate researchers are always able to get funds? Does the Minister deny that he spoke in such general terms? I invite the Minister to extend the adjournment debate this evening to address those press reports. It is within his power, Mr Acting Speaker, as you well know, to extend the adjournment debate to answer these points. He could take five or 10 minutes-however long it takes-to reply to the alleged clash with the Education Minister. I give credit to the Minister. Of course, we would expect him to take issue with any Minister who sought to downgrade the CSIRO so viciously as did the Education Minister, following in the tracks of his fellow Centre Left colleague, the Minister for Finance (Senator Walsh). We are told from press reports that the Minister for Science, Customs and Small Business replied, somewhat angrily, that it was not easy to obtain private money for research in the Australian economy because a large part of industry was dominated by companies owned overseas. Of course, research is done by the parent companies in countries overseas. That is true. That is one of our major problems in attracting industry support. It is not the only one. The fact that agriculture and mining provide 80 per cent of our export income means that it is unrealistic to expect, for instance, a high level of private industry investment by agricultural industries. Elders IXL Ltd, which rivals the Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd as the largest company in Australia, spends next to nothing on research. Of course, beer is beer and agriculture is agriculture, so why would Elders think that it was of any real profit to invest heavily in research and development? Moreover, I suspect that the Minister-I await his clarification of the situation-did not reply to the Education Minister by alleging that the investment climate for private industry is most unsatisfactory, with high interest rates, a high inflation rate, a rigid labour market and a very inflexible oncost system. Why would industry, particularly the manufacturing industry, invest very heavily when it knows that at the end of the day it is not worth investing in the finished product? Realistically, investment from private industry largely must come from the high technology and manufacturing industries. I challenge the Minister to reply to further press reports to the effect that, at the full Ministry meeting on Monday of this week, science was listed on the agenda, along with care for the aged and housing, as a priority for Government attention. In other words, does the Minister agree that he has been successful in adding science to the list of problems for the Government to address? If that is the case, maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel. I ask the Minister to reply. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member's time has expired. Mr McGAURAN(Gippsland)(10.58) —I notice that the Minister for Science, Customs and Small Business (Mr Barry Jones) has failed to jump to get the call to follow me. Maybe in two minutes time he will extend the adjournment debate. Will the Minister fail to take this opportunity to reassure the science community-in particular the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)-that he is fighting for its interests against the ignorant assessments of the Minister for Employment, Education and Training (Mr Dawkins)? Will he encourage it in its endeavours to place science on the political agenda by saying that he has finally got the Cabinet to admit that it is a political problem? I hope that the Minister can take the credit for doing so. I, more than anyone, would congratulate him if he were able to assure us that our efforts are beginning to bear fruit. Why will the Minister not respond? These are legitimate questions being put by the Opposition, on behalf of a very concerned constituency, which affect the well-being and standard of living of all Australians. The Minister is a coward. He is running away from his ministerial responsibilities. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member will withdraw that remark. Mr McGAURAN —Mr Acting Speaker, if the Minister does not answer the question, he is clearly a coward. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! The honourable member will withdraw that remark. Mr McGAURAN —I withdraw. If the Minister does not have the courage of his convictions publicly to address the concerns of the Opposition, quite frankly, he should resign. I am bitterly disappointed by the Minister's attitude. Before now I had a higher regard for him. Quite simply, he is washing his hands of the whole problem. He simply does not care sufficiently to answer the Opposition's questions. He should tell us whether the education Minister joins the Minister for Finance (Senator Walsh) in his attack on the science community and the CSIRO. Mr ACTING SPEAKER —Order! It being 11 p.m., the debate is interrupted. The House stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow. House adjourned at 11 p.m. The following notices were given: Mr Hicks to move- That this House notes with concern the Government's decision no longer to provide funding for surveillance and control of mosquito-borne diseases through the National Disease Control program. Mr Hicks to move- That this House notes with concern the problems confronting nursing homes, aged persons hostels and other aged persons facilities as a result of the most recent changes to Commonwealth funding of those facilities. Mr Hawker to move- That this House deplores the continuing high levels of personal taxation and the distortion which when coupled with assistance to low income families has seriously lowered incentive for people to reduce their dependence on fellow taxpayers. Mr Dawkins to present a Bill for an Act to amend the States Grants (School Assistance) Act 1984, and for related purposes. Mr Dawkins to present a Bill for an Act relating to the grant of financial assistance to the States and the Northern Territory for schools, and for related matters. Mr Dawkins to present a Bill for an Act relating to the funding of technical and further education and for matters connected therewith. Mr Dawkins to present a Bill for an Act relating to the funding of certain institutions of higher education, and for matters connected therewith. Mr West to present a Bill for an Act to repeal or amend certain Acts, and to enact certain transitional provisions, in consequence of the enactment of the Lands Acquisition Act 1988, and for other purposes. Mr Howe to present a Bill for an Act to amend the law relating to social security and veterans' entitlements, and for related purposes. Mr West 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: Bandiana redevelopment, Stage 1, Vic. Mr Lionel Bowen to present a Bill for an Act to provide for the protection of certain layouts for integrated circuits, and for related purposes. Mr Lionel Bowen to present a Bill for an Act to amend the Copyright Act 1968, and for related purposes. Mr Lionel Bowen to present a Bill for an Act to amend the Arbitration (Foreign Awards and Agreements) Act 1974. Mr Beazley to present a Bill for an Act to amend the Naval Defence Act 1910. Mr Peter Morris to present a Bill for an Act to amend the law relating to insurance. The following papers were deemed to have been presented on 2 November 1988: Archives Act-Regulations-Statutory Rules 1988, No. 256. Australian Bureau of Statistics Act-Australian Bureau of Statistics-Proposal for collection of information-1988-No. 62-Extension of quarterly survey of balance sheet information. Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court Act-Rules of Court-Statutory Rules 1988, No. 257. Banking Act-Regulations-Statutory Rules 1988, No. 254. Bankruptcy Act-Rules-Statutory Rules 1988, No. 261. Defence Act-Determination-1988-No. 57-Overseas Living Allowance and other allowances. Income Tax Assessment Act-Regulations--Statutory Rules 1988, No. 262. National Measurement Act-Regulations-Statutory Rules 1988, Nos. 258, 259. World Heritage Properties Conservation Act-Notice of consents (2) pursuant to section 9, dated 27 October and 2 November 1988.