Thursday, 26 May 1983 The PRESIDENT (Senator the Hon. Douglas McClelland) took the chair at 10 a.m., and read prayers. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Leader of the Government in the Senate) —I inform the Senate that the Minister for Housing and Construction, Mr Hurford, has been appointed Minister Assisting the Treasurer. The Clerk-Petitions have been lodged for presentation as follows: Marriage To the Honourable the President and Members of the Senate in Parliament assembled: We the undersigned citizens of Australia concerned about the high and increasing rate of divorce and family breakdown, convinced that the Family Law Act has weakened marriage by making divorce a trivial matter, the present Act paying scant regard to its own definition of marriage as a life-long union; and believing that the legal bond of marriage should be strengthened. Humbly petition for the Family Law Act and the Marriage Act to be amended in order to: 1. reject any moves towards divorce by post 2. restore the former prohibition of marriages between close relatives by blood or marriage 3. protect the rights and welfare of aggrieved partners of a marriage who are threatened with being divorced against their will 4. ensure that in divorce judgments paramount attention be given to whatever course will best serve the welfare of dependent children of the marriage 5. encourage counselling towards reconciliation 6. restore objective tests to irretrievable breakdown of marriage in terms of: (i) intolerable behaviour; (ii) desertion for two years; (iii) separation for three years. And we pray that you may be conscious of God's sovereign purpose for our nation . And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Sir John Carrick (from 11 citizens). To the Honourable The President, and Members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The Petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth that whereas the Government of Australia has signed the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which in Article 23(1) states that 'The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to the protection by society and the State'. And whereas the terms of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women would violate the above Article 23(1). We humbly pray the Government to refrain from ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women; Believing that its implementation would result in: (1) Undue cost to the Nation at this time. (2) 'The elimination of any stereotyped concept of roles of men and women at all levels' as described in Part 3 Article 10 (c), being a disruption of traditional parental roles, is likely to result in emotional disturbances of childhood. (3) The strong encouragements to mothers to join the workforce, with the provision of networks of creches and child care centres as outlined in Article 11 of the convention is likely to result in maternal deprivation and psychological disturbances among children with an increase in childhood psychiatric illnesses. (4) The sexual role changing as recommended in Part 3 Article 10(c) is likely to contribute to further marriage insecurity and breakdown. And we pray you may be conscious of God's sovereign purpose for our Nation. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senators Sir John Carrick (from 10 citizens), Collard (from 18 citizens), Jessop (from 120 citizens) and Watson (from 191 citizens). To the Honourable the President and Members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. This petition of the undersigned respectfully showeth: That the Church of Mary Queen of Peace Klaipeda, Lithuania was the only church permitted (by the Soviet authorities) to be built in post-war Lithuania. That the church was built by the Catholic parishoners from their own resources and with support from overseas Christians. That upon completion of the church building in 1960, the church was not allowed to be consecrated and, in 1961 was resumed by the State for purposes other than religious. That this resumption of the church and the subsequent persecution and arrests of the local clergy and other christians is contrary to the spirit and the letter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenent on Human Rights. Your petitioners most humbly pray that the Senate in Parliament assembled request the Australian Government to communicate most strongly to the Government of the USSR the sympathy of the petitioners for the plight of the Lithuanian Christians and ask that the Church of Mary Queen of Peace be restored to the Catholics of Klaipeda for the practice of their religion without interference. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Mason (from 690 citizens). Petitions received. Notice of Motion Senator TATE(Tasmania) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: That the National Service Amendment Bill 1983 be referred to the Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs for inquiry and report as soon as possible. The PRESIDENT —I present 'Business of the Senate and its Committees' for 1982. Ordered that the paper be printed. Senator ELSTOB(South Australia) —I present the first report of the Publications Committee. Report-by leave-adopted. Senator ROBERT RAY(Victoria) —I table additional information received by Estimates Committee A and seek leave for it to be incorporated in the Hansard record of the Committee's proceedings. Leave granted. Senator PRIMMER(Victoria) —I table additional information received by Estimates Committee C and seek leave for it to be incorporated in the Hansard record of the Committee's proceedings. Leave granted. Senator ROBERTSON(Northern Territory) —On behalf of Senator Georges, I table additional information received by Estimates Committee F and seek leave for it to be incorporated in the Hansard record of the Committee's proceedings. Leave granted. Motion (by Senator Button) proposed: (1) That, unless otherwise ordered, the hours of meeting of the Senate on Tuesday, 31 May 1983, be 1.45 p.m. to 6.30 p.m. and 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., and on Thursday, 2 June 1983 be 10 a.m. to 6.30 p.m. and 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. (2) That the Sessional Order relating to the adjournment of the Senate have effect at 10 p.m. on these days. (3) That, unless otherwise ordered, Government Business take precedence of General Business after 2.15 p.m. on Thursday, 2 June 1983 Senator CHANEY(Western Australia-Leader of the Opposition) —by leave-I merely wish to indicate to the Senate that this is an arrangement which has been made with the Opposition. The PRESIDENT —Order! There is too much audible conversation in the chamber. Senator Chipp —Mr President, I raise a point of order. We would like to hear the Opposition Leader but we cannot. Something is wrong with the microphone, I think . The PRESIDENT —I have just drawn the attention of honourable senators to the level of noise in the chamber. I call Senator Chaney. Senator CHANEY —The blessed silence which has descended I am sure will aid the microphone mightily. I wish to indicate to the Senate that the Opposition agreed to these revised sitting hours on the basis that next week was likely to be the final week of sitting. Many changes and concessions have been made during that period to ensure that the Government has time to conclude its business. However, I want to advise the Senate of what has been discussed privately, namely, that the Opposition would have preferred not to continue sitting for a continuous five-week period. I had some discussions with the Government and with the Australian Democrats about that matter. A continuous five-week period of sitting is very wearing on the Government, not less than the Opposition. In general we would prefer to have a pattern of sittings which did not involve such continuous periods of sitting. It was the view of the Australian Democrats in those discussions that other arrangements would probably be made even more convenient if we broke the sittings and then resumed. Since it was clear that the Opposition would not have a majority if it sought to ensure that we had a week up and then resumed sitting, it seemed better to go along with the proposal and not to waste a lot of parliamentary time. Because the matter may be an issue in the Budget session, which will be a more normal session in that there will not be an election which will interfere with the pattern of sitting and make the Government's job more difficult, I publicly indicate that the view of the Opposition will be against prolonged periods of sitting of the sort that we have had to have on this occasion. It is the view of the Opposition that we should, if possible, have both Tuesday and Wednesday mornings free for party and shadow Cabinet meetings in the traditional way. I mention that matter because in the negotiations-quite informal negotiations at times-which took place around the rearrangement of sitting hours during the last parliament, concessions were made to the then Opposition's view that it required the Tuesday and Wednesday mornings to meet its responsibilities to Caucus and to the shadow Ministry or shadow Cabinet, whatever it was termed. At that time the Government acceded to the request of representatives of the Opposition that we should permit that pattern. I have little doubt that after the experience of these revised sitting hours it will be necessary for us to have some discussions about what this pattern has meant to the operations of both the Government and the Opposition and what pattern the Government will suggest to the Parliament for the Budget session. I wish to indicate that Opposition senators are firmly of the view that we would like to avoid these prolonged period of sittings and we would like those mornings I have mentioned to be free. Of course, we are ready, willing and able to sit whenever the Government has business and we do not seek to avoid our responsibilities in that respect. But there are features of the present sitting hours which are difficult. As I said earlier I think the Government will have found those difficulties impinging on its operations. Senator CHIPP(Victoria-Leader of the Australian Democrats) —by leave-I agree essentially with a great deal, if not all, of what Senator Chaney has said. So far, the proceedings of this place have taken place with a harmonious relationship between the party leaders and between the Whips. Inevitably there are some breakdowns in communication. I will give an example and I do so only to express the hope that it will not happen again, not in any sense of acrimony or complaint. Yesterday, the Leader of the Government consulted the Australian Democrats and asked whether we would be prepared to negative the adjournment so that we could get the Australian Broadcasting Commission legislation through the Senate. We said that we were agreeable to an additional period of half an hour or one hour. I assumed that he had already communicated that information to the Leader of the Opposition, but that was not the case. I am not suggesting that there was any sort of wilful withholding of information. It was just one of those simple things which was neglected because of the pace with which this Senate proceeds. Similarly, apparently the Leader of the Government consulted with the Leader of the Opposition and obtained agreement to sit for three nights next week. I and my party were confronted with that proposition as a fait accompli. Again, I am not complaining about it. We would have preferred, if we had been consulted, to have made a very strong plea not to sit three nights a week because that would be going back to the bad old days. We would have far preferred to have sat another week. However, although it is difficult in this place because of the pressure under which we work, I suggest that in future these consultations should take place either at the Whips level, as the Whips meet every morning, or at a meeting where at least the leaders of the three parties are present. Senator ROBERTSON(Northern Territory) —by leave-I wish to respond briefly to the comments made by the Leader of the Australian Democrats (Senator Chipp). The negating of the adjournment motion was discussed with the Opposition Whip. I have no idea what happens internally within the Opposition, but certainly the matter was discussed and the information was conveyed. Again, there is no acrimony. Let me refer to the second matter that was raised. The arrangements mentioned by Senator Chipp were discussed at the Whips meeting where agreement was reached. Senator HARRADINE(Tasmania) —by leave-At the risk of introducing a little acrimony into this debate I simply state that, as a member of the Senate, one tends to base one's appointments, electoral and otherwise, around the times of the Senate. As far as I am concerned sessional orders govern the sitting times of the Senate. We are now confronted with a change of times for the next week of sitting which, of course, will alter the availability of time for the types of appointments that I have mentioned. This matter was presented to the Parliament without any consideration being given to me. I had no notification and my opinion was not sought about the matter. I might not have any particular power in this place but I happen to represent two quotas from the State of Tasmania. Senator Robert Ray —No; 1.95. Senator HARRADINE —I am sorry; 1.95. Those two quotas are representative of the types of votes that one would have been able to get if one were on the mainland. Honourable senators should translate that into the number of votes that one would have got if one were standing, say, in Victoria. Last night the negativing of the adjournment motion took place without any consultation whatsoever with me . I take exception to that. I take the opportunity now of saying that I have no complaint about the courtesy of the office of the Government Whip, Senator Robertson. I am not kept in the dark, nor was I with the former Government Whip, Senator Kilgariff, and I place that on the record. On the major matter of the sitting times of the Senate, I object to being presented with a fait accompli without having an opportunity to express the view that I have on behalf of my constituents. I hope that this is the last time that that sort of thing will occur. Question resolved in the affirmative. Senator SIBRAA(New South Wales) —I move: That so much of the Standing Orders be suspended as would prevent such senators as are members of the Joint Standing Committee on the New Parliament House attending a meeting of the Committee during the sitting of the Senate on Wednesday, 1 June 1983. Mr President, as you are aware, the Joint Committee on the new Parliament House has not been able to meet this year until recently- The PRESIDENT —Order! The motion is not open to debate. Question resolved in the affirmative. Notice of Motion Senator LEWIS(Victoria) —by leave-I give notice that, on the next day of sitting , I shall move: That leave be given to introduce a Bill for an Act to establish Anzac Day as a national day of remembrance and to provide for observances in the Australian Capital Territory to mark Anzac Day. The PRESIDENT —I inform the Senate that I have received a letter from the Government Whip in the Senate, Senator Robertson, requesting that he be discharged from further attendance on the Senate House Committee. Motion (by Senator Button) agreed to: That Senator Robertson be discharged from further attendance on the Senate House Committee and that Senator Crowley be appointed a member of the Committee. Bill received from the House of Representatives. Ordered that the Bill may be taken through all its stages without delay. Bill (on motion by Senator Button) read a first time. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry and Commerce)(10.17) —I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The speech read as follows- There was general agreement at the National Economic Summit that an economic planning advisory council (EPAC) should be established to continue the process of co-operation and consultation begun at the Summit Conference. The purpose of this Bill is to put this commitment to co-operation and consultation into effect. Through EPAC the Government will have available to it, on a continuing basis, independent advice from State governments, industry, unions and community groups which will be invaluable to the process of economic policy formulation. However, this information flow will not be just one way. The public release of a large volume of government information prior to the National Economic Summit is evidence of the fact that the Government is firmly committed to knowledge sharing. The Government is convinced that such knowledge sharing plays an integral part in establishing a common perception among various community groups regarding the causes of, and possible solutions to, Australia's economic difficulties. The Bill before the Senate defines the functions of the council and invests it with sufficiently wide powers to enable it to execute its functions. Provisions are made for the council to express its views freely and to have its own independent secretariat. It is important that EPAC be constituted as a statutory body in order to provide the council with the status, permanence and stability it needs to do its job effectively. It is also important to ensure that EPAC is as independent as possible of any department of government, and statutory status is necessary to achieve this. The functions of the council are defined in clause 6 of the Bill. In essence, the council's role will be to act as a vehicle for community participation in the development of government economic policy. In particular, it is intended that the council will: Draw together the views of community representatives on prospective economic conditions and appropriate economic policies; Identify feasible and desirable goals and targets for the economy as a whole; Provide perspectives on the medium-and longerterm economic outlook; and Develop policies to help realise the maximum growth potentialities of the economy and assist in the achievement of sustained economic growth. These functions will allow the council a very wide charter. In addition to acting as a vehicle for knowledge sharing and policy consultation, EPAC will enlarge our knowledge base. In part, this will be through its basic research activities which will be directed at fundamental problems facing the economy. As well, it is intended that EPAC will, after it has found its feet, undertake what we have called indicative planning-that is, it will advise on feasible and desirable economic goals and on policies to realise the economy's maximum growth potentialities. The Government considers that it is of considerable value for the nation to try to assess the longer term trends ahead and to seek to influence these trends in a desirable direction. The council will have seventeen members, including three Commonwealth Ministers and three State government representatives. For this purpose the Northern Territory will be treated on similar terms as the State governments. In addition , one member will be selected in consultation with local government organisations, three in consultation with business, one in consultation with rural industry, four in consultation with trade unions, one in consultation with welfare organisations, and one in consultation with consumer and community groups. The State government representatives will be nominated by their respective governments. The representation of the States will be arranged on a rotating basis, with rotations every two years. For non-government members, it is the Government's intention that they will, after an initial phasing-in arrangement, serve for four years. The latter will be appointed by the Government after consultation with relevant organisations as set out in the Bill. The non- government members will be selected on the basis of those who are best able to contribute to the work of the council rather than as nominees of organisations. To discharge its important functions, the council is to be provided with appropriate powers, listed in clauses 7, 8 and 19 and 22 to 24 of the Bill. The council will be able to conduct inquiries and collect information on any aspect of its functions. Clause 7 contains provisions in regard to the publishing of reports. While the clause provides that the Treasurer may refrain from publishing a report or may publish a report with deletions if the Treasurer considers that to do so is necessary to protect the public interest, it is the Government's intention that this power be exercised only if there are overwhelming reasons in the national interest for doing so. The Government remains committed to knowledge sharing with all members of the community. The council will be able to consult widely with Commonwealth and State bodies and with commercial, industrial, consumer, welfare and other organisations. The council will have powers to engage consultations to conduct studies for it and to arrange with the Commonwealth and State authorities for officers of those authorities to be available to assist the council. The council will also be able to form committees of council members and others, who will conduct investigations on behalf of the council and will report their findings and recommendations to the council. These powers should enable the council to meet its responsibilities adequately. The legislation gives the council the necessary degree of independence so that its advice can be provided to government freely and without unwarranted influence. Clause 6 of the Bill provides that the council, in deciding which matters it should consider, shall consult with, but shall not be bound by the views of, the Commonwealth Government. The Bill also provides that the Commonwealth members will not vote when the council is deciding on the advice to be given to the Commonwealth Government in a policy report. These provisions will make sure that EPAC's advice is truly at arm's length from government. Provision is also made for the recording of minority opinions although it is the Government's expectation that, as far as possible, the council will endeavour to find a consensus in its opinions. Another important area where independence is ensured is in the staffing of EPAC . It is intended that EPAC will be served by professional staff in an independent secretariat. The staffing requirements will be a matter for negotiation with the council when it has been established. The staff are to be employed under the Public Service Act, but clause 22 of the Bill provides specifically that staff members shall perform their functions and duties in accordance with the directions of the council. The budgetary costs associated with the establishment and running of EPAC, which will mainly reflect the costs of staffing and maintaining the secretariat, will be met in full by the Commonwealth Government. The foregoing represent the more important purposes of the Bill. There are, in addition, the usual provisions of a Bill of this nature concerning the appointment, terms of office, payment of expenses of council members, and acting members and related matters. The council will meet as necessary to perform its functions. A council member will be required to disclose any interest he may have in any matter under consideration by the council where such an interest would conflict with the proper performance of his functions. Unless the council determines otherwise, such an interest will debar the council member involved from taking part in any decision on the matter in question and from being present at any discussions on that matter. The Government believes that there is an overwhelming case for establishing an effective economic policy advisory body in Australia as an independent and permanent statutory authority. Nothing less will properly safeguard the status, permanence and stability of EPAC. This Bill provides the necessary safeguards. I commend the Bill to the Senate. Debate (on motion by Senator Reid) adjourned. Bill received from the House of Representatives. Ordered that the Bill may be taken through all its stages without delay. Bill (on motion by Senator Button) read a first time. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry and Commerce)(10.18) —I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The speech read as follows- This Bill, as outlined by the Treasurer in his Economic Statement, is the initial step in giving effect to our election commitment to take immediate action to create worthwhile employment opportunities, especially for the record number of Australians now unemployed. The Bill establishes the Community Employment Program with the intention of generating a level of activity in 1983-84 consistent with our objective to provide in a full year, through this program, up to 70,000 full time jobs for an average duration of six months. In particular, the Community Employment Program will be aimed at those most disadvantaged among the ranks of the unemployed who will be least likely to be assisted by employment growth generated by the general economic recovery which will result from this Government's policies. The Treasurer's Economic Statement made very clear that Australia's current economic problems are without recent precedent, and that the seriousness of the economic situation imposes very real constraints on the Government. Notwithstanding these difficulties, we were elected with a commitment to create jobs and we are determined to fulfil that commitment. The need for such action is desirable at a time when Australia has the worst unemployment since the Great Depression. Seven years of the policies of the previous Government have led to an increase in unemployment of almost half a million with the rate of unemployment in April standing at 10.2 per cent or almost three quarters of a million people. Over this period the average duration of unemployment has risen from around 3 months to more than 7 months at the current time. The social and economic consequences of this explosion in unemployment have been immense and need no elaboration to any concerned member of the Senate. These consequences, however, were virtually ignored by the previous Government. The Fraser Government was elected on a promise to provide jobs for all those wanting work. After more than 7 years its abysmal failure to fulfil this promise is painfully evident. As the dimensions of its failure became more apparent, the Fraser Government steadfastly refused to accept responsibility for the jobs crisis, but instead sought to shift the blame. Its two most popular scapegoats were wages growth and the international recession. This Government recognises the crucial importance of wage restraint in current economic circumstances, but it is the responsibility of the national government to provide the environment and the leadership to attain appropriate wage outcomes, as this Government has done. The Fraser Government failed utterly in this regard. The Hawke Government recognises the difficulties posed for domestic economic management by current international circumstances, but it is the responsibility of the national government to meet the international challenge head-on, to implement domestic policies which will foster growth in activity and employment, notwithstanding adverse external influences. We are adopting positive policies to overcome the legacies left by the previous Government. Part of these policies is our commitment to job creation measures directly aimed at increasing employment opportunities in both the public and private sectors of the economy. Such policies were steadfastly rejected particularly in regard to the public sector by those occupying the other side of the Senate except for the one-year program to sugar coat the Wage Pause. But the need and justification for such policies in the current circumstances cannot be disputed. Most Western governments operate specific employment creation schemes as an integral ingredient of policies to reduce or contain unemployment. Even such a conservative government as the Thatcher Government in the United Kingdom has seen the need to operate specific job programs. Similarly in Australia political conservatives have at times recognised the value and impact of such programs, as is illustrated by the following quotation: ''In summary I would like to emphasise that by remaining aloof and closing our eyes to job creation schemes, Australia is at variance with accepted practice in most other Western countries. Certainly overseas experience appears to indicate that such programs are worthwhile. Furthermore their merit is even more underlined by the likely continuation of high levels of unemployment in Australia. Most likely there is room for some mixture of private sector wage subsidy schemes and public sector project employment. It would seem that detailed planning, a slow build-up and a large measure of local involvement would ensure a good chance of successful implementation''. This ringing endorsement of job creation programs came from none other than the Premier of Queensland, Mr Bjelke-Petersen, in a letter to the former Prime Minister in June last year. Certainly this Government agrees with the Queensland Premier on this issue. Our commitment to job generation has also been endorsed strongly by all groups at the recent National Economic Summit Conference. This Government will adopt a twofold approach to directly assisting the unemployed through action, first to create jobs and, second, to provide the unemployed with the training needed to fill the jobs which will be created through a sustained economic recovery. The Community Employment Program along with our housing package are first steps in the process. This Program will involve the Commonwealth Government in constructive partnership with the States, local government and community groups to provide worthwhile and productive jobs in both the public and private sector, on projects of social and economic benefit to the community, for those unemployed Australians hardest hit by the recession in the labour market. It should be painfully evident to honourable senators that there is a vast amount of such worthwhile and productive work, of social and economic benefit, which needs to be done in Australia at the State, local and community levels and that there are record numbers of unemployed Australians, men and women, who can, and want to, do that work. Our Program will provide the framework and financing to bring forward from all areas within the community projects which will provide such work. As I have already said, our objective is to generate a level of activity under this Program in 1983-84 consistent with supporting in a full year up to 70,000 full time jobs for an average duration of six months. Up to twice the number of jobs can be expected to be created indirectly by the increased demand for goods and services and the higher incomes resulting from implementing the Program. As a basis for achieving this objective, the Commonwealth Government intends to allocate $300m to the Community Employment Program in 1983-84. Of that amount $ 50m will be set aside for job creation programs through Commonwealth departments and authorities. The remainder, including the Jobs on Local Roads initiative, under which it is proposed to allocate $70 million to enable local governments to construct and maintain local roads, will be allocated to projects sponsored by State and local governments and community organisations. A sum of $20 milion of this amount will be for project activity involving water supply improvement programs in country towns. In addition to the allocations to the Community Employment Program the Government will continue to meet commitments under the Wage Pause Program set up by the previous Government. This will add a further $100 million to job creation measures in 1983-84. Despite reservations about the adequacy of this Program in fully meeting our job creation objectives. It is our view that pre-existing agreements under this Wage Pause Program should be honoured. Consistent with our election commitment, the Commonwealth under the Community Employment Program will provide the bulk of funds to worthwhile projects to pay for wage and other costs. The Commonwealth will, however, be seeking on a State basis, a contribution of 30 per cent of total costs from project sponsors. This will allow all sectors to make a contribution towards overcoming our unemployment legacy and will mean the creation of a greater number of jobs. The Commonwealth, though, will remain flexible on this matter. We will be prepared to accept greater contributions towards meeting up to 49 per cent of the cost of projects where such funds are available. On the other hand, we will be prepared to provide up to full funding where a desirable project is in danger of not being able to proceed without such Commonwealth funding. Funds appropriated under this Program will be allocated among the States and Territories on the basis of population, with the exception of funds allocated to Commonwealth departments and authorities and 40 per cent of the funds allocated to road programs. This 40 per cent portion of road funds will be distributed on the basis of a formula under the Commonwealth Roads Grants Act. Apart from this allocation, priority will be given when approving projects to areas experiencing especially severe unemployment problems. The Commonwealth will direct and oversight the Program, through the Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations but the States and the Northern Territory will be responsible for the administration of the Program within their boundaries, although not of course for those projects conducted by Commonwealth departments and instrumentalities. The Minister will be having early discussions with the States to reach agreement on these administrative arrangements so that the Program can be implemented from July 1983. The Minister is confident that the States will approach these discussions with the urgency and commitment to help the unemployed which this Government has demonstrated by initiating this Program. Committees comprising Commonwealth and State officials, local government, community organisations and interested groups will be established in each State and Territory to consider projects for approval. They will consult widely in the community as to what type of projects are needed and they will give assistance, where necessary, to interested groups in developing projects. Final project approval will remain with the Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations or his nominee. To be eligible for approval, projects would have to conform to the following guidelines: projects must be labour intensive, offering work for at least three months and a maximum of one year in the first instance at appropriate minimum award rates; projects must involve high Australian content; non-Australian content would be limited to 20 per cent of all projects in a State or Territory; projects will need to involve activities leading to productive output and permanent jobs, or provide services of permanent public and community value; projects will have to provide worthwhile work experience and/or training opportunities to enable participants to enter the normal workforce; and projects must also be additional to those planned and would not otherwise have been funded under normal budgetary conditions. Those eligible for participation must be Commonwealth Employment Service registrants who have been out of work for at least three months, with priority then being given to those who have been unemployed for at least nine months, those who have never worked,-particularly the very disadvantaged of the labour market, such as Aborigines-and those for other reasons in need of immediate employment. Equal access should be provided for females under the Program, which in some instances may necessitate special measures to ensure that women receive an equal share of the jobs created. Finally, vacancies for projects funded under the program must be lodged with the Commonwealth Employment Service. To ensure that the Program makes the most efficient use of resources to meet our objectives, there will, after an initial period of operation, be a joint Commonwealth and State Evaluation conducted by the Bureau of Labour Market Research in conjunction with the States concerned. These guidelines will be the basis of a more effective and equitable job creation package than that provided by the Wage Pause Program. Like the Wage Pause Program, the Community Employment Program will contain provision for equal access to work by men and women alike and ensure that Aboriginal Australians and other particularly disadvantaged groups are catered for. However, the Community Employment Program, through its giving of priority to those out of work for long periods, and its insistence on adherence to the guidelines, in contrast to what has been the happening under the Wage Pause Program, will be more tightly targeted to those most disadvantaged in the labour market. In addition, the Program's administration will be streamlined and more effective and greater provision will be made for direct involvement of local government and community groups. The Community Employment Program does not represent the end of our job creation activities. Our election program foreshadowed the introduction of a Private Sector Assistance Program to provide training and employment opportunities in the private sector. We intend to proceed with this Program during 1983-84. As part of the process of introduction of the scheme we will be conducting a broad review of all existing training and assistance programs to ensure that they fully meet the Hawke Government's objectives in this area. The overall result will be, however, a substantial increase in the Government's commitments to employment and training activities. As the Treasurer has indicated total expenditure in 1983-84 in this area will be $733m-an increase of 110% on the funds provided on these crucial programs during 1982-83. This figure is clear evidence of the Government's commitment to provide greater job opportunities for all Australians. The Community Employment Program is the first step towards fulfilling that commitment. I commend the Bill to the Senate. Debate (on motion by Senator Reid) adjourned. Bill received from the House of Representatives. Ordered that the Bill may be taken through all its stages without delay. Bill (on motion by Senator Button) read a first time. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry and Commerce)(10.21) —I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The speech read as follows- This Bill provides for an amendment to the Wheat Marketing Act 1979 to give effect to decisions taken by the Government in the context of its expenditure review. The effect of the amendment will be to terminate from 1 July 1983 the scheme whereby the Australian Wheat Board is reimbursed for the additional costs involved in borrowing from the domestic capital market compared with the Rural Credits Department of the Reserve Bank. The scheme was introduced to compensate the Board for the Government's decision to compel it to borrow from the higher cost domestic market. The Bill therefore provides that from 1 July 1983 there will be no liability for the Commonwealth to make any payments under the scheme. In consideration of the termination of the scheme, the Government will seek the approval of Loan Council to permit the Board to borrow overseas in 1983-84 and subsequent years subject to the following conditions. The Board would be free to borrow 50 per cent of its prospective net borrowing requirements overseas but would require the agreement of the Treasurer and myself to borrow more than 50 per cent from overseas sources. The criteria for our approval in the latter case will take into account both the prospective monetary situation on the one hand and the prospective borrowing requirements and borrowing costs of the Wheat Board on the other. Within the annual limit the Board would be free to determine the currencies, timing, size and term of individual borrowings subject to it giving the Government prior notification of the size and timing of borrowings. The Bill therefore also provides for the Board's powers in relation to borrowing and the issue of securities, to be exercisable both within and outside Australia. These new arrangements should enable the Board to borrow from lower cost markets such that there should be no increase in the cost of borrowing to the Board from the termination of the interest subsidy. Not only are current interest rates generally lower overseas but as wheat is often traded in foreign currencies the Board would be able to hedge the risks of currency fluctuations by borrowing in the same currencies in which it makes sales. I am sure that the Board and wheat growers would welcome the increase in commercial freedom of the Board. I commend the Bill to honourable senators. Debate (on motion by Senator Reid) adjourned. Consideration resumed from 25 May 1983. Proposed new Part VIIA. Senator HARRADINE(Tasmania)(10.23) — I move: (1) Proposed new clause 77A, definition of 'complaint', paragraph (a), leave out 'unjust or unfair', insert 'inaccurate, unfair or biased'. (2) Proposed new clause 77A, definition of 'complaint', paragraph (b), at end of paragraph, add '(whether or not the matter so obtained was included in the program)'. (3) Proposed new clause 77A, definition of 'complaint', at end of definition, add the following new paragraph: '(d) that the program was otherwise offensive'. (4) Proposed new clause 77A, definition of 'person affected', leave out the definition. (5) Proposed new clause 77D, sub-clause (1), leave out 'affected', insert ' making the complaint'. (6) Proposed new clause 77D, sub-clauses (2) and (3), leave out the sub-clauses , insert the following new sub-clause: '(2) The complaint may be made by an individual, or by a body of persons, whether incorporated or not.'. (7) Proposed new clause 77E, leave out the proposed clause. (8) Proposed new clause 77F, sub-clause (1), leave out 'Subject to section 77E, '. (9) Proposed new clause 77F, sub-clause (4), paragraph (c), leave out 'the person affected or'. The purpose of these amendments is to incorporate in the Opposition's amendment the principles that I outlined during the second reading debate. In my view, at least some of them ought to be accepted if the point of view that was expressed by Senator Martin last night is valid. I consider that the matters which Senator Martin outlined to the Committee last night are valid. The complaints of people under the circumstances outlined by the honourable senator should receive proper attention by the Australian Broadcasting Commission. The allegation was that the matter raised in a Four Corners program was unfair to the complainant. The allegation also was that the matter was an error of fact. It could be said that the community affairs officer would be required to deal with errors of fact under the current legislation. I take the point that has been made by the Government that people ought to have the right to feel that their complaints are being adequately dealt with by an independent tribunal. As I understand it, that was the attitude of the Australian Democrats last year. Of course, that has been detailed to the Committee by Senator Baume in moving his proposition. It is my view that that ought to apply as well because, over the years, the ABC has tended to become bureaucratic and a law unto itself. My amendment to the proposition would ensure that the complaint was about matters that are considered by the complainant to be 'inaccurate, unfair or biased'. Clearly, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Board has a duty to ensure that its programs are accurate and impartial. Clause 8 on page 6 of the Bill relates to the duties of the Board. The Government, in detailing the guidelines for complaints, has picked up only the accuracy part of the duties of the Board. It has not picked up the impartial part of the duties. In fact, on the one hand, clause 8 refers to the duties of the Board which require the Board to ensure that information is accurate and impartial. On the other hand, the Government, in the same piece of legislation, when it comes to testing the Board about whether it is carrying out those functions, will apply only one test, and that is the test of accuracy. There is another matter which is quite distinct altogether and that is the invasion of property. What I am trying to pick up and what I believe the Opposition really is trying to pick up is the question of impartiality. Therefore, I am proposing to amend the Opposition's amendment so as to include the words 'inaccurate, unfair or biased'. The second amendment is to proposed new clause 77A, which relates to the definition of 'complaint'. I feel that the Opposition's amendment does not pick up what is now in the Government's Bill. Clearly, if there is an invasion of privacy the complaint should relate to actions taken by the ABC regardless of ' whether or not the matter so obtained was included in the program'. I seek to make that amendment to the Opposition's amendment. I hope the Opposition will agree with that as well. My third amendment is also to proposed new clause 77A. It seeks to add a paragraph to the definition of 'complaint'. My amendment is that the proposed new clause should include the words: (d) that the program was otherwise offensive. If the Opposition's amendments are not carried I will also be proposing that amendment to the Government's Bill. My fourth amendment is complementary to the fifth amendment. It is, of course, also complementary to the sixth. The amendments propose that 'the complaint may be made by an individual, or by a body of persons, whether incorporated or not'. The other three propositions flow from the statements that I made in the second reading debate or which I believe I have made elsewhere. Rather than delay the Committee, I commend those propositions to it. Senator PETER BAUME(New South Wales)(10.31) —It seems to me that Senator Harradine's amendments fall into two groups which are really quite separate. The purpose of the first group is to cover the definition of 'complaint' and the second group is to alter the question of who shall have standing. Senator Harradine might correct me if I am wrong, but I think that the second group of amendments seeks to widen quite markedly the group of people who might make a complaint. Is my understanding correct? Senator Harradine —Yes. Senator PETER BAUME —As a matter of principle, we had chosen to stay as close as we could to the British model so that the point we were making and the comparison we were drawing with what the Australian Democrats proposed last year remained perfectly valid. We are not happy to move away from the British model to the extent of altering who should have standing. A number of Senator Harradine's amendments-I think amendments Nos 2 through 9-actually bear upon the question of who can make a complaint and the fact that people can make complaints about programs in which they may not have been involved. We would not be disposed to agree with those amendments. I come back to Senator Harradine's first amendment in which he is concerned about the definition of 'complaint'. I think the honourable senator makes a point there which has a considerable amount of substance. He wants to add the words 'inaccurate' and 'bias'. He wants to make a slight rearrangement to the words there. I can see no reason why that would not be acceptable. It seems to me perfectly appropriate that those words should be included in that way. I indicate that the Opposition agrees to the first of Senator Harradine's amendments. I wonder whether we are incorrect in thinking that the remainder really form a block of amendments. Senator Harradine —No, they do not. Senator PETER BAUME —The honourable senator might care to separate the groupings for us. I will yield to him again in a moment. If he can indicate which of those amendments actually refer to giving a wider capacity for standing for a complaint, I can then indicate the Opposition's view. Senator HARRADINE(Tasmania)(10.33) —My amendments Nos 1 to 3 relate to what constitutes a complaint. Amendments Nos 4 to 9 effectively relate to the locus standi. That is it in simple terms. Senator PETER BAUME(New South Wales)(10.33) —The Opposition thinks that the first amendment is one with which it can agree. We find that the second and third amendments may be a bit too difficult or too broad. The honourable senator is quite correct; they relate to the type of complaint. The view we have taken is that unless compelling arguments were advanced we would not support amendments Nos 2 and 3. Senator HARRADINE(Tasmania)(10.34) —The compelling argument is simply this: If the Government agrees to place something in the Bill, why not pick it up? My amendment No. 2 simply proposes an amendment to the Opposition's new clause 77A. The definition of 'complaint' is contained in clause 77B. The Opposition's amendment provides that: 'complaint', in relation to a program means a complaint as to any one or more of the following matters: . . . . (b) that an unwarranted intrusion into the privacy of a person took place in the course of obtaining matter for inclusion in the program; All I am suggesting is that we add the words 'whether or not the matter so obtained was included in the program'. As I understand it, that is contained in the Government's proposition. My proposition is that if there has been an invasion of privacy a complaint against the actions of the Australian Broadcasting Commission is proper whether or not the matters have been referred to in a television or radio program. It is clear that there is either an invasion of privacy or there is not. For example, there could well be an invasion of privacy in the collection of material. Whether that material is used on a program is immaterial; an invasion of privacy has taken place. As I understand the Government's legislation, community affairs officers would be required to deal with that sort of invasion of privacy. Perhaps the Minister will enlighten me. Senator Chipp —It is clause 82 (1) (b). Senator HARRADINE —That is right. I thank Senator Chipp. That is quite clear. Clause 82 (1) (b) states: that an invasion of privacy has occurred in, or in connection with the preparation of, a program, announcement or other matter broadcast or televised by the Corporation. Senator Peter Baume —We will accept your amendment No. 2. Senator HARRADINE —That must have been a compelling argument. I am now compelled to put the other argument to see whether we can get acceptance of my third amendment. Clearly, I accept that persons have the right to complain to the ABC about program standards where they do not have a 'sufficient interest', in the narrow definition of that phrase. Where they do not have that sufficient interest this amendment provides them with the opportunity to make a complaint. If there are excessive numbers of complaints about a particular matter, excessive in that it is unduly burdensome on the complaints tribunal to answer all the complaints individually, it would do so, presumably, by way of some sort of broadcast. As to a program that is otherwise offensive, I believe that if we have a complaints tribunal as has been suggested by the Opposition, or if community affairs officers receive complaints, the public will expect that that tribunal or those persons will receive complaints. I do not think that the public will see the niceties of the situation described by Senator Button. I do not think it will say that complaints have to go through the complaints tribunal or the community affairs officers. Why can these people not receive the complaints that I mentioned? Senator CHIPP(Victoria-Leader of the Australian Democrats)(10.40) —I am impressed to some extent by some of the arguments put forward by Senator Harradine. But, as Senator Button explained, to insert these amendments into legislation at this time, particularly those conditions concerning standards, and to broaden the scope of the activities of the tribunal, as the Opposition would want to call it, or the community affairs officers as stated in the legislation, would in the Government's mind-and I suspect it is right-cause such a welter of complaints and material at the outset as to make the system unworkable. The Government might be wrong but at least we have an undertaking from it that this matter will be reviewed at an early opportunity once the corporation is set up and is working. I say with great respect and without giving offence that the argument on amendments to the Opposition's amendment is rather academic at this stage. It is a fascinating debate, and I am interested in all that is being said because the Government and the Democrats will not accept the Opposition's amendment. Debate on the Opposition's amendment is a good debate going to waste. I would prefer the very sensible comments of Senator Harradine to be directed to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Bill proper. I think we could save time. The reason why the Democrats will not accept the amendment, as I said before and will say again -Senator Peter Baume, Senator Harradine and Senator Sir John Carrick were quite right last night in saying this-is that the Democrats would prefer a complaints commissioner, an independent body. There is no question about that. With great respect-and I do not think those honourable senators meant any mischief by those remarks-all of them omitted the vital part of the Democrats' proposition, that is, that that complaints commissioner should not be appointed by the Government but should be appointed and approved by both Houses of the Parliament. There is a world of difference. Senator Sir John Carrick, with great respect for his years of experience, mildly and in a good manner rebuked us by saying that if a judge is appointed everything will be all right. That argument contends that a judge is beyond reproach and beyond suspicion and is totally objective-- Senator Button —He believes that. Senator CHIPP —I am sure he does. I respect him for his views, but I hope he respects me for mine when I say that I absolutely disagree with that view. I do not think there is anything sacred about judges. I could point to a few-- Senator Sir John Carrick —Or ombudsmen? Senator CHIPP —Or ombudsmen, indeed. Senator Sir John Carrick —Governments appoint ombudsmen for exactly this purpose . Senator CHIPP —The fact that there has been a practice in some areas does not mean to say that we have to compound those practices with the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Of course governments make these appointments. I would prefer, and the Democrats would prefer, for those kinds of appointments to be approved by both Houses of Parliament. But the Opposition clearly, right from the outset, said that it would not accept that part of the Democrats' proposition. Opposition senators are entitled to do that. Having done that, the Democrats have to address themselves to the question of which of the two worlds we would prefer-an independent complaints commissioner who is capable of being appointed by a government or the present system in which at least we have filters, checks and balances built into the system. The Government has accepted Democrat amendments for the community affairs offices to be recommended by the advisory councils. At least we have a checks and balances system in regard to pure stooges being directly appointed by the Government. Therefore, I must say that we will oppose the Opposition's amendment and Senator Harradine's amendments to the amendment. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK(New South Wales)(10.45) —I wish to make a couple of points, and I shall do so quite objectively. Senator Chipp said that there may be no merit in a debate on issues in which it is clear that some amendments will not be carried. I put to him and to the Committee that this debate goes well beyond what will happen initially as a result of this Bill. Great philosophical questions must be asked and attempted to be answered in this journey. It is not good enough, for example, to use the argument which Senator Chipp used. I have not heard the Government use it, but Senator Chipp, and I respect what he says, argues that the Government says that if one took the course advocated by Senator Harradine there would be too many complaints to handle. If that is the question to be directed, it is entirely the wrong end of the telescope. The real question is not whether there would be too may complaints but whether there is a sufficiency mechanism to allow valid complaints, however many, to be dealt with. We are not looking at the question of whether a bureaucracy would be bogged down . We are looking at a citizenry which has the right to make complaints. That is a primary situation. Senator Crichton-Browne —The only situation. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK —The only situation. It is inherent in what Senator Harradine is saying, although as Senator Baume says, the Opposition will stick primarily to its amendments because they are as close to the British Broadcasting Corporation situation as possible and very much what the Australian Democrats advocate. Senator Chipp —Come on, state our position clearly. I plead with you. Do it fairly. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK —I would be very happy to do that. Senator Peter Baume —The difference is acknowledged. Senator Chipp —He doesn't acknowledge it. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK —What am I not acknowledging? Senator Chipp —That there is a fundamental difference between what the Democrats put and what you're saying. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK —As I understand it, the only difference is how the chairman of a totally independent commission, divorced entirely from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, shall be appointed: As I understand it, what the Democrats are doing today is putting aside that principle entirely and supporting with some amendments the concept of a complaints officer in the Corporation, responsible to it for his salary, his term of appointment and conditions. I direct myself to that aspect. How can such a person do that job? What will be the level of his salary? Shall he have officers senior to him in the Broadcasting Corporation? Will he be junior, perhaps considerably junior, to the Managing Director? How can there be any objectivity? With the greatest respect, I suggest that the device of using an advisory council to recommend his appointment is simply an incestuous device. Who appoints the advisory council? The test should surely have been heavily upon us. In recent weeks we have seen, arising out of a contretemps in the Senate, all sorts of allegations of pressure and duress on the Australian Broadcasting Commission, all sorts of revelations that complaints had been made privately. Indeed, there had to be a digging and a delving to bring out the nature of those complaints and a judgment made as to whether certain people were attempting to use duress, whether they had done things properly, whether there was a right for management to handle the disciplining of officers or whether a commission should do all these fundamental things. One thing became abundantly clear, that is, that in no way at all could a complaints commission function properly if it were incestuous. If the complaints commission were in the Broadcasting Corporation, quite clearly, all the events of the past could happen again. There would be no way in the world of getting away from the bad old days. I have pleaded and made it perfectly clear that the worst of all worlds would be if there were any danger to anybody, a public figure or not, in criticising the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Today if we criticise the ABC, our opposition will say that we are using threats and duress on it. The element of duress will also arise if letters are sent to a complaints officer who is a member of the staff. What will he do if a Government member sends him a letter? Of course he will say to himself: 'Here is a situation involving a Government member'. The implication of duress will be there. I cannot believe that anybody-Australian Democrats, Independents or others-having gone through the journey of recent weeks could possibly say that whatever device we use, whether it be advisory council recommendations or not, we should have a complaints officer who is subject to the terms and conditions of appointment set by management and who is a member of staff of the very corporation that is the subject of complaint. I drew a parallel to this situation when I spoke before. In this place we have regarded it as very healthy to expose a variety of corporations, primary industry corporations and others, to scrutiny. We have said that they ought to be the subject of the crucible of exposure. They ought to be examined. They are stronger for it and better protected for it. In what area could this be more important than in the national broadcasting system? How can we do it unless we separate the complaints process from the people against whom the complaints are made. I have referred to a situation that has occurred in virtually every State in Australia. The citizenry of the States have rejected the idea that the police force can hear appeals by the public against individual policemen and their actions. Nobody really believes that that kind of situation is a good and sensible one. The worst of all worlds is that it does not protect the integrity of the police force. It suggests that it has something to hide. It puts a taint, a defect, on all the people who are concerned, whereas that taint is not deserved. Senator Crichton-Browne —It compromises them. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK —Yes. Why do we do this when we have a simple opportunity to rectify the situation? The British have tested a complaints commission and found it to be a sensible thing. It is no good saying to me: ' Senator Carrick has faith in judges'. Senator Chipp does not have that faith. Therefore he must not have faith in any royal commissioner we appoint. Senator Chipp —Some. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK —Some. The essence of the structure of our democracy is the separation of the Executive, the Parliament and the judiciary. If we do not believe in both the independence and the integrity of the judiciary we are in a bad way indeed, we are seeing evil under every bed. Senator Chipp —Not everyone. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK —There is no way in the world of devising a perfect system. Senator Chipp says: 'Let us have a parliamentary system for doing that'. Are parliamentarians less fallible than judges? Are they more likely to reach an objective conclusion than a judge is? In any judgment the majority would prevail . The Government of the day would make sure that it had the numbers. The very nature of a parliamentary system is the pressure of numbers. We operate under a majority system. How could that be more objective than a person who is selected because, in the public judgment, he or she has both the integrity and sufficient ability to carry out the job. When we look at these arguments we see that they demolish around us. We are dealing with a fundamental. We are dealing with a failure to understand who is the master and who is the servant in this situation . Senator Chipp —The Parliament is the master. That is something you have never understood. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK —I have understood it. The reason I am here is that I am the servant of that principle. The Parliament is the servant of the people. Honourable senators should understand that the Parliament is not the master at all; it is the servant of the people. Let me state fundamentally what this matter is about. We are setting up a statutory corporation, not as an end in itself, not as a goal, but as a means to an end-a means to serve the whole community and to reflect value judgments, the standards and the moral and ethical judgments of the community. It is no good the Government telling me that it cannot devise these things in law. The Government will do that willingly if it wants to. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is an instrument which is there to serve and reflect the views of the community. Its very charter says that it is there to reflect the views of the community. As I have said, it is given independence not as an end in itself but as a means of accepting the responsibility of being objective. That is what independence is about. It should not have freedom of licence or take liberties, on the contrary, the test is: Will it live up to the responsibility that it has been given? It is no good saying: 'Look at all those lovely words in the charter '. The public must be able to make a fundamental acid test. The members of the public should be able to say: 'There is your charter. Let us test it'. They should be able to test it as widely as possible. It is nonsense to say: 'If we did this there would be too many inquiries. We cannot handle them'. Again, that is letting the bureaucracy make the judgment and not the people. The only question is the validity of the inquiry-the right of people to have their say. Fundamentally, we are not looking at a question of someone losing or winning when a vote is taken today. If we decide today to continue with a system that, in the past, produced the very unpleasant circumstances that were triggered off in the exchanges between Senator Button and Professor Leonie Kramer; if we continue with the same system where a leader of a political party of whatever colour and a senior member of a government of whatever colour can suggest that there has been unfairness and suggest-however unfairly perhaps-that there has been duress-- Senator Harradine —Not available to the ordinary citizen. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK —This avenue is not open to ordinary people at all. It is like saying: 'Come and see me in my office and I will tell you privately what it is all about'. Honourable senators will remember this interesting situation. We are now looking at a system that will entrench that very situation where a Minister can say: 'Come and see me in my office. I will not tell you here what in fact I have against the Chairman of the ABC but if you come and see me privately I will'. Having had second thoughts the next day we then get the statement: 'I will get around this. I will not say it in here. I will write her a letter and put the onus on the person attacked to decide whether to expose the reasons'. That is the kind of situation that we have. That system will continue unless the Australian Democrats are willing to break the placental tie, unless they are willing to establish a completely independent complaints commission. Senator Harradine —They were last year. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK —They were last year. The onus is heavily upon them today. Senator CRICHTON-BROWNE(Western Australia)(10.59) —I wish to deal firstly with the question of whether the recipient of complaints should be a member of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation or an independent person. It is a very sad indictment of today's community that people believe most of what they read in and hear on the media. It plays a vital role and has enormous effect and influence upon and within the community generally. It is imperative that there is a proper balance and proper fairness. Very sadly and inevitably people are judged guilty just by the very fact that their names are mentioned or linked with the suggestion of impropriety. I find it very sad that people, by and large in the community do not await the final outcome before concluding that a person is guilty until he can prove himself innocent. We have all seen in recent years how many people have been judged guilty by the media and in no other way. It is vitally important that there should be a proper mechanism of a complaints commission that not only properly resolves the questions of complaints but also certainly gives the Australian Broadcasting Commission an incentive to ensure there are as few complaints as possible. It is without question that if there is an employee of the Commission-a person to whom complaints shall flow and who will determine the outcome-inevitably there will be some bias and colouring. There will be public perception of no impartiality or no independence. Of course , there will not be independence because that person will be an employee of the group about whom the complaints are being lodged. He will be part of the establishment, part of the system, part of the comradeship, part of the club and part of the team about which the complaints are being made. It seems to me a poor analogy to suggest that if a complaint is made against a footballer his coach should sit on the tribunal; to say the least it certainly would not be seen to be the right thing. It is like Caesar's wife. In these situations I am sure it is important that fairness is seen to be fair. The proposition of having the appointment approved by both Houses of Parliament does not have a great deal of merit either because invariably the judgment will be made by one party that the other party is putting up somebody of their colour and persuasion because they can expect the same from the other side. Unfortunately-- Senator Macklin —Both Houses of Parliament. Senator CRICHTON-BROWNE —Well, there are two parties in both Houses. It is an unfortunate quirk of fate that three parties are represented here for the moment . Invariably one finds that both political parties will be tempted to balance the scales, at least as they see it, by appointing somebody on their side at least if it is only to be taking out-- Senator Macklin —So you want to get into the Government. Senator CRICHTON-BROWNE —Yes. I would rather all the sins be visited on the people who make the appointments. As I said last night, they will be judged by the community. They will be judged in the ballot box by the voters. Nothing can be achieved by having two parties compounding the sin. At least if there is one party they carry all the responsibility. Senator Macklin —We are trying to avoid the sin, not compound it. Senator CRICHTON-BROWNE —If the honourable senator listens very carefully without interrupting-- Senator Macklin —I have been. Senator CRICHTON-BROWNE —The honourable senator cannot be listening and talking at the same time, unless he has a facility which he has not demonstrated so far. If two political parties are making judgments, inevitably either side will be taking out a bit of insurance and appointing somebody who will be seen to be countering the appointment of the other side. At present the ABC is not intimidated by complaints. My view is that from the modest experience I have had of lodging complaints with the ABC I have received very little satisfaction. I am no Robinson Crusoe about that. Senator Macklin —That is an argument for the Government. Senator CRICHTON-BROWNE —I do not follow the honourable senator's logic. Perhaps he might save his comments for his own speech. I am sure the great majority of people in the community have a sense of unease about the ABC's treatment of their complaints. In fact, the matter was raised before the Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs recently because of a story run I think on Nationwide or Four Corners-I do not recall which-regarding a Perth technical school. I think it arose as a result of a report by some students. The program was televised. The principal of the school was subsequently called upon by the producers of the program to make some observations of his own. Under ministerial direction and instruction, he declined to do so. He told the producers of that direction at the time. However, they insisted that the program would be televised. During the program the point was made that he was indifferent, did not care and had, of his own volition, declined to make any comment. He then complained to the ABC and received no satisfaction whatsoever. He asked for nothing more than a retraction. That was not forthcoming, so he went to Professor Richardson, the Commonwealth Ombudsman. The Ombudsman took up the matter with the ABC. Naturally, it felt completely immune from any sort of criticism. In fact, it was prepared to take the matter to the High Court of Australia in order to challenge the Ombudsman's jurisdiction over the ABC. The Ombudsman's observation was that the ABC treated him, his position and authority with a great deal of contempt. This demonstrates that so long as the ABC is secure in the knowledge that it will be the ultimate arbitrator of complaints lodged against it, no one will receive a fair hearing of complaints. It seems to me that the appointment of an officer ought to be along the lines suggested by the Opposition. To suggest there is something wrong in the Parliament appointing a judge does not seem to be a fair observation. All governments appoint to the positions of ombudsman, royal commissioners and judges, people whom they perceive to be persons of integrity and capacity. Under the proposals put forward in our amendment, they will be able to report to the Parliament. That, in itself, insulates them from any suggestion of bias one way or the other, because their activities are exposed to the community and to the Parliament. In general terms I support the amendments numbered (1) to (3) that have been put forward by Senator Harradine. I am pleased that the Opposition accepts them. One of the greatest complaints made against the ABC is not necessarily its inaccuracy- Senator Peter Baume —We accept amendments (1) and (2). Senator CRICHTON-BROWNE —I hope that the Opposition will also accept the third amendment because it seems to have the same thrust as the Opposition's amendment . The greatest complaint made against the ABC on most occasions is that of bias. I am glad that that word, along with the words 'inaccurate and unfair' are contained in Senator Harradine's proposal. It is almost the same wording as we proposed. As Senator Harradine has said in respect of the second matter, there seems to be no material consequence whether information that has been obtained by unwarranted intrusion of privacy is used on a program. I am glad that that point has been accepted also. Proposed paragraph (d) states: that the program was otherwise offensive. I cannot see any objection to that paragraph. I cannot see why paragraph (d) cannot be included also, when definitions are able to be drawn with respect to obscenity and all sorts of other matters. I hope that Senator Peter Baume will reconsider that point unless he can tell me why it should not be included. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry and Commerce and Minister Assisting the Minister for Communications)(11.8) —I see some merit in some of Senator Harradine's amendments to the Opposition amendment. Of course, as the Government will oppose the Opposition's amendment, I will not comment on them at this stage. I simply say that, in the course of looking at this matter, a number of solutions have been suggested by all parties. The Government was concerned to provide a solution which was relatively simple and relatively low key and which provided a quick remedy for those who are aggrieved by a particular Australian Broadcasting Commission program in the area of untruth, which is the principle area of concern or, in the area of invasion of privacy. For example, Senator Harradine made a very good point in his amendment to the Opposition's amendment in relation to invasion of privacy. I would submit, and I think Senator Harradine would agree, that the proposition in the Bill relating to that is far preferable to the proposition in the Opposition's amendment. I take it that Senator Baume may accept that fact. Senator Peter Baume —That is amendment (2). We accept amendment (2) moved by Senator Harradine, on the same grounds; that is, that it makes a lot of sense. Senator BUTTON —Senator Harradine's proposition is an improvement on the Opposition's amendment, if I might say so, because I think it covers the situation where privacy might be invaded and no program goes to air. I want to say one or two things again about the general issue in relation to the complaints tribunal. Senator Sir John Carrick, in contributing to this debate, referred to the journey of recent weeks which we have been through. Of course, this legislation is designed to rectify the journey of recent years. I simply make the general point about the complaints procedure that the ABC is now 50 years old. Liberal-National or Liberal-Country Party governments have been in office for, I think 36 of those 50 years of the history of the ABC. Not once in those 36 years has concern been expressed about the necessity for a complaints mechanism in relation to the ABC. In not one of those 36 years, until last year, has any concern been expressed about this matter. I find it extraordinarily strange that Senator Sir John Carrick should suddenly have developed this passionate concern. On this question we as a government say that certainly there may not be a perfect solution. We do not suggest that the Government solution is a perfect one. We have indicated that, after looking at how the complaints procedure operates, we would be amenable to further suggestions about how it might be developed. But we as a government do not want to create, after all these years of neglect of this issue, an enormous sort of superstructure which would be responsible for supervising, as it were, the ABC in respect of all its activities. That is what would be involved if Senator Harradine's proposition amending the Opposition's proposition about program standards was taken up. I might illustrate the difficulties we all face in this sort of matter in trying to arrive at a solution by referring to Senator Sir John Carrick's speech . He says that the Opposition's proposition would involve a judicial appointment . That is extraordinary. That is an interesting view from the back bench of the Liberal Party in this chamber. Not once in the House of Representatives was the suggestion made that there should be a judicial appointment to the complaints tribunal which is suggested by the Opposition. Not once did the shadow Minister for Communications in the Senate suggest that it should be a judicial appointment. But Senator Sir John Carrick, in his usual juristic way, invented the idea of a judicial appointment in order to give greater credibility to a proposition which is not really credible and which does not stand in its own right. That is the position of the Opposition. Senator Peter Baume —By using that analogy, you do not do him justice; you really don't. Senator BUTTON —I think I do because that is what he said. He made a lot of play about the fact that when dealing with a totally different matter Britain appointed a retired Lord Chief Justice to a position on the tribunal. Of course, we could do that in Australia. We could appoint Sir Garfield Barwick or Sir John Kerr. They are the only people available in Australia who fall into that illustrious category. One is a retired Chief Justice of New South Wales and the other is a retired Chief Justice of Australia. But that is precisely the sort of thing the Government is trying to avoid. We want the complaints procedure to be simple and practical. I quite agree with some of Senator Sir John Carrick's criticisms in the sense that they were constructive. He suggested that perhaps the mechanism could be improved by creating greater independence for the community affairs officers, although I would draw his attention to the fact that the Bill provides for community affairs officers in the States. It is quite clear that they could be appointed from outside the Corporation, although they would, of course, be on the Corporation's payroll. The Government is merely saying that it wants a complaints procedure to be available for the first time in the history of the ABC in relation to two particular matters, untruth and the invasion of privacy, which we take to be the most important matters with which people are concerned. This procedure will enable a quick remedy. Senator Martin, in the course of her contribution to this debate, drew an illustration from Queensland. The remedy offered by the Government in this legislation would be the most appropriate remedy one could find. The aggrieved person in the example given by Senator Martin could have gone straight to the ABC and said: 'These things which have been said about me are untrue'. Because of this expeditious procedure which we have suggested, the ABC would be required under the provisions of the legislation to issue on ABC programs a statement saying: 'Yes, what we said about this person was untrue'. There is no better or quicker remedy than that. Senator Peter Baume —How expeditious would it be? Senator BUTTON —I do not know. It would certainly be more expeditious than this cumbersome structure which the Opposition envisages and which, of course, is quite outside the province of the Australian Broadcasting Commission itself. In our view the suggestion which comes from the Opposition has a fatal flaw in that the appointment to this very sensitive position would be made by government. In spite of all the protestations that have been made from the other side, in a number of ways-in terms of appointments to the Corporation and or removing some sections of the old legislation which militate against the independence of the Corporation-we are trying in this legislation to create an ABC which is more independent of the political process than it has been in the past. It is very sad to us that the Opposition seems reluctant to agree with the desirability of that process. Indeed, the second reading amendment moved by the Opposition was the most classic example of misunderstanding the true nature of this legislation . It is a total misunderstanding to say: 'Let us adjourn it all because Neville Wran has a libel action against the ABC.' While we see some merit in some of Senator Harradine's amendments to the Opposition's amendments, the Government will not accept them for the reasons which have been outlined. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK(New South Wales)(11.18) —I wish to address a question to Senator Button. He said that the fatal flaw in the Opposition's amendment is that the complaints commissioner would be appointed by the Government. Does that mean that there would be some lack of objectivity if it were an appointment by the Government? If so, is there not such a fatal flaw in the appointment of a royal commissioner or anybody else by the Government? Since he chose to find some whimsy in saying that Sir Garfield Barwick or Sir John Kerr might not be suitable people, has he noticed a report in this morning's Press that the British people felt that Sir Zelman Cowen, a former Governor-General and also a distinguished lawyer, was the right person to head the British Press Council? This is a body in which the role of ombudsman displaying objectivity is regarded very highly, in which there is something of a parallel to this matter. What is the fatal flaw? Each time that the Government makes an appointment from now on, are we allowed to say: 'There is a fatal flaw in what you have done, you have subjectively intruded a government influence'? If we cannot say this, why not? Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry and Commerce and Minister Assisting the Minister for Communications)(11.19) —The reference to Sir Zelman Cowen being appointed Chairman of the Press Council in Britain illustrates the silliness of the whole argument advanced by Senator Sir John Carrick. I do not wish to make any comment about Sir Zelman Cowen. I think he is widely recognised as a distinguished jurist and a great Australian. There is no question about that. We are trying in this legislation to de-politicise the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. That is what we are talking about, and that is something which Liberal-National Party governments, for 36 out of the last 50 years never did. I do not want to go into the sorts of appointments that the former Government made to the Board of the Australian Broadcasting Commission but I tell honourable senators opposite this: It was agreed by Ministers for Communications in the previous Government that over the last five or six years that Government had done a pretty poor job in this regard. That is precisely why the former Government had to have the Dix Committee of Review of the Australian Broadcasting Commission and it is precisely why this legislation is before the Parliament. We want to de-politicise the activities of the Australian Broadcasting Commission in the sense of taking it out of the partisan political process. There can be no more sensitive appointment as it is susceptible to political pressure or the allegation of political pressure-to this organisation than the appointment of a complaints officer, or whatever he might be called, with the powers that are envisaged in this amendment. We say that as part of that process the government of the day should have nothing to do with that appointment. That is the point which I am trying to get over and which I think has eluded Senator Sir John Carrick, for all his experience in politics, and probably still does. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK(New South Wales)(11.22) —I wish to ask some further questions to clarify this matter. Will the members of the Board of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation be political appointments and therefore by some strange means depoliticise the Board? Will those members who are political appointees appoint the managing director and therefore-- Senator Chipp —Have you read the Bill? Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK —Yes, I have. Senator Chipp —Well, that is an absurd question, with great respect. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK —May I ask the question? I do not intervene when Senator Chipp asks questions, many of which I happen to disagree with. I am probing at the fundamentals. What will be the test of objectivity? If, in fact, the appointments to the Board are capable of being influenced, if the Board appoints the general manager, and the general manager has influence over the complaints commissioner, where does objectivity lie? Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry and Commerce and Minister Assisting the Minister for Communications)(11.23) —We do not live in a perfect world. Senator Chipp asked Senator Sir John Carrick, by way of interjection, whether he had read the Bill. If he had read the Bill he would know the answer to the question. The Government is to appoint the Board. But let me make a qualification, something which Senator Sir John Carrick has never done in government. The qualification is simply that there is a clause in this Bill which deals with the criteria under which members of the Board will be appointed . They are important criteria in considering the board of a corporation. The Government will make appointments in accordance with those criteria. This will be the first time that there have been criteria of that kind. Not only will the Government make appointments in accordance with those criteria but also the Opposition will be asked to consider the names suggested by the Government. Senator Robertson —That has never happened before. Senator BUTTON —Of course it has never happened before, because the ABC was regarded by Liberal Party governments as a sort of bunyip House of Lords to which people were appointed as a reward for political services to the Liberal Party. But that will not happen in the future, we hope. Senator Harradine —Do you include the Chairman in that description? Senator BUTTON —No. Senator Sir John Carrick —And Laurie Short, the Deputy Chairman and a few others ? Senator BUTTON —No. Senator Walters —Well, whom do you include when you say that? Whom are you referring to? Now, come on! Whom are you referring to? You said everyone else isn't included. Senator BUTTON —Let us not get excited about individuals. Let me just say this: In making appointments the Government will consult with the Opposition, if the Opposition wants to avail itself of that process of consultation, as to whether the people whom the Government proposes to appoint meet those criteria. That process has never happened in the past in Australia. I should have thought that somebody who expresses great concern about the independence and so on of the Australian Broadcasting Commission as Senator Sir John Carrick has, would welcome that process because, as I said, it has never happened before. It is important that we make these sorts of changes. We are trying to introduce into the whole approach to the Australian Broadcasting Commission some of the sophistication, if I might use that expression, which has applied in Britain over many years in connection with the British Broadcasting Corporation. It has to be a slow process. But that is what we are trying to do. There is always consultation between the Government of the day and the Opposition of the day about the-- Senator Harradine —They have an independent complaints tribunal. Senator BUTTON —That matter has nothing to do with appointments, nothing at all. Senator Harradine —It really has. Senator BUTTON —I resent some of these desperate throws. That matter has nothing to do with appointments. It has never happened in Australia that the government of the day consults with the Opposition about appointments to the Board of the ABC. The difficult problem we have is that the conservatives in Britain are relatively cultured and enlightened people, and that is something, sadly, which is not being shown here and that is a problem we have to get over. Senator Peter Baume —That is quite gratuitous, Senator. It is quite gratuitous and unfair. Senator BUTTON —It is quite true, too. Senator Harradine —That is insulting to the Chairman. Senator BUTTON —I am not talking about the Chairman; I am talking about Senator Sir John Carrick. That is a problem which we have had in Australia over many years and we are trying to change that sort of approach. Senator PETER BAUME(New South Wales)(11.27) —Several points raised by Senator Button I think need a response. It is ridiculous to say one can depoliticise the appointments. One moves them to a different arena for resolution. Senator Button may say that they could be moved out of the hands of one group, but they are still appointments which require choices to be made; they are appointments of authority and power. Let people be under no illusions. We are altering the locus of the conflict from one place to another. We are trying to make sure that the process will be reasonable. Let us not pretend that appointments that were made to the Australian Broadcasting Commission-- Senator Chipp —Do you know what you just said? You said it is impossible to depoliticise the appointments. Do you believe that? Senator PETER BAUME —It depends on what one means by the word 'politicise'. Senator Button was talking about depoliticising appointments. It depends on one' s definition of 'political'. I think Senator Chipp understands the point I am trying to make. It is ridiculous to pretend that what has happened over the years has been something for which former governments of my persuasion ought to be criticised. We have had governments of several persuasions. Senator Chipp was a member of a government for a number of years, and he was party to appointments to the board of the ABC. Senator Chipp —Never. Senator PETER BAUME —He was a member of a Cabinet and a Ministry. He carried the same responsibility as I did as a member of a Ministry. Is Senator Button criticising all those past appointments? Senator Sir John Carrick —Or those of the Whitlam Government? Senator PETER BAUME —That is the point. Senator Sir John Carrick —Or the Chifley Government? Senator PETER BAUME —Or the Scullin Government or any other government, although perhaps the Scullin Government may have gone back more than 50 years. Senator Sir John Carrick —Certainly the Whitlam Government. Senator PETER BAUME —The Whitlam Government, certainly. Yes, there is a process of consultation. I noticed in the paper this morning that the names of Opposition representatives have actually been released. Apparently there has been some communication by Mr Peacock as to who they are to be. Senator Chipp —You are one of them. Senator PETER BAUME —That was stated in the paper so I suppose I am. I know only what I read in the paper. I say to Senator Harradine, in relation to this third amendment, that it seems to me that the people who might be picked up under his third amendment on grounds of general offensiveness of programs still have the capacity to complain to the Australian Broadcasting Commission that they always have had. One can always complain. What Senator Harradine is seeking is not that they should be able to complain, because they can make complaints now, but that they should be able to make complaints to this specialist body. We must understand that anyone can make complaints if they think a program is offensive, improper, offends against taste or all these kinds of things. Our concern has been that in the process we are trying to establish we want to draw it rather more narrowly, at least in the beginning. The only other point I make in response to Senator Button is that he continues to talk about a quick process. I think every honourable senator who has made written complaints to the ABC will agree on one point: Whatever else the Australian Broadcasting Commission has done, it has never responded quickly; the responses have been very slow. When one compares them one finds that the responses are almost the same every time. If I was at a football game talking to some of my rough mates, I know the words I would use for what the responses say. I could paraphrase them. One thing that has characterised responses from the ABC is that they have not been quick. It is only a pious hope-- Senator Chipp —That has not been my experience. Senator PETER BAUME —You must pack more punch, Senator Chipp, but I am glad to hear that there is someone who can say that he has had rapid responses. There is no guarantee, and no guarantee that I can find from the Bill, that the responses will be quick or made within a prescribed time. There may still be some delay. One of the things that has to come out of any consideration of the complaints procedure is that one gets a rapid response to complaints, a response which actually deals with the particular complaint and does not come back just stating some general principle of programming as has happened far too often in the past. I invite the Committee to give very sympathetic consideration to the Opposition' s amendments. I take it that they do attract a considerable amount of support for what they are trying to achieve. The difference appears to be in the process by which we are seeking to do it. Senator CRICHTON-BROWNE(Western Australia)(11.32) —Can I just clarify in my own mind what Senator Button was saying about depoliticisation? I put to him the hypothetical proposition that was put by Senator Sir John Carrick, that is, that the appointment be somebody of a judicial nature. Is he suggesting that the appointment has to be seen not to be political, that is, that it be depoliticised, or is he concerned that the government of the day may find somebody in the judiciary who is likely to or who will be biased towards the government of the day, and so will make judgments and determinations compatible with the views of the government of the day? Or is he just simply saying that he wants to give the impression that the appointments will not be of a political nature? It seems to me that perhaps there ought to be-- Senator Chipp —How would you like Mr Justice Staples to be appointed? Senator CRICHTON-BROWNE —I do not know enough about his judgments to make an in- depth determination. Senator Chipp —You have made one. Senator CRICHTON-BROWNE —I do not think that is the point right now. If Senator Chipp is serious about taking on board the argument I will prepare a list for him. But if he is just testing my argument, that is a different matter. I ask: Is it more important in that consideration to ensure that complaints about the ABC are dealt with and treated in a fashion that ensures that the ABC is impartial, that the complaints commissioner-- Senator Chipp —Mr Justice Frederico would be another good one. Senator CRICHTON-BROWNE —Just because he does not like women in pants appearing in his court does not make him a bad judge, does it? Is it better that the community affairs officers be appointed by the Managing Director who will, notwithstanding the best endeavours of his own integrity, be inclined by human nature to want complaints made against his corporation not to have merit and to have no foundation? Surely the best of both worlds is to have somebody who is quite removed from any influence, bias or any temptation of considerations other than the facts before him by way of the complaints. Having more than one political party make determinations about these sorts of matters does not add a great deal to the argument. As I said earlier, if two political parties make the determination I am sure that the Australian Labor Party will take the view from the outset that the Opposition would be looking at somebody of our political persuasion and we might be tempted to the view that the Government might be looking to somebody of its persuasion. So I do not know that there is a great deal to be achieved by getting together and simply saying: 'Listen, all bets are off. We are all unbiased and we all have very clear consciences about our determination'. I do not know that that achieves a great deal. I ask Senator Button what he means by depoliticisation of the appointment. Is he concerned that the Government of the day will find that a judge, or somebody of that standing, is going to be biased, or is it a question of the perception of the public? Is that better, as I say, than an appointment by the Managing Director of somebody over whom he has absolute and total control? Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry and Commerce and Minister Assisting the Minister for Communications)(11.35) —I always listen with fascination to Senator Crichton-Browne's speeches, not so much when he asks questions but when he embarks on philosophical discourses. It is not my burden to argue the question of whether a judge should be appointed. Indeed it is not even the honourable senator's burden, as an Opposition senator, because he has not suggested that. We do not believe that the complaints tribunal procedure of the Australian Broadcasting Commission warrants the appointment of a judge. I do not want to get into that argument. As I made the point earlier, we have lived for 50 years with the ABC being without any complaints procedure at all. We want to introduce a mechanism which we believe is simple and fair. As I have said, if there are any suggestions which might improve the ABC in the next year or so the Government will certainly look at them very favourably. The honourable senator asked me what I meant by depoliticisation of the ABC. What I said was that the thrust of this Bill is, as much as possible, designed to take the ABC away from its traditional unhappy lot of being, in a sense, a political football. Insofar as the Bill is structured as a whole, that is the way it leads. Senator Crichton-Browne —Do you mean in truth or in perception? Senator BUTTON —In truth. We will not be appointing anybody to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on the basis of loyal service to the Australian Labor Party. We would regard it as wrong if we, as a government, appointed anybody to the sensitive position of the complaints tribunal. We concede, as I conceded, earlier, that the mechanism for appointment in the proposal might not be perfect but we think it is better than that the Government should do it. The CHAIRMAN —The Committee is considering nine amendments which have been moved by Senator Harradine to Senator Peter Baume's proposed new Part VIIA. Senator Harradine had leave to introduce them together. I propose, in view of the debate , to put them in three groups-amendments (1) and (2) together; amendment (3); and finally amendments (4) to (9). Amendments (1) and (2) agreed to. Amendment (3) negatived. Amendments (4) to (9) negatived. Question put: That proposed new Part VIIA (Senator Peter Baume's amendment), as amended, be agreed to. The Committee divided. (The Chairman-Senator D. J. Hamer) Ayes . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Noes . . . . . . . . . . . 32 —— Majority . . . . . . . . . 6 —— Baume, Peter Kilgariff, B. F. Bjelke-Petersen, F. I. Lajovic, M. E. Boswell, R. L. D. Lewis, A. W. R. Carrick, Sir John MacGibbon, D. J. Chaney, F. M. Martin, K. J. Collard, S. J. (Teller) Messner, A. J. Crichton-Browne, N. A. Rae, PeterDurack, P. D. Reid, M. E. Guilfoyle, Dame Margaret Scott, D. B. Hamer, D. J. Townley, M. Harradine, B. Walters, M. S. Hill, R. Watson, J. O. W. Jessop, D. S. Withers, R. G. Bolkus, N. Grimes, D. J. Button, J. N. Haines, J. Childs, B. K. McClelland, DouglasChipp, D. L. McIntosh, G. D. Coates, J. Macklin, M. J. Coleman, R. N. Maguire, G. R. Colston, M. A. Mason, C. V. J. Cook, P. F. S. Primmer, C. G. Crowley, R. A. Ray, RobertElstob, R. C. Reynolds, M. Evans, Gareth Richardson, G. F. Evans, Jack Robertson, E. A. (Teller)Foreman, D. J. Ryan, S. M. Georges, G. Sibraa, K. W. Gietzelt, A. T. Walsh, P. A. Giles, P. J. Zakharov, A. O. Jones, G. N. Missen, A. J. Hearn, J. M. Teague, B. C. Tate, M. C. Archer, B. R. Question so resolved in the negative. Clauses 78 to 81-by leave-taken together, and agreed to. Clause 82. (Community Affairs Officers). Senator CHIPP(Victoria-Leader of the Australian Democrats)(11.45) —I move: (4) Page 52, clause 82, lines 1 to 8, leave out sub-clause (3), substitute the following sub-clause: (3) The Managing Director shall- (a) on the recommendation of- (i) the Advisory Council established in relation to the State or Territory concerned; or (ii) if no such Advisory Council has been established-the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Advisory Council, appoint, in each State, in the Northern Territory and in the Australian Capital Territory, a person or persons, to be known as Community Affairs Officers, to consider complaints mentioned in sub-section (1); and (b) on the recommendation of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Advisory Council, appoint an officer of the Corporation, to be known as the Principal Community Affairs Officer, whose duties will consist of or include the co- ordination of the activities of the Community Affairs Officers.'. This enables the Advisory Council to recommend the Community Affairs Officers to the General Manager and to ensure that he shall accept their advice. Clause 82 ( 3) states: The Managing Director shall- not 'may', on the recommendation of the Advisory Council- (a) appoint, in each State . . . Community Affairs Officers . . . It takes away the discretion of the Managing Director and puts the choice of these important people virtually in the hands of the Advisory Council. I have spoken about this at some length during the second reading debate and previously during the Committee stage. I will not speak at any length now. Senator BUTTON —(Victoria-Minister for Industry and Commerce and Minister Assisting the Minister for Communications) (11.46)-The Committee has already passed two amendments which are consequential, as it were, upon this amendment. The Government indicated at that stage that it supports this amendment. Amendment agreed to. Senator HARRADINE(Tasmania)(11.49) —I move: (1) Page 51, Clause 82, sub-clause (1), after paragraph (b), lines 33 to 35, insert the following new paragraphs: '(c) that a program was inaccurate, unfair or biased; (d) that a program was otherwise offensive'. (2) Page 51, clause 82, sub-clause (2), lines 38 to 43, leave out the sub- clause. (3) Page 52, clause 82, sub-clause (4), lines 9 to 12, after the sub-clause, insert the following new sub-clauses: '(4A) When the Principal Community Affairs Officer has considered a report under sub-section (4), he shall notify the complainant or, if there is more than one complainant, each of the complainants, of his decision and of the reasons for the decision in relation to the complaint. '(4B) Sub-section (4A) does not require the Principal Community Affairs Officer to notify each of the complainants if he is of the opinion that, having regard to the number of complainants, it would be unduly burdensome to do so.' (4) Page 51, clause 82, sub-clause (1), paragraph (b), lines 33 to 36, at end of paragraph, add the following words: '(whether or not the invasion of privacy complained of was contained in the actual broadcast or televising of the program, announcement or other matter)'. The general consensus-I believe all honourable senators agree-is that complaints should be made about unfair or biased programs. This amendment might fail by the inclusion of paragraph (d) which states: 'that a program was otherwise offensive'. It may well be that some honourable senator may seek to amend my amendment by leaving out paragraph (d) so that at least we will be left with half the cake. I address my remarks to paragraph (c) which states: 'that a program was inaccurate, unfair or biased'. The word 'inaccurate' is contained in the Government's Bill at present; so there is no problem about that word. The words 'unfair or biased' ought to be inserted in the Bill because clause 8 of the Bill , which is entitled 'Duties of the Board', states: (c) To ensure that the gathering and presentation by the Corporation of news and information is accurate and impartial according to recognised standards of objective journalism- Those two tests are to be applied by the Board. The Government has seen fit to enable complaints to be made to the Community Affairs Officer on one test-that is, the test of inaccuracy-but it has not enabled the Community Affairs Officer to deal with complaints relating to the other tests of unfairness or bias. The Government may say that it is open for anybody to complain to the Commission about unfairness or bias. But I believe that unless all viewers and listeners have equal opportunity the result will be elitism. I believe that the Government 's legislation is an elitist piece of legislation. Senator Button or myself can phone the Chairman of the ABC and complain about unfairness or bias. But do honourable senators believe that the ordinary citizen-not that I suppose we are extraordinary-and the rank and file would get through to the Chairman. Of course they would not. In fact it is elitist to prevent other citizens from making complaints to the Community Affairs Officer. I hope that if honourable senators have a problem with paragraph (d) they will at least salvage paragraph (c). Senator PETER BAUME(New South Wales)(11.54) —I will be brief. Senator Harradine 's first amendment contains two questions. He suggested we may wish to move a further amendment if we had any difficulties. Mr Chairman, it may be more appropriate to seek your ruling, in accordance with Standing Orders, so that the two questions can be divided for the consideration of the Committee; we can consider proposed paragraph (c) and proposed paragraph (d) as separate questions . We propose to support proposed paragraph (c) but not to support proposed paragraph (d). The CHAIRMAN —I am prepared to put the two questions separately. I will do so now. Question put: That proposed new paragraph (c) (Senator Harradine's amendment) be inserted. The Committee divided. (The Chairman-Senator D. J. Hamer) Ayes . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Noes . . . . . . . . . . . 32 —— Majority . . . . . . . . . 6 —— Archer, B. R. Jessop, D. S. Baume, Peter Kilgariff, B. F. Bjelke-Petersen, F. I. Lajovic, M. E. Boswell, R. L. D. Lewis, A. W. R. Carrick, Sir John MacGibbon, D. J. Chaney, F. M. Messner, A. J. Collard, S. J. (Teller) Rae, PeterCrichton-Browne, N. A. Reid, M. E. Durack, P. D. Scott, D. B. Guilfoyle, Dame Margaret Townley, M. Hamer, D. J. Walters, M. S. Harradine, B. Watson, J. O. W. Hill, R. Withers, R. G. Bolkus, N. Grimes, D. J. Button, J. N. Haines, J. Childs, B. K. McClelland, DouglasChipp, D. L. McIntosh, G. D. Coates, J. Macklin, M. J. Coleman, R. N. Maguire, G. R. Colston, M. A. Mason, C. V. J. Cook, P. F. S. Primmer, C. G. Crowley, R. A. Ray, RobertElstob, R. C. Reynolds, M. Evans, Gareth Richardson, G. F. Evans, Jack Robertson, E. A. (Teller)Foreman, D. J. Ryan, S. M. Georges, G. Sibraa, K. W. Gietzelt, A. T. Walsh, P. A. Giles, P. J. Zakharov, A. O. Jones, G. N. Missen, A. J. Hearn, J. M. Teague, B. C. Tate, M. C. Martin, K. J. Question so resolved in the negative. Consideration interrupted. Progress reported. Senator CHANEY —My question, which is addressed to the Leader of the Government in the Senate, follows the question I asked him yesterday. Can the Leader of the Government now tell me, as he was unable to do yesterday, whether the Prime Minister gave a post-election undertaking not to alter taxation of lump sum superannuation payments? If so, how does the Government justify the mini-Budget decision to lift the rate from 5 per cent to 30 per cent? Senator BUTTON —The answer to the first part of the question, I am sorry, is no. I think the second part of the question misrepresents the position somewhat in that any increase in taxation in respect of superannuation lump sums is prospective and no person who has an entitlement as at the date of the economic statement will have that entitlement interfered with at all. Senator CHANEY —Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. In light of that answer, how does the Leader of the Government explain that the union movement and the national media interpreted private and public comments by Mr Hawke as meaning that there would be no change to the superannuation arrangements? Specifically, has he seen the remarks of the Australian Council of Trade Unions Secretary, Mr Bill Kelty, in this morning's Sydney Morning Herald that when he and other union leaders left Mr Hawke last month they believed that lump sum provisions would not be changed? Senator BUTTON —It is not my function to interpret remarks made by people outside the Government and I do not intend to do so. There has been a lot of misrepresentation in the media of the facts in relation to the proposed tax on superannuation lump sums. I do not propose to make any interpretation of the remarks made by Mr Kelty and others. As I informed the Senate yesterday, the Government will be meeting with the ACTU next week and these matters, amongst others, will be discussed. Senator ROBERT RAY —I direct my question to the Minister Assisting the Minister for Communications. Has any evidence been forwarded to the Minister's Department with regard to employees illegally assisting starting price bookmakers? When will the Minister be in a position to respond to allegations made in the Connor report to the Victorian State Government? Senator BUTTON —I am unaware of any information having been forwarded to the Minister for Comunications in relation to the allegations made in the report of the Connor inquiry dealing with SP bookmaking and the alleged role of Telecom Australia in relation to that matter. I will make inquiries and will advise the honourable senator as soon as possible if there have been any such complaints. Senator Dame MARGARET GUILFOYLE — I direct a question to the Leader of the Government in the Senate. It follows the question I raised with him yesterday. Is he now aware of the context of the Government's pre-election undertaking not to remove the health insurance tax rebate until after the introduction of Medicare? What will be the cost to Australian families of the breaking of this promise? Senator BUTTON —One learns from experience in this position. I have learnt from the experience of four years watching the former Government in operation. I have not yet obtained the information for which Senator Dame Margaret Guilfoyle asked me but I will try to expedite the obtaining of that information. Senator ELSTOB —My question is directed to the Minister for Social Security. It refers to the special assistance scheme for community welfare agencies in financial difficulties. Can the Minister explain why so few welfare agencies have been granted funding under this scheme since its inception in 1974? Does this scheme have any future? If so, what role will it play in the overall funding structure for community welfare agencies? Senator GRIMES —From memory, this special assistance scheme was introduced in 1974 to assist agencies that were in difficulty with one-off payments. I believe that since that time only about 50 agencies have been assisted. After 1977 the application of this scheme was so narrow that very few agencies qualified under it. Very few have been assisted in recent times. The new guidelines were introduced in 1980 or 1981. It is my intention to use this scheme to assist agencies on the basis of those guidelines. However, I will get for Senator Elstob further details of the exact operations of the scheme since it was introduced. The Government will certainly investigate whether this is the appropriate method to use to assist agencies which, as he knows and as other honourable senators know, are frequently in greater difficulties in these difficult times. Senator JACK EVANS —Is the Minister representing the Minister for Sport, Recreation and Tourism aware that at present there are some four separate competing offices in London, each promoting individual Australian States and Territories as tourist destinations? Is the Minister aware of the expressed wish of the Australian tourist industry that the Commonwealth Government co-ordinate marketing of Australian tourism overseas out of one office per country, with the individual States and Territories each having representation in each office as they desire? What steps has the Government taken to persuade the States and Territories to forgo their individual tourist promotions overseas and join the Commonwealth in one major advertising push to sell Australia as a holiday destination rather than a collection of competing States, as was undertaken by the Minister in his address to the National Economic Summit Conference? Will the Minister be raising this issue at the annual meeting of Federal and State tourism Ministers tomorrow? Senator RYAN —The question was so detailed and took up such fine points of policy regarding the promotion of Australian tourism overseas that I am not in a position to answer it. I will refer the matter to Mr Brown immediately so that an answer can be forthcoming. I would say, though, that the policy for a co- ordinated approach to the promotion of Australian tourism overseas implied by the honourable senator's question sounds eminently sensible to me. I will make sure that Mr Brown gives the matter urgent and thorough consideration. Senator REYNOLDS —Can the Minister representing the Minister for Health outline this Government's proposals for supporting worker health centres which provide such important awareness of worker health hazards? Can the Minister comment in particular on the Government's plans to have the hazardous material asbestos banned from use where alternatives exist and, where asbestos must be used, to have the process guaranteed to ensure worker safety? Senator GRIMES —My colleague the Minister for Health, Dr Blewett, is in the process of drawing up a comprehensive program for workers' health education, and preventive and occupational health in particular. As Senator Reynolds, and particularly Senator Crowley, will know, this has been a preoccupation of the Minister and the Australian Labor Party's health and welfare committee for some years. The full outline of the program will be announced when it is completed. The Government is aware, as previous governments were aware, of the dangers of asbestosis and the resulting diseases which come from the inhalation of asbestos . I noted recently that some buildings owned and occupied by the Department of Social Security have recently needed modification because asbestos was used as an insulation material and as a lagging material around hot water pipes, et cetera. The Government is conscious of the dangers of asbestos. State building regulations in this day and age usually ban the use of asbestos and require its removal in dangerous situations. As to the involvement of the Commonwealth Department of Health in this area, I will seek full information from the Minister for Health and forward it to the honourable senator. Senator WATSON —Has the memory of the Leader of the Government in the Senate been refreshed to the extent that he can now recall the Government's election commitment to continue the existing tax concession on mortgage interest payments ? Senator BUTTON —No, not yet. I will try next week. Senator WATSON —Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. How does this position square with the Australian Labor Party's election housing leaflet which stated that the Government would provide mortgage relief for those in difficulty and retain tax rebates for home loan interest payments? Senator BUTTON —I suggest, with respect, that it is for Senator Watson to work out how, as he puts it, it squares with something I have already indicated I do not recall. Senator ZAKHAROV —Has the attention of the Minister for Education and Youth Affairs been drawn to the remarks by Professor Leonie Kramer reported in the Australian of 14 May concerning the decision of the Australian Education Council to discontinue the national student evaluation program? Was this decision supported by all State Ministers of Education? What were the reasons for discontinuing the national student evaluation program? Senator RYAN —The answer to the second part of the honourable senator's question is yes. I am pleased to have this opportunity to explain to the Senate the decision taken by the Australian Education Council. The Australian Education Council sought an evaluation of the national assessment research project which was being undertaken. That evaluation was an independent evaluation by Professor Power. I think the evaluation was actually undertaken during the time my predecessor, Senator Baume, was still the Commonwealth Minister at the AEC. The result of the evaluation showed that the research project was simply not giving reliable information about educational standards. The methodology was dubious and the results were not such that any government, State or Federal, could base sensible education policies upon them. Thus the decision was taken that this research project into national standards would not be continued. That decision was supported by all Ministers at the AEC meeting, with the exception of the Northern Territory Minister. For Professor Leonie Kramer or other advocates of reactionary education policies to interpret this decision, as she has done, according to media reports , as a decision that means that the AEC is not concerned with standards in schools throughout Australia, is quite wrong and quite mischievous. The AEC's decision was expressed in terms of wishing not to continue with a useless project, but the AEC confirmed its concern about educational standards. There is no opposition by any Minister within the AEC to the idea of a national survey of educational standards. There is a concern that any such evaluation produce reliable data on which educational policies designed to raise standards of all schools in Australia can be pursued. In terms of educational values the overwhelming concern at the AEC meeting was that all children should have access to a high standard of education and that the standards of education should be improved in a number of ways. So, to characterise the decision, as has been done according to media reports by Professor Kramer, as a decision that showed that the AEC was not interested in educational standards is entirely wrong and misleading. Senator DURACK —I refer the Attorney-General to the recent statements made by the Prime Minister in an interview with Mr Peter Costigan reported in the Melbourne Herald last Saturday and on the Mike Walsh Show, I think, on Monday of this week to the effect that the Prime Minister would have broken the law had he given Mr Combe the information contained in the report of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation which was received and considered by the security committee of Cabinet. I ask: Did the Attorney-General advise the Prime Minister that he would break the law if he took this action? If so, what was the basis of such advice? If the Attorney-General did not so advise the Prime Minister, will he inform the Senate who did advise the Prime Minister to this effect, and what was the basis for it? Does the Prime Minister's view mean that the law was broken at the conference which took place on Wednesday, 11 May 1983, between the Attorney-General, Mr Combe and the Director-General of ASIO? Senator GARETH EVANS —Senator Durack well knows that it is not the practice in this place under Standing Orders either to ask for or to give legal opinions. As such, on that ground alone it would be inappropriate for me to comment on the question as to whether a breach of the law was committed in any of the circumstances referred to by the honourable senator. I add to that, however, that in order to give a complete reply, even if I were minded to do so, to that request for a legal opinion it would be necessary to place on the public record more facts in relation to this whole matter than the Government is presently prepared to do. Indeed, in that respect the Government is simply continuing to observe the stricture which has been constantly urged upon it by members of the Opposition in relation to security matters. I add further that these matters and all other associated matters of contention in relation to the Combe affair are, of course, within the ambit of the Royal Commission on Security and Intelligence Agencies to be set running next week under Mr Justice Hope. It is perfectly open to Mr Justice Hope, under his very wide terms of reference, to deal with these matters, as indeed all the others that are in issue in relation to this affair. If Senator Durack or anyone else on the Opposition benches is unhappy with the answers they have so far received to their public questions, they have a forum in which to pursue these matters further. Senator DURACK —Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. The Attorney- General obviously, to put it charitably, misunderstood the question. I was not asking for a legal opinion. I am asking the Attorney-General whether he advised the Prime Minister in relation to the statements the Prime Minister has now made and, if he did not, does he know whether anybody else did. I am asking him about a fact. Senator GARETH EVANS —To the extent that the honourable senator seeks answers to questions of fact, I have nothing to add to my previous answer. Senator COLEMAN —I refer the Minister representing the Minister for Defence to a statement made by the Minister for Defence and reported in the Daily News on 2 May, relating to United States B52 flights over Australia. He was reported as saying: As with other low-level training flights, these B52s will be unarmed and carry no bombs. I ask the Minister: Has the United States Defense Department altered its policy of refusing to confirm or deny that United States military ships or aircraft are carrying nuclear weapons at any time? If not, can the Minister inform us how he knows the weapons status of United States military aircraft while in Australia? Senator GARETH EVANS —The situation is that the new Government has not modified in any way the arrangements previously in force which permit United States B52s to conduct low-level navigation flights over northern Australia and surveillance operations from Australia over the Indian Ocean. These flights, we are assured and accept are unarmed and carry no bombs. The agreement of the Australian Government would need to be obtained for the B52s to carry out any other category of operations from or over Australia. As I understand it, no such agreement has been either sought or obtained. There is no present intention, on behalf of the present Government, to review the detailed arrangements under which these aircraft are allowed to operate in Australia. As with our other co- operative arrangements with the United States, the broad issues will be considered in the context of the Government's review of the ANZUS alliance. Senator COLLARD —Has the Attorney-General seen an article in the Canberra Times on Sunday last in which Mr Jack Waterford asserted that, under the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act, the Cabinet security committee which received and considered the ASIO report affecting Mr Combe was obliged to inform him of the adverse assessment contained in it unless the Attorney-General certified otherwise? Did the Attorney-General at the relevant time give any consideration to the question whether Mr Combe had a legal right to be informed of the ASIO report affecting him? If so, what conclusion did he come to on the question. If not, why not? Senator GARETH EVANS —I did, of course, give consideration to what obligations were upon me or the Government under the ASIO Act or indeed what avenues were open to Mr Combe or other people affected by the course of recent events. I am not prepared, for the reasons I indicated previously in my answer to Senator Durack, to indicate what legal conclusion I came to or what advice I gave other members of the Government in the context of that matter or in relation to any other matter. As to questions of both legal opinion and fact, I repeat that these are matters that are all being dealt with and able to be dealt with by Mr Justice Hope. If any member of the Opposition, whether Senator Durack, Senator Collard or anybody else, is dissatisfied with the way in which these matters are being dealt with presently by the Government, he has his redress in that forum. Senator COOK —I ask whether the Minister representing the Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations has seen a report in today's Sydney Morning Herald headlined 'Macphee attacks Howard' wherein in part it is reported: The Opposition spokesman on employment, Mr Macphee, has launched a major criticism of the wages policy of the shadow Treasurer, Mr Howard, in a document calling on the Opposition to support centralised wage fixation. The report continues: In his paper Mr Macphee criticises by implication the Fraser Government's role in destruction of wage indexation in 1981. He says that the industry-by-industry approach (which was backed by Mr Howard) was ''doomed to fail miserably and to aggravate the economy, especially as it followed a period of what unions regarded as wage restraint.'' Is it not true that no party can claim economic credibility while it is in disarray on wages policy? Will the Government now invite the Opposition to cease its carping and defeatist criticism of the National Economic Summit Conference and, in the spirit of bringing Australia together, welcome Mr Macphee's comments as a positive step towards endorsement of the Summit communique in which all summiteers expressed support for centralised wage fixation? Senator Chaney —Mr President, I raise a point of order. I draw your attention to Standing Order 98 which states: . . . Questions may be put to Ministers of the Crown relating to public affairs; . . . or other public matter connected with the business on the Notice Paper, of which such Senators may have charge. I suggest that the question is not related to any matter of business or any public matter of which this Minister has charge. The PRESIDENT —There is no point of order. I invite the Leader of the Government in the Senate to answer the question. Senator BUTTON —I understand the reason why the point of order was raised, Mr President. Yes, I have had my attention drawn to the article in the Sydney Morning Herald. Not only have I had my attention drawn to it but, of course, I did not need to have my attention drawn to the smouldering issue within the Opposition as to whether it should have a wages policy. Everybody in this country has been quite aware of the Opposition's difficulties for some time. We, as a government, are particularly aware of the Opposition's difficulties because we are suffering from them. The absence of a wages policy for the last two years has caused enormous-- Senator Chaney —Senator Button has got his memory back. Senator BUTTON —I remember the former Government very well. I do not easily forget those last seven years. The fact is that the present Government is suffering because the Fraser Government did not have a wages policy. It went from one ad hoc decision to another in relation to wages. The seeds of the present wage fixation difficulties, about which Opposition senators now ask questions, were laid in 1981 by the Fraser Government. Mr Peacock, the present Leader of the Opposition-for how long I do not know-recognised this in his speech during the Budget debate in 1981 when he said: Since the abandonment of wage indexation, there is no real wages policy. That is what the present Leader of the Opposition said when talking about the policies of the former Government. Mr Peacock thought that the transition from a centralised to a decentralised wage fixation system should be planned and orderly. As we know, it was neither of those things. Following the collapse of wage indexation, in the six months ended December 1981, under the Fraser Government, we saw the highest levels of industrial disputes in the post-war period. That was followed by the wages pause, the need to be seen to be doing something, a series of ad hoc decision-making, divisive policies and no policy at all for the end of the wage freeze enunciated by the former Government. Of course the Liberal Party, in contrast to the Government, still has no wages policy. Over many years the only person in the Liberal Party who has had an appropriate appreciation of the difficulties of industrial relations policies has been, of course, Mr Macphee who was responsible for criticising the Deputy Leader of the Opposition about his absence of wages policy. Senator Chaney —Mr President, I ask that the Leader of the Government table the paper from which he has been quoting. Senator BUTTON —Absolutely. Senator MacGIBBON —My question, which is directed to the Attorney-General, refers to the matters raised by Senator Primmer during the adjournment debate last night against a series of officers in the Department of Foreign Affairs. From the Minister's reply in the adjournment debate it is clear that he does agree that serious and unsubstantiated allegations, totally destructive of several professional careers, have been made under privilege. To protect the civil liberties of those who have been named in this fashion, will the Attorney- General ensure that the matters raised by Senator Primmer are finally and expeditiously dealt with and cleared up? Will he ensure that Senator Primmer and other members of his party are made aware of the avenues open to them to pursue matters of concern without indulging in unsubstantiated character assassination under cover of privilege? Senator GARETH EVANS —In dealing with this matter last night during the adjournment debate I did not say that Senator Primmer's allegations were unsubstantiated. I did say that they were so far unsubstantiated by the various inquiries that had been held by the Australian Federal Police and, in particular , the Department of Finance, as well as the internal inquiries in the Foreign Affairs Department. Inquiries are still on foot by the Public Service Board and the Commonwealth Ombudsman in relation to matters arising out of Senator Primmer's allegations. Until those inquiries have reached their final conclusion I do not think it would be appropriate to accept the description that Senator MacGibbon has offered. However, I accept that there may well be a case for reviewing the extent to which it is proper, under cover of privilege, to engage in the rather wide- ranging series of allegations that have been put on the record on a number of occasions by Senator Primmer, albeit, as I said last night, with a fierce sense of conviction, honesty and sincerity of purpose by Senator Primmer as to the rightness of the information in front of him. I make that point very clear. As to the larger questions about the use of parliamentary privilege to raise matters of public importance of this kind, which may indeed have the incidental effect of harming the reputations of individuals, I simply say that these are matters which are being squarely addressed by the Joint Select Committee on Parliamentary Privilege which has been reconstituted since the election and which is due to report shortly. Senator MAGUIRE —Has the attention of the Minister for Resources and Energy been drawn to the report in the Adelaide News of 20 May that preparations are under way to move the controversial Australian Mineral Development Laboratories, AMDEL , out of the densely populated Thebarton area of Adelaide to Technology Park at the Levels? Has the South Australian Government and/or the Thebarton Council approached the Commonwealth seeking financial assistance to relocate AMDEL from Thebarton, where residents have protested against the possibility of radiation contamination from uranium processing? What stage has been reached in dealing with this matter? Senator WALSH —The answer to the first part of Senator Maguire's question is yes, my attention has been drawn to the Adelaide News report of 20 May. My attention had been drawn to this issue on a number of previous occasions by a number of South Australian Government supporters and in particular the honourable member for Hindmarsh, Mr Scott. On the question of possible contamination, the factual position is somewhat in dispute. Regardless of that, a strong case has been made by Mr Scott and others for transferring this facility to a different site. I might add that there were at least three approaches to the previous Government by both the present South Australian Government and the Liberal Government which it replaced last year on this matter, dating back to at least September 1982. No substantive reply was received to any of those approaches by either the present or the previous South Australian Government. I have told Mr Scott and others that the request for Commonwealth financial assistance will be considered in the Budget processes. I repeat that assurance. But Mr Scott is well aware, as I am sure Senator Maguire is well aware, that this Government faces enormous fiscal problems in the coming financial year because of the very large and, prior to the election, concealed deficit which it inherited from its irresponsible predecessor. Senator PETER BAUME —Does the Minister for Education and Youth Affairs believe that the freedom to send one's children to an independent school is bought at too high a price for the rest of society? Senator RYAN —I think the Government's attitude to independent schools has been made very clear. Certainly during the election campaign this aspect of our policy was given a great deal of exposure. I simply reiterate that the Government is not opposed to independent schools in principle. The Government acknowledges its responsibility to support such schools on the basis of need. Senator Peter Baume —What is your view? Senator RYAN —My view is the view of the Government. Senator PETER BAUME —I ask a supplementary question. Senator Ryan has said that her view is the view of the Government. How then does she explain her written statement in the Sydney Morning Herald of 10 October 1981? It states: The freedom to send one's children to an independent school is bought at too high a price for the rest of society. Does she really expect that she can say different things in different places to different audiences and still be regarded as credible? Senator RYAN —I am sure the Senate is edified by the capacity of the honourable senator to undertake research into newspaper files. I am trying to recall the occasion on which I said those words. I thought they had a ring of familiarity actually when the honourable senator asked his question the first time. It is the kind of flourishing phrase that I like to think is typical of some of my written work. In recalling the situation in 1981, it was probably the case that the balance between a needs based approach to non-government schools and ensuring adequate funding so that the primary responsibility of government towards public schooling could be fulfilled was going the wrong way. It is certainly my view that after seven years of the Fraser Government the balance between the Federal Government's responsibility towards maintaining public schooling-available to all children from any socio-economic, race or religious background-of the highest possible standard should be maintained. Certainly, it was the case that during seven years of the Fraser Administration the capacity of public schooling to provide education of the highest possible standard to all children was undermined. At the same time, there was a very generous funding of schools which were already providing schooling in the private sector at a very high standard. Under those circumstances, I believe that the price of individual choice is too high; that is, it is too high a price if a school chosen by individual parents is funded at a level which erodes the Government's capacity to fulfil its primary obligation to public schooling. Those honourable senators who have listened to what I have been saying and have not engaged in their usual practice of mindless interjections will realise that there is no discrepancy between the remark ferreted out by Senator Baume and the Government's policy, which it is my responsibility to implement. Senator SIBRAA —Can the Minister representing the Minister for Defence inform the Senate whether the Government is planning to provide any assistance to victims of the present floods in northern New South Wales? Senator GARETH EVANS —I am able to inform the Senate as to a variety of measures that have been taken by the Commonwealth Government in this respect, involving a spectacular demonstration of the co-operation that is possible between the military and civilian arms of government in this country. The Natural Disasters Organisation received a request for Defence Force assistance from the New South Wales State Emergency Services at 9.34 a.m. yesterday, 25 May. The Minister for Defence approved the provision of a helicopter and at 10 a.m. yesterday the Joint Military Operations Staff at Defence headquarters was advised of this approval. A Royal Australian Air Force Iroquois from No. 5 Squadron at Fairbairn was prepared for a five-day deployment and long range operations, fitted with auxiliary fuel tanks and was airborne at 2 p.m. yesterday en route to Walgett. During its ferry flight I regret to say that it suffered fuel supply problems and was forced to return to Canberra late last night. But following repairs, the helicopter was dispatched and arrived at Walgett at 11.20 this morning. An additional Royal Australian Navy helicopter to provide flood relief operations in the Walgett-Bourke area was dispatched from Nowra at 8.15 this morning. Again , it was forced to divert to Canberra because of bad weather. But it departed an hour or so ago and is due to arrive at Walgett early this afternoon. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK —My question is directed to the Leader of the Government in the Senate. Did Mr Hawke during the election campaign promise that a Labor Government would reduce unemployment by 2 per cent over its three years in office? I know that the Minister is perhaps subject to political amnesia on this subject. In contrast, did Mr Keating state at the National Economic Summit Conference that under either scenario A or scenario C, the percentage level of unemployment in the three years ahead would remain, at the end of those three years, the same as it is now, and, therefore, there would be a greater total number of people unemployed? Did the recent economic statement by the Government reduce overall government spending by $427m and indicate a sharp reduction in the overall money supply? In view of those actions, is it not apparent that there will be a substantial increase in unemployment in the years immediately ahead, and another broken promise by the Government? Senator BUTTON —I recall Mr Hawke saying during the election campaign that if the Fraser Government was re-elected the level of unemployment in Australia would reach one million people by the end of this year. I also recall Mr Hawke saying in the course of the election campaign-in fact, a week before the election- something which the Fraser Government never said on any occasion prior to an election; it always did so afterwards. He said: If we get into government and we have the National Economic Summit Conference and the people of Australia find out that Mr Fraser and Mr Howard haven't been telling the truth-that the Budget deficit is very much higher . . . and there is consensus at the Summit that there would have to be some modification of our programs, then obviously we would accede to that. That is what the Leader of the Opposition said prior to the election. Of course, that problem was identified by way of suspicion by the Leader of the Opposition before the election and was not identified by way of any semblance of honesty on behalf of the previous Government. I have been asked whether Mr Keating said that scenarios A and C as put to the National Economic Summit Conference would result in unemployment remaining much the same. My recollection is that he did, but I will check that with Mr Keating. I believe the question asked about the cut in expenditure announced by the Government in the course of the recent economic statement to be correct. I do not believe the Treasurer foreshadowed a sharp reduction in the money supply, but I will check that for Senator Sir John Carrick and advise him in due course. Senator McINTOSH —Is the Minister representing the Minister for Health aware that he was reported on commercial radio this morning as advocating the abolition of smoking in the Australian Capital Territory? Is this an accurate reflection of his views or just a smokescreen? Senator GRIMES —Yes, it was drawn to my attention that I was reported on a commerical radio station in Canberra this morning as advocating the abolition of smoking in the Australian Capital Territory as a result of my answer to a question asked yesterday. My comment in answer to that was that anyone who interpreted my words yesterday as meaning that I advocated the abolition of smoking in the Capital Territory had been smoking something considerably stronger than cigarettes. What in fact happened yesterday was that Senator Coates, with that clarity of mind and heightened perception which comes to all ex-smokers, had noted while travelling to and from Canberra that there was a considerable amount of cigarette advertising in airports. Being aware that airports were in general under Commonwealth control and advocating the abolition of advertising of cigarettes and other tobacco products, he suggested that I should advise the Minister for Health that this was an appropriate action we could take as an extension of the banning of advertising of these products on radio and television which is already in existence. I conceded yesterday that this was a possibility and said that I would refer the matter to Dr Blewett, the Minister for Health. That is as far as the matter has gone so far. I am certainly not advocating the abolition of smoking, nor do I think we have the power to do so in the Australian Capital Territory or anywhere else. Senator MACKLIN —My question is directed to the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs and Environment. I refer to what I believe is one of the major health scandals of the decade; that is, that some 120 Brisbane household backyards have been found to have levels of radioactivity from sand mining tailings which exceed the National Health and Medical Research Council safety limits. The Minister would also be aware that less than one per cent of the 200,000 tons of hot sand which were sold have actually been traced. Can the Minister indicate whether the Federal Government will undertake an inquiry into this matter? Since the problem extends beyond the limits of Queensland this matter would seem to fall within the province of the Federal Government in relation to its powers in radioactive areas. Senator RYAN —The matters raised in Senator Macklin's question are obviously of great seriousness and urgency. I am unable to reply to him now but I will make sure that the responsible Minister investigates the matter immediately and gets a reply for Senator Macklin as soon as possible. Senator PRIMMER —Is the Minister for Veterans' Affairs aware that large numbers of World War II veterans are now approaching retiring age? Can the Minister clarify what the position would be if all veterans over 65 were eligible to receive the Service pension rather than the age pension? Senator GIETZELT —It is true that a substantial number of World War II veterans are approaching what is regarded as the normal retiring age of 65 and a considerable number of them would be eligible for the Service pension. Senator Harradine asked me a somewhat similar question on this matter a couple of weeks ago. As I am informed, a considerable number of ex-servicemen have applied for and have been granted the Service pension. As a result of the economic conditions existing in the country, arising from the seven years of mismanagement of the economy, a number of people out of work are finding themselves unemployable and, therefore, come within the category considered for a Service pension. However, in answer to the specific question that was asked of me, following what Senator Harradine put to me a couple of weeks ago, the estimated cost of providing in the next Budget funds for those who become eligible would approximate $25m. The following year it would be some $57m, assuming that it would be approved in the Budget context. These are net figures representing the cost to my Department in pensions and medical benefits, less savings which the Department of Social Security or the Department of Health would otherwise carry. These costs occur as a result of the advantages which accrue to applicants for Service pensions, namely, that the disability pension received by ex-servicemen is completely disregarded in the assessment of Service pensions whereas it is held in full as income in the assessment of age pensions. So, there is an advantage in that respect. Similarly, under the existing legislation, which was largely determined by the previous Government, the provision by my Department of medical treatment is more expensive than that provided by Senator Grimes's Department. So a substantial cost is involved, which clearly has to be taken in the Budget context. My Department and I are sympathetic to the proposition that veterans should become eligible, but I remind the Senate that the figures in respect of the 1982 -83 deficit show a blow-out of some $3,000m. When one takes that against the projected deficit for 1983-84 of some $6 billion, one sees that the Government is placed in a position in which it is not able to put into effect its policy considerations and apply a compassionate approach to these problems. This is because of the very difficult Budget problems we have arising out of the way in which the previous Government left the economy of this country. While we are sympathetic, I have to advise the Senate that the Government's hands are considerably tied as a result of what we have inherited. Senator REID —My question is directed to the Minister for Veterans' Affairs. On the introduction of the Medicare scheme, what will be the effect on repatriation disability pensioners who are in receipt of a 50 per cent or higher disability pension and who are currently entitled to free medical, hospital, dental and pharmaceutical services? Will they pay one per cent extra tax from 1 January 1983 as part of the new Medicare scheme? Senator GIETZELT —I am currently having discussions with the Minister for Health in respect of the Medicare proposals and the levy. We are determined that there will be no additional cost as far as Service beneficiaries are concerned. The question of whether they will be eligible for the levy requires some specific consideration by the Department of Veterans' Affairs and the Department of Health. Those in receipt of substantial incomes will probably be regarded as being eligible for the levy. Those who are in receipt of benefits from my Department will generally be exempt. Senator BOLKUS —My question is directed to the Attorney-General. It arises out of raids on homosexual venues in Oxford Street, Paddington, in January and February of this year and the subsequent charging of 15 men with offences under the New South Wales Crimes Act. Does the Attorney-General agree that the New South Wales laws relating to homosexuals are in need of urgent reform, especially in view of the recent tactics of the New South Wales police? I ask whether the Attorney-General recalls his statement during the election campaign when he said: I shall be consulting with Mr Landa, the New South Wales Attorney-General and my other State counterparts with a view to the uniform implementation of more enlightened homosexual law reform measures, both in the areas of anti- discrimination legislation and also with a view to achieving the decriminalisation of the law, at least to the extent that has already been achieved in South Australia and Victoria. Senator Ryan —And the Australian Capital Territory. Senator BOLKUS —And the Australian Capital Territory. Has the Attorney-General had discussions with Mr Landa? If not, when will he consult with the New South Wales Attorney-General and other Attorneys-General? Senator GARETH EVANS —I do recall making that statement during the election campaign and expressing on a number of occasions the concern that is felt, I think, around Australia at the weakness of the protections given by the law to homosexuals in a number of jurisdications, not simply New South Wales. I have consulted since the election with Mr Landa, the New South Wales Attorney-General , both in writing and-I hope the expression will not be misunderstood-orally on the subject. I am waiting for Mr Landa's reaction to the raising of the issue that I have set in train in this way. I hope that it will be possible on a consultative and co-operative basis over a period to get a rational set of uniform laws around Australia protecting the liberties of the individual in this area. Senator WALTERS —My question also is directed to the Attorney-General. It is in three parts, all in relation to the issue of South West Tasmania. The first is in regard to the promises that the Attorney-General made to me on two separate occasions to table aircraft movement messages that were distributed when the spy flights over Tasmania were ordered by him. When will the Attorney table the messages? On 11 May, in an Estimates committee hearing his officer told him that it would take only two days to give him the information but the messages are still not tabled. The second part of my question is as follows: Following the Government's action in seeking an immediate injunction from the High Court of Australia to stop all work on the dam, what arrangements does the Attorney suggest should be made to employ those affected by the cessation of work if the Government is successful? My concern, as he would know, is that from next Tuesday hundreds of men could be thrown out of work for a couple of months until the High Court makes its decision on the Commonwealth's challenge to stop permanently the building of the dam. The third part of my question concerns the answer Senator Evans gave a couple of weeks ago when he said: No concluded decision has been made. Has there been a decision-preferably a concluded decision-as to the Government's intention on the Franklin Dam issue once the High Court hands down its decision? The Attorney would remember-- The PRESIDENT —Order! The honourable senator will ask her question. Senator WALTERS —It is because of the Attorney's answer to one question-- The PRESIDENT —Order! I ask the honourable senator to ask a question and not to make statements at Question Time. Senator WALTERS —He answered a question, he will remember, on Nationwide, when he said: . . . , we'll certainly abide by the High Court's order . . . And then he said: . . . it is only a question of then whether we look to other means-- The PRESIDENT —Order! The honourable senator will ask her question. Senator WALTERS —I ask the Attorney-General: Will the Government look at other means if it loses the case in the High Court or will it abide by the High Court' s decision and leave Tasmania in peace? Senator GARETH EVANS —As to the first question relating to the tabling of papers concerning aircraft movement orders and other such exotica, I repeat my assurance to Senator Walters that I have no intention whatsoever of not tabling the material; it is just that it does not seem to have emerged yet from the bowels of whichever department it happens to be buried in. I did ask Senator Walters, as she may recall, in the aftermath of the Senate Estimates hearing, whether she would mind harassing the members of my office in the following few days in order to secure the papers in question. It appears that her harassment endeavours in that respect have not yet been successful. I undertake now-I hope my staff is listening-to follow up the matter and ensure that before we rise the papers in question are tabled. I apologise to the honourable senator for not having followed up that matter sooner. As to the question of the redeployment of personnel working on the dam site in the event that the High Court grants an interim injunction, I simply say this: The case is scheduled to commence next week in the High Court. It may be a little delayed by virtue of the amount of time that was occupied in this chamber in debating the legislation on which the litigation is partially based, but it will not be for more than a few days, if that is so. The case is expected to run for about six days. At the conclusion of it there will be a formal application by the Commonwealth for an interim injunction in order to ensure that no work proceeds on the dam, not only during the period we are waiting for the immediate High Court decision on the actual validity of the Commonwealth legislation and regulations but also in the course of any subsequent further hearing that may be necessary to establish the facts of the matter, assuming the legislation is valid; that is to say, whether or not the construction of the dam offends the standards set out in the legislation. The arrangements that would be appropriate to cover the workers who would thus need something else to do are in the process of discussion. The Commonwealth constantly sought to raise this issue with Tasmania. No doubt it will be one of the matters dealt with in the discussions to take place this afternoon between Mr Hawke and Mr Gray. I cannot say anything more about that matter except that we are well aware of the necessity to give an undertaking, as is the normal course in litigation of this kind, that in the event that any damage should occur to the State of Tasmania and to individuals within it as a result of an interim injunction the Commonwealth appreciates that it has a responsibility- certainly in the event that the case is ultimately lost-to ensure that the tab is picked up for such damage. We understand that, and negotiations are proceeding along those lines. As to the question of what would happen in the event-in the unlikely event, I hasten to add-that the Commonwealth position in the High Court fails, I simply indicate that of course we will, as I have indicated publicly before, abide by any order that may be made by the High Court. There is no question in that respect. As to the possible taking of other action in reliance on other powers or other executive measures, that remains a matter for consideration when that particular hypothetical event occurs. Senator GILES —I direct my question to the Minister representing the Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations. It is notable that statements made by the Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations about job development schemes have stressed the Government's requirement for women to be equitably treated by those administering the schemes, unlike the previous Government, under which women were disproportionately disadvantaged in subsidised training programs. What procedures have been adopted within the Commonwealth Public Service to ensure that increasing numbers of women are employed as apprentices and in other training positions? Senator BUTTON —Senator Giles raises an important matter. I am able to say that the Public Service Board is making a determined effort to encourage young women to apply for non-traditional employment vacancies, including apprenticeships. As part of its Equal Opportunity in Employment Program for women, the Department of Transport and Construction, for example, conducted an active campaign to recruit females for its 1983 intake of apprentices. The campaign included the setting of targets for female recruitment and the use of the sentence, 'The Department stresses in the interests of equal employment opportunity that applications from young women are encouraged', in all its advertisements. Guidelines on how to increase the number of female applications were also issued to relevant areas of the Department. A total of 153 young women applied for apprenticeships with that Department, including 33 in New South Wales and 57 in Western Australia. Of the 79 apprentices recruited, 10 are women, which exceeds the target set. Queensland and Western Australia also exceeded their targets of one per region by both recruiting two female apprentices. These 10 women were recruited to the trades of fitter and turner, painter, electrical fitter-mechanic, refrigeration mechanic, carpenter, motor mechanic and sign writer. The 1983 intake takes the number of female apprentices employed by the Department from 7 to 17. Senator MESSNER —My question is addressed to the Minister representing the Treasurer. Is it a fact that the new tax on lump sum superannuation payments applies to such payments at death? Does the new tax also apply to the proceeds of the whole of life policies paid at death? Senator WALSH —I am not sure of the precise details on that aspect. I do not recall them. I will refer the question to the Treasurer and get an answer for the honourable senator. Senator BUTTON —Earlier in Question Time I was asked a question by Senator Robert Ray in relation to Telecom's involvement in the alleged SP bookmaking operations. I take it that the question arises from a comment in the Age newspaper and the Connor report. The only information I am able to provide the honourable senator with at the moment is that there has been a concerted effort at identifying sources of alleged corruption within Telecom. On 29 July 1982 the Managing Director of Telecom met with the heads of the Department of Administrative Services, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Deputy Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police to discuss this matter. Telecom has since continued to co-operate wherever possible with police authorities. A number of Telecom employees have been charged in Victoria and New South Wales. Telecom has co-operated to the fullest extent possible with police authorities to date. Methods of increasing the efficiency and detection of alleged illegal activity are being rigorously pursued. Senator GARETH EVANS —Earlier in the week, on 24 May, Senator Reynolds asked me a question about 14 governments signing a pledge to the World Disarmament Campaign launched last June by the United Nations General Assembly. She asked why Australia's name was not among those countries so pledging. I have the following answer for her. The World Disarmament Campaign was launched on 7 June 1982 by the General Assembly at the Second Special Session devoted to disarmament. The purposes of the campaign are to inform, educate and generate public understanding and support for the objectives of the United Nations in the field of disarmament through: . . . the widest possible dissemination of information and unimpeded access for all sectors of the public to a broad range of information and opinion on questions of arms limitation and disarmament, and the dangers relating to aspects of the arms race and war, in particular, nuclear war. In the concluding document of its second Special Session on Disarmament, the General Assembly invited member states to supplement available United Nations resources with voluntary contributions to carry out the objectives of the campaign on a worldwide basis. A number of governments and non-government organisations have pledged financial contributions to the campaign. As Senator Reynolds observed, the 14 governments which had already announced contributions took part in a pledging ceremony at United Nations headquarters in New York on 22 February where they signed a document entitled 'Protocol regarding the initiation of the World Disarmament Campaign' thereby making official their pledges to the Campaign. Two other governments, Canada and Norway , have also subsequently announced contributions to the campaign. The previous Australian Government took the view that our financial support for the campaign would be covered by Australia's substantial contribution to the regular United Nations Budget. The question of a voluntary contribution to the campaign by the Australian Government, in addition to Australia's contribution to the regular budget of the United Nations, is under active review. Debate resumed from 19 May, on motion by Senator Button: That the Bill be now read a first time. Senator TOWNLEY(Tasmania)(1.7) —I want to take this opportunity of speaking on the first reading of the Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 1982-83 to talk briefly about alcohol, its use and misuse and dangers and to make a couple of suggestions to the Government, one of which I have made on other occasions. Moderate drinking, whether it be of beer, wine or spirits, is not generally harmful to our health. In fact alcohol in moderation is regarded by some authorities as having a distinct therapeutic effect. However, we have to remember that alcohol has a sedative effect; it is not a stimulant. Drinking of alcohol can evolve almost imperceptibly into excessive, damaging consumption. It seems from studies that the earlier a person starts consuming alcohol the more likely it is that he will end up an alcoholic. We must never lose sight of the fact that alcohol is a drug and any drug consumed to excess becomes harmful. I think the dangers of alcohol are pretty well known to the community but less well known is how much alcohol one can drink in a day before one damages one's body. I believe it is generally held that the body can tolerate about 75 to 80 grams of absolute alcohol in a 24-hour period. That is the maximum that a normal weight person can tolerate and can be handled by the liver without damage occurring. That means that about 100cc or one-tenth of a litre of alcohol by volume can be handled by the body in the same period. Perhaps it would be beneficial for the Senate if I turned that quantity into more familiar amounts. For example, I will take Swan beer, which has an alcoholic content of 5 per cent by volume. To receive 100cc of alcohol one would have to drink 2 litres of Swan beer a day and anything in excess of that amount for a normal weight person will result in damage. A can of beer is 375 mls so one can drink just over five cans of beer in a day without any damage. I am not saying that a person has to drink it in an hour or anything like that, but spread over a 24-hour period, the liver , in particular, will be able to handle it. Of course, one can drink a little less of a stronger beer and a little more of a lighter beer. The alcohol range in unfortified wines is somewhere between 10 1/2 per cent to 13 1/2 per cent. For instance, red wine usually has an alcohol content of about 12 1/2 per cent. A person can drink about 800 mls a day or slightly in excess of one bottle. The range of alcohol in spirits is from 30 per cent to 45 per cent volume in volume. If one chooses to take a drink with an alcohol content of 40 per cent, which is about the strength of a lot of whiskeys, in a day one can drink only about 7 to 8 ounces. I have mentioned those facts to once again draw the attention of the Government to the danger of alcohol in amounts that are materially less than some people habitually drink. Once again I ask that the Government look at requesting the manufacturers of all spirits, wines and beers to include a percentage of alcohol on the label. That is being done in some areas but I do not believe it is general enough. That is the first thing that should be done. Although the Government may say that if we do that some people will choose the strongest drink rather than the weaker, many people will gradually get to know the alcoholic percentages in certain beers and the quantities of those beers that can be safely consumed. Maybe we should also include some warning of the danger of alcohol on the label so that people will realise and remember that they are dealing with a dangerous drug. Alcohol is so dangerous that if we had a book of 100 pages that was written on the dangers of all the drugs that are available to humans at least 90 of those pages would need to be about alcohol. It is by far the most damaging and dangerous drug available legally or illegally. Of course, heroin is dangerous. It tends to kill people a lot more quickly than does alcohol but alcohol does more damage over a longer period to a lot people. The second thing that I would like the Government to look at, if it is serious in its aim to reduce the consumption of alcohol, is adjusting the excise paid on beer and making it proportional to the quantity of alcohol in it. These days there are not many manufacturers of beer, and the alcoholic content of the beer batches can be held fairly close from one batch to the next. It would seem to be a fairly simple thing to work out what excise would apply to a particular brand and style of beer. That is a step that I believe the Government should take forthwith. As about 60 per cent of the cost of beer is excise a reduction of excise for lower alcohol beers would obviously result in a sizable reduction in the price of low percentage alcohol. Therefore a lot of people would tend to choose those beers more often and in a lot of cases that would be good for their health. I know that a lot of the labelling that I have asked for is now being done. I am pleased to see that some action is gradually being taken but all wines, beers and spirits should have the percentage of alcohol printed in easily understood terms on their label. The Government should look very closely at reducing the excise for low alcohol percentage beers. For the benefit of honourable senators I seek leave to incorporate in Hansard a fairly simple set of figures showing the percentage of alcohol in certain beers that are available generally in this country. Leave granted. The table read as follows- Percent alcohol Beer name v/v Basis Imported-available in N.S.W. Tuborg (Denmark) 4.95 Carlsberg (Denmark) 5.50 Lowenbrau (West Germany) 5.45 Steinlager (New Zealand) 5.80 D. B. Export (New Zealand) 4.98 Amstel (Holland) 5.10 Heineken (Holland) 5.00 Michelob (U.S.A.) 4.90 Budweiser (U.S.A.) 4.60 Interstate-readily available in N.S.W. Fosters (Melbourne) 4.90 Carlton Draught (Melbourne) 4.95 XXXX (Brisbane) 4.70 Brisbane Bitter (Brisbane) 5.10 Carlton Pilsener (Brisbane) 4.95 Coopers Ale ( Adelaide) 6.20 West End Export (Adelaide) 5.00 Swan (Perth) 5.00 Cascade ( Hobart) 5.50 New South Wales brewed beers KB Draught 4.70 Tooheys Draught 4.70 Country Special 4.70 Resches Pilsener 4. 90 Sydney Draught 5.10 Lowenbrau 5.46 Senator TOWNLEY —I thank the Senate. Senator SIBRAA(New South Wales)(1.14) —I wish to take advantage of the first reading of the Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 1982-83 to make some remarks about the last federal election campaign. I had intended to make them during the Address- in-Reply debate but because of time limitations I was not able to do so. The 1983 federal election victory for the Australian Labor Party was probably the most comprehensive victory that the Party has ever achieved. I seek leave to incorporate in Hansard tables setting out a State summary of House of Representatives first preference votes and also a State summary of the House of Representatives two party preferred votes. Leave granted. The tables read as follows- Federal Elections 1983 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES-FIRST PREFERENCE VOTES State Summary Informal A.L.P. Lib. N.P. A.D. Other votes (a) Percentage of First Preference Votes- New South Wales 50.1 31.6 11.0 4.8 2.6 2.2 Victoria 50.5 37.1 4.9 5.7 1.8 2. 2 Queensland 46.1 24.4 23.7 4.7 1.1 1.3 South Australia 48.4 42.1 1.1 6.9 1. 5 2.7 Western Australia 52.0 41.8 0.8 4.0 1.4 2.0 Tasmania 40.3 54.9 . . 3.6 1.2 2.3 Northern Territory 46.6 . . 45.9 3.5 4.0 4.4 Australian Capital Territory 63.9 32.0 . . . . 4.1 2.2 Australia 49.5 34.4 9.2 5.0 1.9 2.1 Percentage Swing From 1980- New South Wales +3.8 -4.1 +0.5 -0.8 +0.8 -0.2 Victoria +5.0 -2.0 . . -2.5 -0 .4 -0.5 Queensland +3.4 -2.9 +1.9 -0.7 -1.7 -0.5 South Australia +3.9 -2.4 - 0.3 -1.8 +0.6 -0.1 Western Australia +9.9 -4.8 -1.5 -3.0 -0.6 -0.7 Tasmania - 5.9 +3.0 . . +2.1 +0.7 -0.3 Northern Territory +6.2 . . +2.4 -2.3 -6.3 -0.5 Australian Capital Territory +9.0 -6.2 . . -5.6 +2.8 +0.1 Australia +4.3 -3.1 +0.3 -1.5 -0.1 -0.3 (a) Informal Votes as a percentage of Total Votes. Federal Elections 1983 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES-TWO PARTY PREFERRED VOTE State Summary(Per cent) ALP Lib./NP Vote Swing Vote Swing New South Wales 54.2 +3.7 45.8 -3.7 Victoria 54.5 +3.4 45.5 -3.4 Queensland 49 .5 +2.4 50.5 -2.4 South Australia 52.9 +3.7 47.1 -3.7 Western Australia 55.0 +8 .2 45.0 -8.2 Tasmania 42.8 -4.3 57.2 +4.3 Northern Territory 50.7 +1.8 49.3 -1 .8 Australian Capital Territory 65.7 +7.2 34.2 -7.2 Australia 53.3 +3.6 46.7 -3.6 Senator SIBRAA —I thank the Senate. I congratulate the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library Statistics Group for the excellent job it did in compiling these figures. One of the great myths of politics in the past has been the swings for and against particular parties of candidates in individual seats. Over the last two or three elections, the job done by the Library in putting out these very comprehensive results I think has been appreciated by all of us. During the election campaign I was attached to Bob Hawke's staff, virtually as a full time member. The reason for that was that at the time when he attained the leadership of the Australian Labor Party he had no full time staff of his own save the two members of staff that all members of Parliament have. The national campaign committee of the Labor Party appointed me to act as liaison officer with all the State branches of the party, except those in New South Wales and Victoria. This meant that, during the campaign, I visited all States with the exception of Victoria. I was in a unique position to observe the progress of the campaign as it affected individual States and candidates. A number of interesting facts and figures have arisen from the Labor Party's victory. The Labor Party received its highest vote for the House of Representatives-49.5 per cent-since the election of the Fisher Government in 1914. The Labor Party's two-party preferred vote-53.3 per cent-was the highest vote that the Labor Party has ever achieved. Its majority of 25 seats equals the largest ever majority which occurred in 1943 under John Curtin. We lost the seats of Cook and Riverina in New South Wales and Moreton in Queensland by very small margins. If we had won any of those three seats we would have had a record majority. At this stage I mention the situation concerning the boundaries between the States of New South Wales and Victoria. I think it is very instructive that in New South Wales the Labor Party only won 24 out of the 43 seats-that is, 24 seats to 19 seats-yet we achieved 50.1 per cent of the primary vote and 54.2 per cent of the two-party preferred vote. In Victoria, where we achieved a 50.5 per cent primary vote, that is only an 0.4 per cent difference, and a 54.5 per cent two-party prefered vote, that is only an 0.3 per cent difference, the party won 23 seats out of the 33 seats. I hope that, in any fair redistribution of the boundaries, these changes will result in the Labor Party winning an additional three seats at least in New South Wales. National Party representation in the national Parliament is the lowest since 1961. I will refer later to that matter. This is the first time since 1947 that the Labor Party has governed nationally and in four States at the one time. The last 12 months have been the most successful in the party's history, winning the Victorian, the South Australian, the Western Australian and also the Federal elections. In the past, the Labor Party had been able to win at a State level. It has not been able to carry the vote through to a Federal level. But this time we have been able to do it continuously over a period of 12 months. If we look at the gallup poll figures printed in the Bulletin yesterday, we see that those figures indicate that in Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia the Labor Party would win a State election in any of those States by quite a handsome margin at the present time. Senator Peter Rae —What do they show for Tasmania? Senator SIBRAA —Senator Peter Rae has asked what the figures showed for Tasmania . The figures do not indicate that the party would be successful at this time in Tasmania and Queensland, even though the party has shown a great improvement in Queensland. I omitted to mention that, in a gallup poll printed in the Bulletin about two or three weeks ago, the figures showed that the Labor Party would also win overwhelmingly in New South Wales despite the fact we have been in power in that State since 1976. As I said earlier, the Labor Party now has a 25 seat majority in the House of Representatives. Of 125 seats we have 75 seats and the coalition parties have 50 seats. This is an exact reversal of the previous position. It is remarkable that , since the election in 1977, there has been a 10.5 per cent swing to the Labor Party throughout Australia. In Victoria, that swing has been a massive 13.8 per cent with the result that the Liberal Party in Victoria, which was once its stongest State, now holds only seven of the 33 Federal seats. In Western Australia, the swing towards the Labor Party has been a staggering 20.2 per cent since 1977. In 1977, we held one of the 11 seats in Western Australia. We now hold eight of the seats and, in this election, the seat of Forrest went to preferences. If one looks again at the gallup poll printed in the Bulletin yesterday, one sees that it indicates that, if a Federal election were held now, the seat of Forrest would also fall to the Labor Party. During the election campaign, I went to Western Australia on three different occasions. I must admit that, after the State result, I feared that there would be a backlash and that the Labor Party would not achieve the vote that a lot of people expected at a Federal level. But, in fact, the swing to the Labor Party continued. I put on record the fact that, in the Federal division of Stirling where the Labor candidate, Ron Edwards, defeated a sitting Minister, Mr Ian Viner, I witnessed what I thought was the best technical campaign that I had witnessed being run in the whole of Australia. The Labor Party now has 13 women in the Federal Parliament. This is a record. We have six women in the House of Representatives whereas the coalition parties have none. We also now have seven women in the Senate. Jeannette McHugh, the honourable member for the seat of Phillip in New South Wales, became the first woman ever to represent New South Wales in the House of Representatives. In my opinion, it is the most difficult metropolitan seat in Australia for a woman to win. The fact that she was able to win a seat such as Phillip indicates to me that there is now no seat in Australia that a woman cannot win. I am reminded of the excellent maiden speech given by Senator Cook. He pointed out that five of the new Labor members elected in the Western Australian State election were women. In fact, one of those candidates won the seat of Pilbara which again was a seat that people have said a woman could not win. I witnessed at first hand the campaign run by Pam Beggs in the seat of Whitford where she achieved a swing of 15.1 per cent to win it. This seat is within the Federal seat of Stirling. It was a seat at the State level that I did not think would ever be won by the Labor Party, let alone by a woman candidate. Wendy Fatin, who won the seat of Canning, achieved the second biggest swing of any House of Representatives candidate in Australia-9.2 per cent. Another pleasing aspect of our victory was the support that the Labor Party received in rural and provincial electorates. Victory in these areas shows how successful the Labor Party has been in building up support since the rural debacle we suffered in 1975 and 1977. Overall seven seats were won in the rural provincial areas. These were: Calare, Eden-Monaro and Macarthur in New South Wales, Herbert and Leichhardt in Queensland, Bendigo in Victoria, and the seat of the Northern Territory. We almost won the seat of New England where Laurie Daly, the Labor candidate, went very close to defeating Ian Sinclair. The seats of Cowper, Lyne and Riverina, with New England all rural seats in New South Wales, went to preferences. They can now be regarded as marginal seats. If any Opposition senators or senators in my own party doubt the impact that the Prime Minister, Mr Bob Hawke, had on the election campaign they have only to look at the result in the seat of Flinders. To win the seat on top of a 4.3 per cent swing which had been achieved in the by-election, the Labor candidate who was virtually selected at the last moment and unknown throughout the electorate, achieved a further swing of 6.7 per cent. As far as I was concerned, the only disappointing result was that we failed to win the seat of Riverina where we required a swing of less than one per cent. Some Press reporters have stated that the only mistake we made in our campaign was in making a second visit to Tasmania when, in fact, we should have gone instead to the Northern Territory. I believe that the only mistake we made was in not visiting Broken Hill and in taking the Labor Party vote there for granted . The Labor Party vote had declined in the previous two elections and it did so again in March this year. Whilst the Labor Party increased its vote in the vast majority of the rural centres within Riverina, it was not able to win the seat because of the decline in its vote in Broken Hill. However, I mention at this stage the complete hypocrisy of the National Party. During the election campaign, the Labor Party promised the electors of Riverina that, if it was elected, it would subsidise the Letona cannery to the extent of $1m to ensure that that cannery stayed in business. The sitting National Party member, Mr Hicks, campaigned against us and, of course, we won the election even though we did not win the seat of Riverina. He is now going around that electorate trying to make out that he was responsible for the Letona cannery staying open whereas in fact the National Party campaigned against it. I now turn to the Senate results. I seek leave to incorporate in Hansard a table showing the first preference votes in all States and the percentage swings from 1980 as well as a table showing the percentage decline in the votes for the Labor Party and the Liberal-National Party between the House of Representatives and the Senate. Leave granted. The table read as follows- Federal Elections 1983 SENATE-FIRST PREFERENCE VOTES STATE SUMMARY Informal A.L.P. Lib./N.P.* A.D. Other votes* Percentage of First Preference Votes- New South Wales 47.4 38.1 8.6 5.9 11.1 Victoria 46.5 38.2 12.0 3.3 10.7 Queensland 39.6 44.2 7.9 8.3 8.6 South Australia 44.6 42.2 12.1 1.2 8.8 Western Australia 49.3 42.1 6.8 1.8 7.8 Tasmania 32.8 42.6 6.8 17.8 7.4 Northern Territory 46.0 48.1 5.3 0.6 4.7 Australian Capital Territory 55.4 31 .7 11.9 1.1 3.3 Australia 45.5 39.9 9.6 5.0 9.8 Percentage Swing From 1980- New South Wales +2.7 -3.8 +1.7 -0.5 +1.7 Victoria +3.5 -2.6 +0.7 -1.6 -0.5 Queensland +1.1 -5.6 -2.1 +6.5 -0.6 South Australia +3.8 -2.1 -1.0 -0.5 +0.1 Western Australia +10.5 -6.9 -2.5 -1.0 -2.1 Tasmania -2.8 +3.2 +3.6 -4.0 -0.1 Northern Territory +7.0 -2.6 +2.1 -5.2 -2.6 Australian Capital Territory +4. 7 -5.4 +3.3 -2.5 +0.5 Australia +3.2 -3.6 +0.3 +0.1 +0.1 * Total of Lib. and N.P. where separate. * Informal Votes as a percentage of Total Votes. A.L.P. PRIMARY VOTE 1983 House of State Representatives Senate Difference New South Wales 50.1 47.4 -2.7 Victoria 50.5 46.5 -4.0 Queensland 46.1 39. 6 -6.5 South Australia 48.4 44.6 -3.8 Western Australia 52.0 49.3 -2.7 Tasmania 40.3 32.8 -7.5 Australian Capital Territory 63.9 55.4 -8.5 Northern Territory 46.6 46.0 -0.6 LIB./N.P. PRIMARY VOTE 1983 House of State Representatives Senate Difference New South Wales 42.6 38.1 -4.5 Victoria 42.0 38.2 -3.8 Queensland 48.1 44. 2 -3.9 South Australia 43.2 42.2 -1.0 Western Australia 42.6 42.1 -0.5 Tasmania 54.9 42.6 -12.3 Australian Capital Territory 32.0 31.7 -0.3 Northern Territory 45.9 48.1 +2.2 Senator SIBRAA —These figures indicate that the Labor Party achieved an excellent Senate result in New South Wales and Western Australia where a very high proportion of the people who voted for the Labor Party in the House of Representatives also voted for the Labor Party in the Senate, despite the increased informal vote between the House of Representatives and the Senate. The decline of only 2.7 per cent in New South Wales and Western Australia was the best in Australia. By comparison, the Liberal-National Party vote in New South Wales declined 4.5 per cent between the House of Representatives and the Senate. It was the worst State in Australia for the Opposition in this regard. One remarkable feature of the Senate vote in New South Wales was that in 10 seats the Labor Party's Senate vote was higher than its House of Representatives vote. That is quite remarkable when one takes into account the number of candidates and the increased informal vote. In New South Wales seats the Senate vote was higher than in the House of Representatives in the following seats: Bennelong 0.6 per cent, Chifley 6 per cent, Grayndler 1.4 per cent, Gwydir 2.4 per cent, Hume 0.8 per cent, Lyne 0.8 per cent, Newcastle 1.4 per cent, Paterson 3.1 per cent, Reid 0.3 per cent and Riverina 1.2 per cent. In Riverina the Labor vote in the House of Representatives was 48.6 per cent and it was 49.8 per cent for the Senate, an increase of 1.2 per cent. For the House of Representatives the National Party vote was 50.4 per cent. However, the vote for the National Party and the Liberal Party in the Senate was 40.5 per cent, a decline of 9.9 per cent. It is a remarkable figure. It is one that I find very difficult to explain and it will probably need market research to find out why that vote declined by 9.9 per cent . While discussing the results in the Senate election, I must raise issue with Senator Missen who previously in a debate accused the Labor Party of deliberately defeating Senator Neville Bonner in Queensland. The situation was that the Labor Party's national executive ordered all State branches to issue a Senate ticket that was as simple as possible and to avoid jumping from column to column with its preferences. Previous research in New South Wales showed that this practice was likely to cost an additional 6,000 to 8,000 informal votes every time a column was jumped. While Senator Missen is quite right that the Labor Party should have realised that the preferences could have been crucial to Senator Bonner, we were placed in a situation where, to direct our preferences to Senator Bonner, could have resulted in the narrow defeat of a Labor Party Senate candidate. The Liberals in New South Wales have come to the same conclusion in the past and now issue a simple ticket like the Labor Party does. It is all right to be smart after the event like Senator Missen was, but the Queensland Branch of the Labor Party could have adopted no other course of action. We had to accept-that is, we in the Labor Party-that an altered how-to-vote card could have cost the Labor Party control of the Senate. Senator Bonner's tragic situation-I spoke to him about it twice when I saw him on visits that I made to Queensland-was brought about by mistakes made by the Liberal Party. It was not possible for the Labor Party to try to make amends for what Senator MacGibbon and others had done to Senator Bonner in the Queensland campaign. Senator HILL(South Australia)(1.30) —I want to speak on the peaceful use of uranium for the benefit of mankind and how out of touch with reality the Australian Labor Party's policy is in relation thereto. In fact, I want to point out the danger of isolation arising from that policy in an energy hungry world which will witness uranium rich Australia paternalistically deciding that it is not in the interests of other nations that they should purchase our uranium, a needed natural resource. That policy is, in terms of item 9C of the Labor Party' s uranium policy document, a 'total unequivocal commitment to phase out Australia's involvement in the uranium industry'. I do not want to address the matter so much from the point of view of economic loss to Australia because if mining and export are wrong-that is, unduly dangerous to man-either because they will increase proliferation of nuclear weapons or because uranium is unduly dangerous in its utilisation for peaceful means, I will not support the mining or export whatever the economic advantages. However, if the basis of the Labor Party policy is invalid, as I say it is, it is reasonable to look at economic loss. Economic loss to the Northern Territory was ably put last night by Senator Kilgariff. Let me simply say in relation to South Australia that the decision on 22 March to refuse the granting of mining leases to the joint venturers of the Honeymoon uranium mine was a major economic blow. Since 1979 South Australia has seen its share of national expenditure on mining exploration increase from 5.8 per cent to 11.38 per cent. Now, a 10-year, $11m investment has been emasculated, and, according to the South Australian Chamber of Mines, the vetoing of Honeymoon and Beverley uranium mines will see mineral exploration investment in South Australia fall by about $38m this year. The matter is worth pursuing because, although the bottom line policy of the Labor Party is clear, it is equally clear that the party is in fact very divided . Hopefully, with continued logical debate, the wisdom of a more realistic revision can be brought home. The practical application of that conflict, in the words of the Melbourne finance editor of the Australian, Don Kirkwood, is that it is 'an unhappy mish-mash'. The Australian uranium industry now comprises three types of uranium. Firstly, there is the uranium from the Ranger and Nabarlek mines which can be exported because contracts were signed before July 1982. The second type of uranium is not able to be exported because it was not under export contracts at July 1982. Consequently, the proposed Koongarra, Jabiluka and Yeelirrie mines will not go ahead. However, the Labor Party in July 1982 discovered a new form of uranium that could find its way on to the world export market-uranium which is mined as a by-product with other minerals as will occur at the Roxby Downs mining operation. The Labor Party's current policy stands in stark contrast to the uranium policy pursued by the Whitlam Government. The Whitlam Government in fact pursued policies which recognised the enormous economic benefits to Australia of large scale uranium development and fulfilled what it saw to be Australia's clear responsibility as an energy rich nation in meeting the energy needs of other countries. In view of this Government's attitude to uranium mining, it is edifying to recall the opening words of the Whitlam Government's statement on uranium mining, tabled in Parliament on 31 October 1974. It states: . . . this statement is to outline the Government's program for regional development of uranium resources in the Northern Territory: a program which will return substantial economic benefits to Australia from our supply of this vital energy resource to our overseas trading partners who face such grave difficulties in securing their energy requirements . . . Moreover, the Labor Party less than a decade ago not only saw its responsibility to provide uranium to needy world markets but also recognised the additional economic benefits to Australia in establishing an indigenous uranium enrichment industry. On 2 June 1975 the present Treasurer and former shadow Minister for Minerals and Energy, Mr Keating, had this to say of the Australian uranium enrichment industry: Japan is interested in moving into nuclear power and enriched fuel. We are prepared to give the Japanese any amount of fuel that they need, enriched if we can do so. The only thing is that we would like to do the enriching. Instead of just sending yellowcake at bargain basement prices we want to get the profit that comes from enrichment. A year earlier the Minister for Minerals and Energy, Mr Connor, had indicated that the Federal Government would study the potential of the Port Pirie area in South Australia as a possible site for an Australian-Japanese enrichment plant. Unlike the present Government's hostility to uranium mining and milling, the Dunstan Government which had encouraged the exploration of the Honeymoon site, also pushed aggressively for an enrichment plant in South Australia. Very clearly, the Federal Government and State Labor governments gave active support to the development of the Australian uranium industry during the early 1970s. Like the Fraser Government, the Whitlam Government recognised the interdependence between Australia and other countries and sought to ensure that Australia fulfilled its responsibilities as a nation rich in energy resources to supply those resources to others. In less than a decade Labor's attitude has dramatically shifted ground. Support for the development of this vital energy resource has now become antipathy. This change of policy has occurred in a world in which demand for cheap and abundant energy supplies has not lessened, but has increased over the past 10 years. The world's population has not stopped growing. The expected 8,000m inhabiting this planet in the year 2000 will be demanding not less, but more energy than the 4, 000m currently. Those countries which have been classified as underdeveloped will not remain content with their position relative to those with greater affluence. They will demand more energy than is now consumed in order to reduce the gaps between themselves and the affluent nations. The options for nations seeking more and more energy resources are, and are likely to remain for the next 20 years, limited. Their choice will lie with petroleum, coal, nuclear fission and renewable resources. Of these options, only those of coal and nuclear energy are known to be capable of meeting the world's demands for energy now and in the predictable future. Given that present proven and probable oil reserves total about 700 billion barrels, with an estimated 300 billion barrels expected to be discovered by the year 2000, it is unlikely that oil will be exhausted in the new century. Man will also continue to need coal for energy for many years. While still in plentiful supply, the large quantities required for the generation of electricity have impacted on its cost. Furthermore, coal supply is ecologically destructive, highly energy consumptive, dangerous and easily subject to disruption in adverse economic conditions. Much has also been made of the potential of solar energy and, for some, it has become the panacea for the world's future energy requirements. However, even granted that enormous amounts of money could be invested in this potential energy source, recent research indicates that at best it would provide up to only one-tenth of our energy requirements in due course. At the same time, it is argued that it would represent the greatest drain on the earth's heavy metals and raw materials of any technology yet devised by man. Given our current technology, however, it appears clearly that the world's demand for electricity will be met by the two cheapest forms of generating technology: Coal fired and nuclear power plants. The cost in cents per kilowatt hour of coal fired and nuclear powered electricity generation is half to two- thirds that of oil. It is interesting to note that the results of two recent surveys, one conducted by the United States Department of Energy and the other by the Atomic Industrial Forum, show electricity from nuclear power plants being cheaper than that from coal fired plants of comparable size and age. This relative cheapness indicates, in theory, what is happening in practice, although so often denied by the Labor Party. There is a growing reliance on nuclear energy. In July 1982 some 277 nuclear power reactors were operating in 24 countries. The reactors are producing electricity, not bombs, as some of the more emotional anti-nuclear proponents would have us believe. Some 300 nuclear power reactors are also presently under construction. When in service they will help to provide an estimated 9 per cent of total world energy requirements. This compares with only 4 per cent in 1980. In some countries reliance on nuclear energy is very much higher. If I had time, I would detail to the Senate the rapid advance in volume of nuclear power being produced in France, Hungary, Taiwan, the Federal Republic of Germany, Korea and Japan. It is important to note also that the demand for nuclear energy will, in all probability, increase even further after the year 2000. Research undertaken last year by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, an independent research institution based in Vienna, concluded that nuclear energy might meet approximately 40 per cent of the world's total energy needs by the year 2030. Those projections include the provision of nuclear power to meet the demands of developing countries, which over the next few decades will be the fastest growing sector of world demand. While energy consumption in the developed countries is projected to grow by only 2 per cent annually, a growth rate of 5 per cent a year is expected for the developing countries up to and beyond the year 2000. By 1995 developing countries are likely to account for nearly one- third of the world's total energy consumption. Because of the trend towards urbanisation, developing countries will require highly centralised energy supply systems. Clearly, nuclear power will form part of the energy systems of those countries. Currently some 13 nuclear power plants, with a total capacity of 6, 200 megawatts, are operating in seven developing countries. A further 24 nuclear power plants, with a capacity of about 16,000 megawatts, are under construction in those seven countries. It can only be concluded from such observations that nuclear power for electricity generation will not go away. Is it safe? Contrary to ALP uranium policy which claims to have regard to the present unresolved economic, social, biological, genetic, environmental and technical problems associated with the mining of uranium and the development of nuclear power, the World Health Organisation in a report released last month stressed that nuclear power is a safe, viable and necessary alternative to conventional energy sources. The report pointed out that only about 200 tonnes of uranium fuel was needed to operate one electricity power plant for 12 months, against 2 million tonnes of anthracite coal or nine million barrels of oil. Athough the Labor Party believes that the nuclear power industry stands condemned for the absence of procedures for the storage and disposal of radioactive wastes, the report of the World Health Organisation pointed to the studies of disposal in underground depositories which had been going on for the last two decades. It pointed to the burying of high level radioactive wastes 500 metres to 1,000 metres underground in stable rock formations being generally accepted as a safe disposal method. Will it lead to nuclear weapon proliferation? To halt uranium mining and export because of dangers of nuclear proliferation presumes a direct link which does not exist. One need only refer to the bible of disarmament-the final document of the first United Nations General Assembly Session on Disarmament, which was re- endorsed last year at the Second Special Session-one of the few things that all nations at the session could agree upon. I refer specifically to clauses 68 and 69 of that final document. Because of the shortage of time, I seek leave to incorporate those clauses in Hansard. Leave granted. The clauses read as follows- 68. Non-proliferation measures should not jeopardize the full exercise of the inalienable rights of all States to apply and develop their programmes for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy for economic and social development in conformity with their priorities, interests and needs. All States should also have access to, and be free to acquire technology, equipment and materials for peaceful uses of nuclear energy, taking into account the particular needs of the developing countries. International co-operation in this field should be under agreed and appropriate international safeguards applied through the International Atomic Energy Agency on a non-discriminatory basis in order to prevent effectively proliferation of nuclear weapons. 69. Each country's choices and decisions in the field of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy should be respected without jeopardizing their respective fuel cycle policies or international co-operation, agreements, and contracts for the peaceful use of nuclear energy provided that agreed safeguard measures mentioned above are applied. Senator HILL —The matter of non-proliferation started almost from the day of the discovery of splitting the atom. Production of, or the acquisition of, nuclear weapons is a matter of judgment for a country. It is a matter of trust versus distrust. To date, more than 100 nations, including Australia, have declared that they do not consider that domestic development of nuclear weapons increases that security. They have declared this by ratifying the Non-Proliferation Treaty and have agreed to inspection systems under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Active participation in the supply of uranium for peaceful purposes gave Australia an effective presence in ensuring adherence to the safeguards treaty. However, we now have a policy which has as its rationale that the cessation of uranium exports will, on the whole, stop nuclear weapons or the incentives for their spread. But to consider nuclear weapons one must focus on the underlying causes rather than surface symptoms. Denial of uranium, whether or not it is in an enriched form, will not assure that nuclear explosives will not be developed. It may even be counter-productive. The denial of uranium may even force it to obtain a nuclear capability in order to achieve a military solution to growing energy and food needs. If countries are forced to be independent in such areas as the production of uranium, and even more so in enrichment and reprocessing, without international safeguards, what has been achieved by the policy of energy denial? This Government, under its present policy, is stepping back from its important role of ensuring non-proliferation in a world which a World Health Organisation report notes will need to satisfy its increasing and high energy demands through the utilisation of a variety of energy resources, including nuclear power. We cannot afford a government whose policy denies the vital role Australia can play in satisfying the essential energy requirements to the rest of the world. Question resolved in the affirmative. Bill read a first time. Senator GARETH EVANS(Victoria-Attorney-General)(1.45) —I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The speech read as follows- I present Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 1982-83 which, together with Appropriation Bill (No. 6) 1982-83 and the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 2) 1982-83 which I shall introduce shortly, comprises the normal additional estimates for 1982-83. In these Bills, Parliament is asked to appropriate moneys to meet essential and unavoidable expenditures additional to the appropriations made under Appropriation Acts (Nos 1 and 2) 1982-83, the Appropriation ( Parliamentary Departments) Act 1982-83, and the Appropriation Acts (Nos 3 and 4) 1982-83 which Parliament passed at the recent special sittings to provide funds for certain urgent purposes which could not reasonably await the passage of these additional estimates. Cost and price increases since the Budget was prepared are principal factors underlying the additional estimates. Firstly, although the Budget figuring contained allowances for prospective wage and salary increases, those amounts were not then appropriated, and funds are now required to meet the costs of awards and determinations made before the introduction of the wages pause in December 1982, and because of other factors such as staff increases. Funding is also needed in respect of commitments approved by the previous government after introduction of the Budget, and some urgent initiatives of the Labor Government since taking up office. I will outline some of the more significant of these requirements later in this speech and in that relating to Appropriation Bill No. 6. The additional appropriations in the three additional Estimates Bills total $1, 047.8 million. Of this, $640.0 million is sought in Appropriation Bill No. 5, $ 407.4 million in Appropriation Bill No. 6 and $0.3 million in Appropriation ( Parliamentary Departments) Bill No. 2 These amounts are offset by in part by savings in the Appropriations made by Appropriation Acts (Nos 1 and 2) 1982-83 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Act 1982-83, resulting partly from the Government's determined efforts to achieve savings in expenditure for ongoing programs wherever possible . These savings, amounting to $168.6 million, are detailed under the relevant appropriation headings in the document, 'Statement of Savings Expected in Annual Appropriations', which has been distributed to senators. The appropriations now sought, together with those made in Appropriation Acts ( Nos 3 and 4) 1982-83, and after allowing for prospective savings, represent a net increase of $1,286.5 million in expenditures financed from annual appropriations. This increase represents approximately two and a half per cent of aggregate budget outlays for the fiscal year. The Government considers this increase unavoidable in view of the need to maintain essential services, to continue at existing levels programs of the previous Government pending their review (where appropriate) and to fund certain requirements that have had to be met by the Government since the election. I now outline some of the main areas in respect of which the Government has found it necessary to seek additional provisions in Appropriation Bill (No. 5) 1982-83 to meet expenditure for the ordinary annual services of the Government. An estimated $275 million is for wages and salaries, $208 million being for non- defence and $67 million for defence purposes, to meet increases in award rates and other wage and salary costs including costs in respect of increased staff ceilings approved by the previous Government for the Australian Taxation Office and the Department of Social Security. The amounts include the wage and salary component of additional funds being provided to statutory authorities funded under one line appropriations. $17.5 million is included under the Department of Communications for the Australian Broadcasting Commission primarily to meet salary and rent increases and thus to enable the Commission to maintain its domestic services. Under the Department of Defence, provisions totalling some $129.1 million are to meet price and exchange rate effects on the costs of new and replacement equipment and stores including programs for the FA-18, Orion and F1-11 aircraft, the FFG frigates and trucks for the Army. A further $11.9 million is included under the Department for the repair and overhaul of equipment and stores. $10.4 million is sought for the Department of Defence support for production assistance in respect of the Nomad aircraft and covers increased subsidy and development costs caused by price increases, production overruns and cancellation costs. A further $4.3 million is sought by way of additional working capital advances to various Government defence factories. An amount of $10.0 million is sought under the Department of Foreign Affairs for the provision of the special grant to Papua New Guinea announced recently by the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Additional provision of $8.8 million is made for CSIRO, primarily to meet the cost of wage and salary increases. An additional $5.0 million has been provided for grants under the Industrial Research and Development Incentives Act, and a like amount is sought for payments under the Export Expansion Grants Act. Supplementation has also been sought for a number of welfare related programs funded from annual appropriations, including: $2.0 million in respect of grants administered by the Social Security Department for community welfare agencies; $3.3 million for payments in respect of accommodation for migrants and refugees ; and Support for employment related schemes administered by the Department of Employment and Industrial Relations, including $3.0 million for special training for aboriginals, $2.0 million in respect of the Commonwealth rebate for apprentice full-time training, $1.5 million for community-based youth support schemes and $1.5 million for youth training. I commend the Bill to the Senate. Senator GARETH EVANS(Victoria-Attorney-General) —Mr Deputy President, I suggest that we have a cognate debate on the three Appropriation Bills and the three Supply Bills. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —There being no objection, I will allow that course to be followed. Senator Dame MARGARET GUILFOYLE —(Victoria) (1.46)-In speaking briefly in the cognate debate on these Bills, I indicate that the Opposition will not impede the progress of the Bills. The supplementary Appropriation Bills have been subjected to the scrutiny of the Estimates committees at which the explanations were sought from and given by the officers of the departments and the Ministers. As is usual, the Estimates committee reports are available for the Senate. The Supply Bills are the normal Supply Bills for the ordinary annual services of government-capital works and services, payments to the Territories and other services. I simply indicate that the Opposition does not wish to impede in any way the progress of these Bills. In fact, we wish them a speedy passage. A number of honourable senators will be speaking in the cognate second reading debate. But I would assume that at the second reading stage we will dispense fairly quickly with the Bills that will provide the funds required by the Government in the normal way. Senator MacGIBBON(Queensland)(1.47) —In speaking in the second reading debate on this collection of Appropriation and Supply Bills, I wish to deal with Appropriation Bill (No. 5) and Appropriation Bill (No. 6) and to talk about one point in each of these Bills. The point in Appropriation Bill (No. 5) which I wish to address deals with the Department of Defence vote. It relates to debates that took place in Estimates Committee E with respect to what have become known as the flights over Tasmania. Senator Durack and I spent a considerable amount of time inquiring into the background of these operations. I must say that the evidence we have is incomplete. But viewing the evidence fairly dispassionately, there is a very clear inference that two conclusions arise-firstly, that the flights were unauthorised and, secondly, that they could not be classified as normal training flights. Some consequences come from this deduction. Firstly, if the flights were not authorised then they were an unauthorised use of defence assets. Therefore, it follows that there was an unauthorised expenditure of public funds. Secondly, as the flights were not training flights, defence assets were tasked against a properly constituted State government proceeding on its lawful way. I realise that it is terribly important to the Australian Labor Party to have the legality of these flights pass unchallenged for a whole variety of reasons, not the least of which is the use of public funds. One of the propaganda points that is terribly important to the Labor Party is the subterfuge that the flights were normal training flights. Many people around Australia say: 'Why cannot aircraft of the Royal Australian Air Force fly over any part of Australian territory? We are all Australians, aren't we?' Of course, that is fair enough, Air Force aircraft can fly over Australia in the same way as civil aircraft can fly over nearly every part of the country. But if the flights were not properly tasked and it was not a lawful operation, it becomes a different matter entirely. I would like to amplify the unauthorised nature of the flights. The Director General of Joint Plans and Operations was asked which of the reference documents the Air Force has to cover situations such as this were applied in this case. There are two documents-'Policies and Procedures for Defence Force Assistance to the Civil Community' and 'Defence Force Aid to the Civil Power'. The Air Commodore admitted quite frankly that there was confusion as to which document was used as the source of the authorisation. It followed as a consequence of that that we questioned a particular document. The witness was given the choice of saying which clause in those two documents he thought was the most relevant one. Again, we found that there was quite a degree of ambiguity. This is important because these documents specifically instance the cases in which RAAF aircraft or RAAF assets can be used to aid the civil power or the civil community. One obviously has to have a requirement for this in cases of floods, emergencies and things such as that. So the fundamental point-what justification the Air Force had for tasking these aircraft-could not be established. Then we got on to the interesting business of finding out how the request was placed with the Air Force. It turned out that the Director of Operations, Group Captain Waterfield, had received a telephone call. A signal was not sent. Nothing was ever put in writing. It was just a verbal call from Mr Glare in the Attorney-General's Department to the director of Operations of the Air Force. On the basis of that telephone call service aircraft were tasked into operations against a State government. I find that to be a rather surprising thing. I accept that the Director of Operations of the Air Force must have some degree of initiative and must be able to use his own judgment because clearly emergency situations arise in which he has to react immediately. But I would expect that the Director of Operations would satisfy himself as to the authority of the person who made the request. In effect, what happened was that the Director of Operations simply received a telephone call from a person whom he did not know and whom he had never met. This person was a civilian who was not associated with the Defence Department at all. The consequence of that was that low level Mirage flight and the flight the day after by the RF111C. The Air Force is often called upon to provide emergency services. It is doing that today in regard to the floods. The Air Force does that very well and to the great benefit of the community. The Air Force frequently gets involved in the whole field of search and rescue. I have never had recourse to make a personal request to the Air Force but I do know people in Queensland who have. For example, requests are frequently made for helicopter assistance in search and rescue operations. The experience in those circumstances is that the requests are always expeditiously and efficiently dealt with but that RAAF station Amberley always finds out who is making the request and checks out its authorisation very quickly, but quite completely. Apparently this was not done in this case. As one who knows Service officers very well, I muse on the reasons this took place. Group Captain Waterfield, the officer in charge, in evidence recorded on page 154 of the Hansard record of Senate Estimates Committee E, said : As I said, because of the way the request or the task was passed to me-I emphasise that it was passed to me as a task already approved by the Minister and not a request-I simply arranged the task. That leads us to consider the place of Mr Glare in this matter. Did he overstate his case? What form of words did Mr Glare put to the Director of Operations? Did he go beyond what reasonably could have been expected of an officer? We do not know the answers. We have no documentation on the matter. The matter probably will not ever be resolved. Did Mr Glare, a zealous officer working for a new Attorney-General telephone the Air Force and say: 'It is all right; no troubles. We have the approval of the Minister for Defence and the A-G. It's right-we're ready to go. We want this immediately before the court case tomorrow'? Was Group Captain Waterfield dazzled by this authority and the authoritative tone in which this was put to him? Did he say: 'Right, that will be no trouble. We will arrange that for you'? Did he-Mr Glare-go back to the Attorney-General and say: 'No troubles, Minister, it is all set. I fixed it for you in a minute and the Air Force will look after it'? We will never know the answer to that but we can reflect on what might have happened. I will deal with the aspect that the flights were training flights. It is fair to say that we only got hesitant and evasive answers from the two RAAF operational officers who answered these questions. Any people who read the Hansard transcript of the Committee's proceedings can confirm that for themselves. The implication was quite clear there that they were not normal training flights. I quote a reply to a question reported on page 155 of Hansard. Senator Durack asked: Would it be in any way appropriate to describe that as a re-routed training flight? Group Captain Waterfield replied: This is the Mirage flight you are referring to? Senator Durack answered: The Mirage flight. Group Captain Waterfield replied: No, that Mirage flight was specifically tasked. It is interesting to read the letter of the Chief of Defence Force Staff. Air Chief Marshal Sir Neville McNamara is a very great soldier who served this country well. On 12 April he wrote to the Chief of the Air Staff. For those honourable senators who do not know, neither the CDFS nor the Chief of the Air Staff was advised that these sorties were on or being planned by the Air Force, which is a matter that alarmed them both. Air Chief Marshal Sir Neville McNamara wrote to the Chief of the Air Staff on 12 April and he selected his words with great precision. I will quote from the first paragraph of his letter. He said: . . . in particular I am extremely concerned that the matter appears to have been handled as a routine task within your Directorate of Operations and authorization given without your or my knowledge. At the very least this action demonstrates a lack of awareness of the political sensitivities and even deeper consequences of the use of Defence Force assets on an issue such as the Franklin River Dam. Quite clearly the CDFS in no way and at no time regarded these as routine training flights. Further evidence that was advanced to the Committee showed that at no time were these flights tasked before the dam flights. The flights over the dam were tasked first of all. Then the excuse of training flights or extra tasks was added afterwards to justify them. I do not wish to take up much more of the time of the Senate in dealing with this matter, but one of the things which concerned me related to security. I do not wish to go through some of the security breaches which may or may not appear in the documentation tabled by the Attorney-General (Senator Gareth Evans), but I will refer to one which was in the file of the Department of Defence. It is signed by Squadron Leader Kennedy. Paragraph 2 of his letter relates to an inquiry by Mr Glare. Mr Glare inquired into the operational performance of the aircraft and the photographic gear used. Apparently a discussion took place over an open telephone line concerning what was fairly confidential information because the next part of the letter states that the section on photo- reconnaissance capabilities of the RF111C was deleted on grounds of national security. I wonder what sort of security clearance Mr Glare had and what precautions were taken to avoid an intercept on that telephone line. I will not proceed with that matter much further. We have had quite a degree of censure in this chamber against the Attorney- General, and I think it was quite justified. The point is that I do not think the Attorney realised the enormity of what he did at the time. I do not think we will convince him of that in the short term. Clearly the most culpable person in this whole business, the person who has avoided all public censure, is the Minister for Defence (Mr Scholes) in another place because he is the person who must assume responsibility for this matter. It is his Department, his action and his authorisation. He cannot evade the responsibility, and I believe he was grossly negligent in this. He is the person who should be brought to charge. He does not appreciate what it is for a serviceman to be tasked against people of his own nation. The greatest act of disloyalty one can ask a serviceman to perform is to operate against the people of his own country. I make a parallel with the medical and dental practitioners. If the Minister for Defence were in one of those professions and acted in the way he did in regard to the spy flights over the dam, he would be up on a charge of criminal negligence. I turn now to Appropriation Bill (No. 6) which deals with the expenditure of $ 407m. That means that everyone in Australia is contributing roughly $27 under this Appropriation Bill. Some of that money is well spent but we need to be convinced that it is all being well spent. In this Bill there is an appropriation to shore up Trans Australia Airlines, Qantas Airways Ltd and the Australian National Line to the extent of $240m-$90m for TAA, $90m for ANL and $ 60m for Qantas. I wish to speak only on the expenditure for TAA. I make the general point that governments simply cannot run commercial enterprises. Where they try to, it costs the taxpayer very dearly-not only in money but also in inconvenience and a whole lot of other things. We are moving into a situation of state monopoly of health services in this country. I shudder to think of the cost of that to the Australian community. It will go through the roof. More than that, we will get a really rotten service because there will be no competition as a result of it. The ANL is a classical example of commercial mismanagement. Honourable senators will remember that last year we had the farcical business of whether someone from the Merchant Service Guild of Australia or the Seamens Union of Australia would operate a winch on the new coalburning River Boyne for Comalco on the Weipa-Gladstone route. That Gilbert and Sullivan exercise ran for weeks, if not months, and cost all the parties involved tens of millions of dollars. The blame for that can be squarely laid on the managerial incompetence of the Australian National Line. At a future date I will come back to that and go into it in more detail. I return now to TAA. The first point is that capitalisation of TAA is too low. I do not think anyone on this side of the chamber has any argument about that at all. Without adequate capitalisation life in the commercial world is very difficult. TAA needs to have more capital and I am pleased to see that it has been given more capital, but the fundamental point has to be made that it is a task of management to service the capital it already has, whether in the form of shareholders' funds or raised as borrowings in the market place. TAA simply has not serviced the capital that it has. A classic case was the superannuation inadequacies which TAA has never ever funded. The government of the day has supported TAA and bailed it out on at least two occasions that I can think of. The last time was within the last 12 months when the Government put over $200m- possibly $220m-into its superannuation fund. TAA cannot say that it does not have the resources to cope because Ansett Airlines of Australia operates under the same situation and does provide superannuation funding for its employees. We are asked for a large sum of money to go to TAA this year. Unfortunately we do not have its annual report yet. We do not know how big a loss it will make. Rumors around the market place are that it will be somewhere between $10m and $ 20m. I hope it is not as high as that, but it might be. The Parliament has a relevant interest in knowing how much money TAA is losing when Parliament has to put money in to shore it up. We are paying the price at present for the two-airline agreement in this country. Because the two-airline agreement does not provide for commercial competition between the two major carriers-in fact it preserves them, protects them and guarantees that they can stay in business-we have a hopelessly inefficient internal airline system in this country. The consequences of that are many from the travellers point of view. This Parliament has an interest in looking after the interests of the Australian traveller for he is priced out of the market. If one looks at the relevant figures one will find that traffic around Australia has decreased dramatically. The latest figures I have show that there was a 6 per cent drop in the number of passengers travelling through the Brisbane domestic terminal in the last quarter of 1982 and that the number of people travelling by air in Australia as a whole was down by 9.3 per cent in the last quarter of 1981. I do not have a later figure than that. It is simply a fact that it has become too expensive for people to travel by air. TAA has contributed to this development by operating in an inefficient way and putting up its fares to cope with its inefficient operation. It has been losing money for years and there is no reason why it should have been. It gets mixed up with extravagant operations like Hertz. I do not know how much that Hertz hire car business has cost TAA but it has certainly cost it millions and millions of dollars and it is still not making a profit out of it. There is no reason on earth for an airline company to own a hire car company, least of all when it is bleeding to death on it. TAA does not seem to show any commonsense in the market-place. It fritters money away on such things as the bone china purchase. It ridiculed Ansett when that airline went into the business of providing bone china. The correct commercial approach was to let Ansett go and pay the commercial penalty of an unwise move. But, after ridiculing Ansett and saying that it would cost Ansett half a million dollars a year to replace breakages alone, the genii on the board of directors of TAA turned around and spent $850,000 buying gold line Wedgwood bone china for TAA. That is an entirely unnecessary charge on the passengers who fly in Australia. It increases the operating cost of the aircraft because it increases the weight that has to be carried. Weight is highly critical on an aircraft. Breakages have to be replaced. It is all unnecessary. Let us look at the advertising aspect. I made some Press releases in June last year about the need to sell TAA to protect the Australian public. The reaction to that proposal was the 'Our TAA' theme. I suppose that I should be flattered that I influenced the public projection of an airline but the 'Our TAA' theme riles me even more than the way TAA loses money. The final mindless piece of advertising is this two-page spread-God knows how many hundreds of thousands of dollars it is costing-which one has to read to find out what it is all about- whether it is for an airline, a shoe company or something like that. All that TAA lists here is 12 ways in which it has managed to lose money over the last few months. I will be very interested, at the relevant time, to know what that campaign is costing us. I would have thought that the primary concerns of those running an airline were to advertise safety and things like the convenience of its flight schedules and the frequency of flights, to establish on-time departures and arrivals and to fly people in reasonable comfort and, above all, at low cost. But we never see evidence of that in any airline advertising in Australia. Quite simply, passengers are not interested in luxury meals, free drinks and things like that. They do not travel on aircraft for a hedonistic experience. They travel on aircraft because they want to go, say, from Brisbane to Sydney or from Sydney to Melbourne. All the legs in Australia except for the Western Australian run are about one hour in length. Anyone can sit there without being filled with wine and food. Honourable senators would find that an airline that operated a no frills service would sweep all the others from the board. Air travel is simply a utilitarian service in Australia today. I return to the theme of 'Our TAA'. As I said earlier, that particularly riles me. If I am a TAA shareholder I want to go to a shareholders' meeting. Furthermore, I wish to move at that meeting to vote the present board of directors out of office. After that, I wish to sell my shareholding. TAA is something that this country can well do without as a government instrumentality. It is a commercial operation that is best handled by private enterprise. Until we get TAA out of government hands, until it can compete equally with Ansett, East-West Airlines Ltd or any other airline which chooses to operate in Australia on an equivalent commercial basis, we cannot get rid of the two- airline agreement. While we have the two-airline agreement, we have this nonsense of two-page advertisements about an airline that has taken the initiative 12 times in the last few months. Debate (on motion by Senator Robertson) adjourned. (Quorum formed). The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —Order! I have a statement to read on behalf of the President. Honourable senators will recall that both Sir Condor Laucke and Sir Harold Young, the President's predecessors in the office of President, established accommodation advisory committees to review the allocation of accommodation on the Senate side of the building. When this arrangement was first made in 1980, the then Speaker also appointed a committee of members to advise him on the allocation of accommodation on the House of Representatives side of the building. The aim of the Presiding Officers was to achieve the best utilisation of space available for senators and members without diminishing the efficient functioning of the chambers or the services necessary for senators and members to discharge their responsibilities. In addition, it was regarded as a minimum requirement that every senator and member should have a separate room. Accordingly, past Presidents have made offices on the Senate side of the building available on a permissive occupancy basis to members of the House of Representatives to avoid members having to share rooms. Shortly after the election of the present President, he reviewed the reports of the two previous Presidents' accommodation advisory committees. These committees made a number of recommendations designed to improve senators' accommodation. The President also reviewed the response of the previous Speaker to the proposals of those committees. Subsequently he was asked by the Speaker, Dr Jenkins, whether further rooms could be made available on the Senate side to accommodate four members who are currently forced to share offices. He is now able to advise honourable senators that he and Mr Speaker have directed that certain administrative staff of the Joint House Department be moved from Parliament House to the Hotel Kurrajong. They have also directed that the Secretariat to the Joint Committee on the New Parliament House be moved from Parliament House. Both of those proposals were recommendations of the President' s Accommodation Advisory Committee. Once these moves have taken place, one member of the House of Representatives will be accommodated in the office vacated by the new Parliament House Committee secretariat and the other three members will occupy rooms on the Senate side. In addition to these arrangements, the President has requested Black Rod to prepare detailed proposals to improve the accommodation available to senators in accordance with other recommendations of the previous Presidents' accommodation advisory committees. When these proposals are finalised the President will further review the matter. At this stage the intention is to commence a program of progressive improvements to senators' accommodation in Parliament House early in the winter recess. The President concludes by thanking those senators who served on the President's accommodation advisory committees and, in particular, the sub-committee of Senators Jessop, Coleman, Scott and Chipp which conducted the main investigation. Senator ROBERTSON(Northern Territory) -by leave-I move: That the Senate take note of the paper. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. Senator CHIPP(Victoria-Leader of the Australian Democrats) —by leave-As a member of the original President's Accommodation Advisory Committee and sub-committee, I compliment both the President and the Speaker on adopting two of the recommendations of that committee. As I remember, at least Senator Coleman and Senator Scott were on that Committee with me. Senator Jessop —I was there too. Senator CHIPP —I am sorry, Senator Jessop was the distinguished Chairman. It was one of the most efficient committees on which I have ever served. The Committee encountered a singular lack of co-operation from the previous Speaker-I say that advisedly-and from the staff of the House of Representatives who were advising him. Senators, I believe it is fair to say, bent over backwards to assist members of the House of Representatives in their accommodation on this side of the House, but we needed some co-operation from the Speaker and the staff of the House of Representatives which certainly was not forthcoming. Whilst I am very pleased to accept your action and congratulate you, Mr President, I think it is fair to say that if the Speaker and the staff of the House of Representatives were more receptive to change, the comfort and convenience of most honourable senators, particularly those who now are forced to have very small rooms, would be considerably improved. It is my view, notwithstanding the progress that you have made, that further improvements could be made in the facilities available to some honourable senators who now work in cramped conditions. General Business taking precedence of Government Business at 2.15 p.m.- Motion (by Senator Walsh) agreed to: That unless otherwise ordered during consideration of General Business this day , business be considered in the following order: 1. Further consideration of Government papers pursuant to sessional order; 2. Government Business Order of the Day No. 24 relating to the Royal Commission on Security and Intelligence Agencies; and 3. General Business Order of the Day No. 24 relating to Australian aid to Vietnam. Debate resumed from 25 May, on motion by Senator Lewis: That the Senate take note of the paper. Senator LEWIS(Victoria)(2.19) —I congratulate the Government on finalising this agreement which was negotiated during the term of the previous Government. The history of our relations with New Zealand over a period of years has been reflected in a number of agreements which have developed vigorous trade across the Tasman Sea. Finally in March 1980 there was a meeting of Mr Fraser and Mr Muldoon following which there was a joint communique about developing closer economic relations. From that time until November 1982 Mr Doug Anthony, the then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Resources, was involved in extensive negotiations with his New Zealand counterpart until, finally, on 10 November 1982 an agreement between the two governments was signed. This agreement was prepared following that agreement and was signed by Mr Lionel Bowen on behalf of Australia. It came into force on 1 January 1983. The aim of this agreement is the gradual and progressive reduction of all remaining trade barriers between our two nations. The reason is that each country is the other country's major export market for manufactured goods- Australia with a population of 15 million and New Zealand with a population of 3 million. Clearly, Mr Anthony and the former Government are to be complimented for trying to develop a free trade arrangement between our two nations, and I wish the two nations success. It is my belief that it is most unfortunate that in 1900 New Zealand did not become a State of the Commonwealth of Australia, or whatever we might have called it. New Zealand is no further away from Canberra than is Western Australia. It is a great pity that we do not have an additional State, New Zealand. However, I also wish to congratulate Mr Anthony on his consultations with industry representatives, both primary and secondary, about their concerns with his agreement. Primary and secondary industry representatives on both sides of the Tasman have been concerned, and the negotiations and consultations were extensive. I am aware of problems in the horticultural and agricultural field- including potatoes, timber, fish, wine; and in textiles, steel and industry. Those problems have occurred on both sides of the Tasman. I mention, for example , one manufacturer in New Zealand who set up a company there for the purpose of exporting a product to Australia. He was taking advantage of New Zealand's lower wage structure and export incentives in order to export the product to Australia . Of course, that company is now in grave difficulty because Australian manufacturers will be able to set up in competition with him without his having advantages in the form of export incentives. In particular I have been concerned about potatoes because of the number of potato growers in western Victoria-in the south-west and in the Ballarat area- who have been concerned about their inability to compete with their New Zealand counterparts. New Zealand has a lower wage structure than does Australia. It has a very substantial currency advantage over Australian dollars, and New Zealand manufacturers get export incentives and subsidies worth about 20 per cent, as estimated by Mr Anthony. I believe that over time the currency will balance out these differences, but in the short term there will be difficulties and many adjustments will have to be made. However, that may very well mean that Australian growers, Australian primary producers and Australian secondary industries, ought really to be looking at the opportunities which will arise as a result of this agreement, as well as watching the concerns. Certainly we will watch the agreement with great concern to ensure that people in our areas are not disadvantaged. I shall mention very quickly other problems. For example, inducements are given to companies to establish in a certain area. Local governments and State governments have been known to build roads for companies, give land, reduce rates and subsidise their borrowings, all as decentralisation incentives. These are not properly known by an examination of the tariff barrier but are clearly of enormous advantage and could create great difficulties. In fact, those incentives certainly create difficulties of completion between Australian States . I also mention the problem of manipulation of competition by giant organisations. I hope that will not run astray as the result of this agreement. Question resolved in the affirmative. Annual Report 1981-82 Debate resumed from 25 May, on motion by Senator Messner: That the Senate take note of the paper. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK(New South Wales)(2.26) —I rise to comment on the report of the Defence Force Retirement and Death Benefits Authority primarily because of the impact of the Government's announcement in the economic statement to tax lump sum superannuation payments. My comments will relate in general to lump sum payments. They will relate specifically to service men and women who are eligible for lump sum payments, which are now to be subject to tax. The whole of the system as put forward-I am aware that there are now rapid attempts to alter it-is offensive in every principle. I will demonstrate this first of all in practice and then in principle. Let us suppose that a person, over 30 or 40 years, has contributed to a fund and that fund yields him upon retirement at, say, 60 years of age, the lump sum of $50,000-a small enough capital saving over that time. It would be small enough anyhow because if he invested it at 12 per cent over the years he would then be getting only in the order of $125 a week. That would be a modest enough income on which to survive. What is going to happen to such people? Not only will they be robbed of $15,000 -that is 30 per cent-straightaway but, of course, the capacity of their remaining capital to earn income will also be robbed. Their income will be cut to roughly $81 a week. Taking these as rough figures we can see that, on the one hand, $15,000 will be taken away in capital and on the other, $44 a week in round figures will be taken from them. Let us look at the position of a person who retires at 60 years of age. On ordinary actuarial expectations, he has 17 years of life left to him. The Government is taking away from him not only $15,000 but also that extra $44 a week, which in present dollar terms is something like $39,000. So the Government is managing, under this scheme, to rob people receiving the most modest lump sums-the ordinary trade unionist, the ordinary low wage earner in the public sector-of huge amounts. That is the particularity of the matter. Of course, at the very heart of it is the socialist principle which is so repugnant. The Government is saying: 'We dislike people accruing capital and then using that capital for their own purposes. We will either force them into putting that capital into institutions through buying an annuity and thus destroy the capital and the ability of the people to invest it. Failing that, we will take from them 30 per cent plus the earning capacity of that 30 per cent over the remainder of their life'. The community of Australia is one of the most egalitarian societies on earth. In Australia there are fewer extremes between the rich and the poor than in most other countries. Most people are of moderate means. The Government's action does not affect just a few people. That must be understood, because the suggestion is that superannuation is for wealthy people. The Opposition does not say that at all. Nearly two million employees contribute actively to superannuation funds. There were 1.82 million of them several years ago. The number would be larger now. The incomes of those people range from small incomes of a few thousand dollars a year right through the scale. Those people are being denied their right to accrue capital. I find that grossly offensive. Senator MESSNER(South Australia)(2.31) —I also speak on the report of the Defence Force Retirement and Death Benefits Authority in order to draw attention to the Government's moves to institute a tax on lump sum superannuation payments . As I pointed out during my brief remarks yesterday on this matter, the fact is that people retiring from the fund covered by this report are, generally speaking, in the most modest of circumstances. Indeed, the report shows that the average lump sum payable on retirement of people from the Defence Force is of the order of $38,000-a very modest sum, I believe all honourable senators would agree. In those circumstances, we are not talking about semi-millionaires or people who collect golden handshakes of the order of $300,000, $400,000 or $500, 000. We are talking about average people in average circumstances who, as a result of their service in the Defence Force and perhaps having been transferred around the country or to other places, have had no time to acquire a home and who because of the terms of their employment as members of the Defence Force, are faced with retirement at a relatively early age. I instanced the case of a major in the Army, who by virtue of his terms of employment is required to retire at the age of 45 or thereabouts. A person in those circumstances needs to work at least another 20 years to make his own way and build up some capital for his retirement. How can he be regarded as being in the same circumstances as somebody who is retiring at the age of 65 years who has his best earning years behind him, finished the education of his children, and built up an asset in his home? I would say that person is in a very different category. I believe that people in the Defence Force require consideration, as do a number of others. I would like to draw the attention of the Senate to Mr Keating 's remarks last Thursday night. If we look at page 60 of the economic statement which was made last Thursday night we recall that, included in the lump sum superannuation payments to be taxed were the following items: so-called golden handshakes, other severance payments, contractual termination payments, payments for unused sick leave, amounts other than bona fide redundancy payments-whatever that is; it obviously brings in an element of discrimination-and other amounts which are paid in compensation for loss of office or employment. In other words, there is a distinct category of persons-I presume mostly those in small business areas or those in public or private employment-who specifically will be caught by this legislation and who in no way could be deemed to be in a position of retirement. I think that is one of the critical issues raised in this report and which demand an answer from the Government. One or two other items also require attention. In Question Time today I mentioned the possibility of the Government applying this tax to lump sums payable to widows upon the death of the superannuitant. That has not been denied by this Government. In fact, from answers to questions in the other place by the Treasurer (Mr Keating) indications are that they are to be included. I ask a further question in that regard. Will such a tax, if applied to lump sums paid in that fashion, also apply to whole of life policies which are paid upon the death of the life assured? Will the ordinary proceeds from life insurance also be covered by this legislation? In the terms of the economic statement from the Labor Government it seems they will be. That opens vast questions of the security of-- Senator Walsh —You quote me the section that says that or implies it. Senator MESSNER —Page 60 of the economic statement. Senator Walsh —Quote it. Senator MESSNER —I just did. The further point that I would like to make seems to be the most overlooked point of all in relation to this matter. Surely the Government would have enough nous to realise it if it introduced a system such as this-a taxation of lump sum payments-with the object of catching those people who have the most significant amount to save in taxes; I refer to those who are on the larger end of the superannuation scale, those who may get a $300,000 or $ 400,000 benefit. The Government is providing the means for those people to enter into, to use Senator Walsh's words, the biggest rort in tax avoidance that has ever been established in this country. The Government is giving a wonderful incentive for people to want to do that. I believe that this Government will rue the day that it has considered this matter because it will have to live with the consequence of enormous tax avoidance that will make the bottom-of-the-harbour schemes look like a game of bingo. Senator WALSH(Western Australia-Minister for Resources and Energy)(2.36) —I will reply very briefly. I just want to place on record my contempt for the humbugs in the Opposition who know very well that they should have taken a step along these lines in all the years that they were in government but never at any stage did they have the courage to do it. Question resolved in the affirmative. Annual Report 1981-82 Debate resumed from 25 May, on motion by Senator Martin: That the Senate take note of the paper. Senator COLEMAN(Western Australia)(2.37) —I thank the Senate for the opportunity to speak again on the report of the Australian Film Commission. In my comments yesterday I congratulated the Australian Film Commission on a very comprehensive report but regretted that once again, as with most reports that come into this place, it is much too late to be relevant to the period that the report refers to. Is it not possible for an instruction to go to all the statutory authorities stating that their report should be presented to the Parliament at least during the Budget session when the period that they relate to is at least more relevant than it is now? I am very pleased to notice that the report mentions the audio-visual programs which have been completed and the types of work that are being done for the various government departments, including the Department of Defence, the Department of Transport, the Commonwealth Employment Service and, in particular, the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. But one has to question, almost straight away, whether an audio visual program such as Your Skills in Australia, which details in English work opportunities in Australia for intending migrants, is still relevant, given that there have been a number of changes in policy since the period covered by this report, July 1981 to June 1982. Changes made in policy in relation to trade skills, of course, do frequently apply as we all know. Amendments are constantly being made to legislation which could confuse intending migrants. I refer not necessarily to those people in the United Kingdom but those in other countries who have an intention to migrate to this country. They see a film of this nature, which could be available through our stations overseas, and are made aware that their particular skill is required. They may make an application and find that government policy has changed to the extent that those skills are no longer required. As I have said, a lot of these problems could be eased if we received these reports a little earlier. I have one question relating to the Australian Film Commission. I do not know whether it is in its power to do something about the matter. It was raised with me last October on a Qantas flight when I went to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Conference in the Bahamas. I thought that it was exceedingly strange that where the Australian Film Commission gives monetary support or assistance to the making of a film its distribution is normally undertaken by an overseas company. In effect, this means that Qantas-Australia's own airline-does not have available to it immediately the opportunity to screen those films on the flights leaving Australia or even coming to Australia. I thought it was rather a peculiar circumstance that required, for instance, Mad Max II to be distributed through, I think, Fox International. The Qantas buyer of films has to journey to the United States once every three or four months to be able to initiate a program of films to be shown on Qantas flights. Perhaps that is something that the Australian Film Commission may care to turn its attention to. Such films are Australian made. Most of them are subsidised by Australian taxpayers' money and we do not deny governments their right to do that at all. I congratulate governments-both past and present-on their attitude to the making and subsidisation of Australian films. However, I do question, with the amount of expertise and talent that we have in Australia, whether it is absolutely necessary that we have to use organisations that are primarily located in the United States of America for the distribution of Australian made films on the world market. Question resolved in the affirmative. Ministerial Statement Debate resumed from 19 May, on motion by Senator Grimes: That the Senate take note of the statement. Upon which Senator Chaney had moved by way of amendment: Leave out all words after 'That', insert: ''the Senate is of the opinion that the terms of reference should be amended by omitting paragraph (c) and substituting the following paragraph: '(c) further to the inquiry in relation to paragraphs (a) and (b) above: (i) all the circumstances, including the actions of the Government, surrounding the expulsion from Australia of Mr Valeriy Nikolayevich Ivanov, First Secretary, Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the involvement of Mr Harvey David Mathew Combe in those circumstances; and (ii) whether or not the Prime Minister, the Special Minister of State or any other Minister or any senior Government adviser disclosed confidential information in any way relating to the decision to expel from Australia Mr Valeriy Nikolayevich Ivanov; and' ''. And upon which Senator Macklin had moved by way of further amendment: Proposed sub-paragraph (c) (ii), after 'senior Government advisor', insert 'or the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives and the Leader and Deputy Leader of the National Party in the House of Representatives'. Senator DURACK(Western Australia)(2.43) —Debate on this matter has taken place in the Senate on two previous occasions; we are now coming back to the matter for the third time. Although that may seem to be a lengthy consideration of the matter, it is certainly one of the greatest importance. As time goes on and as the Government becomes more and more embarrassed and evasive about this whole matter, I believe that the Senate is taking a responsible step in giving this question the utmost scrutiny and consideration. The Senate is mainly considering an amendment to the terms of reference for the Royal Commission on Security and Intelligence Agencies, which was the subject of a ministerial statement put down in this place by the Minister for Social Security (Senator Grimes) on the motion that the Senate take note of his statement and, in particular, the terms of reference for that Royal Commission. The Opposition made it clear that it welcomed the setting up of this Royal Commission. The judicial audit of the intelligence agencies and, in particular, of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation accords entirely with the policy that the Opposition pursued when in government and with a promise we made in the election campaign that if we were returned to government we would set up a judicial audit of ASIO before the end of this year. We made that statement in August 1981 when the present Director-General of ASIO was appointed by us. At that time we announced that during the occupancy of that office by the present Director-General we would establish a judicial audit of ASIO. I think it is appropriate that such an audit is made from time to time. The last audit was made some years ago by Mr Justice Hope, and it is particularly fortunate that he is prepared to undertake this exercise again as he has a greater knowledge of these matters than anyone else who might have been invited to do the job. Attention has been focused mainly on the terms of reference of the Royal Commission. Indeed, these terms of reference were very hastily announced by the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke), I think before there had been any Cabinet consideration of it or discussion about it. One term of reference arose out of the highly embarrassing circumstances created by the Government relating to the expulsion of Mr Ivanov and the handling by the Government of the relationship between Mr Ivanov and Mr Combe. One of the terms of reference included by the Government for the Royal Commission to review reads: . . . all the circumstances surrounding the expulsion from Australia of Mr Ivanov-including the actions of the Government-and the involvement of Mr David Combe in those circumstances. Although it is true that that term of reference includes the words 'including the actions of the Government' the Opposition has taken the view that that phrase is not clear enough and does not cover the very serious and worrying circumstances that have taken place since the decision made by the Government on 21 April to expel Mr Ivanov. A whole series of extraordinary and most worrying events has occurred since then. Therefore, we believe that it should be spelt out in the terms of reference that the Royal Commission should take into account all these matters. Accordingly, the Opposition has moved that the terms of reference should be expanded to include the following provision: whether or not the Prime Minister, the Special Minister of State or any other Minister or any senior Government advisor disclosed confidential information in any way relating to the decision to expel from Australia Mr Valeriy Nikolayevich Ivanov. We have done that because we believe that it is important for this Royal Commission to consider these matters and, if the Royal Commission is so minded and believes that it is necessary, to consider whether there has been a disclosure of confidential information by others. Senator Macklin proposes an amendment which will further widen that proposal and include the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives and the Leader and Deputy Leader of the National Party in that House. We certainly have no objection whatsoever to the terms of the Royal Commission being widened to cover fully this situation so that the Royal Commissioner can give the widest consideration to all the matters about which very great concern exists in not only the Opposition but also the Parliament and the community generally. I do not propose to cover again all the circumstances and the issues which have emerged, which have really been created by the abject failure and mishandling of this matter by the Government, particularly the Prime Minister and the Attorney- General (Senator Gareth Evans). When we were debating this matter last Thursday afternoon Senator Sir John Carrick made a most notable contribution. He raised all the matters that I believe are of deep concern. However, I am speaking in this debate because some further, very strange events have occurred since the debate last Thursday. These events surround some of the Prime Minister's actions over the last week and the non-answers to questions which were addressed today to the Attorney-General by myself and Senator Collard in relation to some of these matters. Apparently the Government has decided that, having set up this Royal Commission , it will now hide behind the action that is taken. It has determined that it will not take part in any debate or answer any questions in the Parliament about the matter. Indeed, if any motions are directed against the Government the Prime Minister will simply refuse to take part in the debate. He is obviously running away from a problem. He has obviously something to hide. He obviously believes that he will be able, through confidentiality considerations which attach to this matter and must attach at least to some part of the Royal Commission's inquiry, somehow or other to be protected by this method from properly facing the music, the Parliament and the people. In contrast to the policy that the Prime Minister has followed in this place he has been prepared to be interviewed in the public arena. But he has not been any more forthcoming in that arena than he has been in this place. He has been making some further, extraordinary statements designed to cover up, to obfuscate and to confuse people as much as possible about the role that he has played in this whole sorry and sordid episode. The matters about which I speak were canvassed last weekend by the Prime Minister in an interview with Mr Peter Costigan which was reported in the Melbourne Herald last Saturday. He also went on the Mike Walsh Show, I think it was, on Monday this week. On the Mike Walsh Show he said that he was nothing less than amazed at the gratuitous and insane observations that he should have called Mr Combe in and tipped him off. That is the phrase that the Prime Minister uses. Nobody else has ever suggested that there was a need for Mr Combe to be tipped off or anything of that sort. What had been suggested, what still is suggested and what the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General still have to face up to and answer, is the very real proposition that, having received a report concerning Mr Combe and these very serious allegations about his conduct, Mr Combe should have been given at least some knowledge of the allegations and some opportunity of answering them. It is not a question of tipping him off at all. But that is the way in which the Prime Minister seeks further to evade the issue. That is not the case that has been made against Mr Combe. The Prime Minister, in his interview with Mr Costigan, as reported in the Herald, said on several occasions that he would have been breaking the law if he had given Mr Combe any opportunity to answer the allegations that were made against him. But the Prime Minister has not been able to explain why a Prime Minister and an Attorney-General of this country would be breaking the law by giving someone at least some knowledge of allegations that had been made and an opportunity of answering them. That would be a pretty strange state of our law if that was the effect. Not unnaturally, some questions have been addressed to the Prime Minister as to what law he would have been breaking. No answer has officially been made, although apparently his office fed out that it was the Crimes Act. The matter was again raised in another place yesterday by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Peacock) and the Leader of the National Party of Australia (Mr Anthony) in a matter of public importance, namely: The Government's duplicitous handling of the Ivanov/ Combe affair. The Leader of the Opposition mentioned these matters and others of great concern relating to the question directly involving the Prime Minister. Yet the Prime Minister ran away from that debate. He did not appear; he did not speak in it; and he has not answered or attempted to answer. What law has he broken? What explanation has he for the fact that a number of people knew all about this matter very shortly after the decision was taken on 21 April to expel Mr Ivanov? The decision obviously was made, to some extent, because of the association with Mr Combe; that is at least clear. Large numbers of people seem to have known about that very shortly afterwards. Mr Combe said that the dogs were barking this whole matter before it ever appeared in the Press or any questions were asked in the Parliament. Mr Combe said: 'The dogs were barking it'. They certainly were. They were barking it because of the very obvious lack of security on the part of people who were not authorised to disclose this information to anybody. Obviously there were unauthorised leaks for this situation of the dogs barking it to have occurred. The Prime Minister or the Attorney-General would have been authorised to give some of the information to Mr Combe. It would have been appropriate to give some information. Mr Combe could then have been given an opportunity of answering it, but they did not do so. The Prime Minister is now falling back on this extraordinary argument that he would have been breaking the law. He is not prepared to face the Parliament; he is not prepared to face the questions that are raised; he is not prepared to answer them. He retreats behind this facade that he has established, namely, the Royal Commission on Security and Intelligence Agencies. I have found this a curious and disturbing situation. Today I asked the Attorney-General-a man who is playing certainly the second most active role or perhaps the most active role in these series of events since 21 April-whether he advised the Prime Minister that he would have been breaking the law and what would be the basis of any such advice, or whether anybody else advised the Prime Minister that he would have been breaking the law. What did we get from the Attorney-General? Again, he did not answer. He fell back on the Standing Order that he could not give a legal opinion. He was not asked for a legal opinion; he was asked whether he advised the Prime Minister. He would not answer the question. He is obviously highly embarrassed about the situation and about the strange and extraordinary answers and the story which the Prime Minister has been putting forward to Mr Costigan and on the Mike Walsh Show. The Attorney-General realises what a complete smokescreen this is for the Prime Minister. He is too embarrassed to say whether he gave any such advice. He is certainly too embarrassed to admit that the Prime Minister has sought to evade this question by giving the reason that he would have been breaking the law. There we have it. It is further evidence of the Government's embarrassment, further evidence of attempts to hide, to cover up, to retreat as far as it possibly can behind the barricades that it has created to protect itself from any further examination in this place or by the people of its very strange and disturbing actions from the time when it made the decision to expel Mr Ivanov. The Special Minister of State, Mr Young, has already admitted that, during a four-hour luncheon he had with a Mr Cameron on the day when it was announced that Mr Ivanov was being expelled, he did breach security by saying, before it was ever announced, that the Government was 'kicking out a Russian'. We do know that there was some breach of security at least to that extent by a Minister. We know from Mr Combe and from others, as Mr Combe has said, that the dogs were barking what we now know to be the facts. We have this attempt now to cover up the situation that is well known. That is why we want a specific term of reference for the Royal Commission that these matters should be fully investigated. What an extraordinary state of affairs was revealed today when I asked the Attorney-General: If it was a breach of the law for the Prime Minister to tell Mr Combe something about the matters that were alleged against him when the Cabinet took its decision, why did the Attorney-General sit down with Mr Combe and the Director-General of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation even though the Attorney-General and the Prime Minister tried to make out they had given all the facts to Mr Combe? When questioned further and when Mr Combe went on the Sunday program and said what had happened, the Attorney-General had to admit that only selected versions were given to him. Even if only selected versions were given to him, how is it that that was not a breach of the law? Was it a breach of the law? The Attorney-General does not answer the question. He evades the issue the same as the Prime Minister has evaded the issue and has tried to put a smokescreen over it all. It is for those reasons that the Opposition has moved this amendment. We hope that the Senate will give it support. Question put: That the amendment (Senator Macklin's) to Senator Chaney's amendment be agreed to. The Senate divided. (The President-Senator the Hon.Douglas McClelland) Ayes . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Noes . . . . . . . . . . . 25 —— Majority . . . . . . . . . 2 —— Archer, B. R. Lajovic, M. E. Baume, Peter Lewis, A. W. R. Carrick, Sir John MacGibbon, D. J. Chaney, F. M. Macklin, M. J. Chipp, D. L. Mason, C. V. J. Crichton-Browne, N. A. Messner, A. J. Durack, P. D. Rae, PeterEvans, Jack Reid, M. E. Guilfoyle, Dame Margaret Scott, D. B. Haines, J. Townley, M. Hamer, D. J. Walters, M. S. Hill, R. Watson, J. O. W. Jessop, D. S. Withers, R. G. Kilgariff, B. F. (Teller) Bolkus, N. Harradine, B. Childs, B. K. McClelland, DouglasCoates, J. McIntosh, G. D. (Teller)Colston, M. A. Maguire, G. R. Cook, P. F. S. Primmer, C. G. Crowley, R. A. Ray, RobertElstob, R. C. Reynolds, M. Evans, Gareth Richardson, G. F. Foreman, D. J. Ryan, S. M. Georges, G. Sibraa, K. W. Gietzelt, A. T. Walsh, P. A. Giles, P. J. Zakharov, A. O. Grimes, D. J. Jones, G. N. Missen, A. J. Coleman, R. N. Teague, B. C. Hearn, J. M. Martin, K. J. Robertson, E. A. Collard, S. T. Tate, M. C. Bjelke-Petersen, F. I. Button, J. N. Boswell, R. L. D. Question so resolved in the affirmative. Question put: That the amendment (Senator Chaney's) as amended, be agreed to. The Senate divided. (The President-Senator the Hon.Douglas McClelland) Ayes . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Noes . . . . . . . . . . . 25 —— Majority . . . . . . . . . 2 —— Archer, B. R. Lajovic, M. E. Baume, Peter Lewis, A. W. R. Carrick, Sir John MacGibbon, D. J. Chaney, F. M. Macklin, M. J. Chipp, D. L. Mason, C. V. J. Crichton-Brown, N. A. Messner, A. J. Durack, P. D. Rae, PeterEvans, Jack Reid, M. E. Guilfoyle, Dame Margaret Scott, D. B. Haines, J. Townley, M. Hamer, D. J. Walters, M. S. Hill, R. Watson, J. O. W. Jessop, D. S. Withers, R. G. Kilgariff, B. F. (Teller) Bolkus, N. Harradine, B. Childs, B. K. McClelland, DouglasCoates, J. McIntosh, G. D. Colston, M. A. Maguire, G. R. (Teller)Cook, P. F. S. Primmer, C. G. Crowley, R. A. Ray, RobertElstob, R. C. Reynolds, M. Evans, Gareth Richardson, G. F. Foreman, D. J. Ryan, S. M. Georges, G. Sibraa, K. W. Gietzelt, A. T. Walsh, P. A. Giles, P. J. Zakharov, A. O. Grimes, D. J. Jones, G. N. Missen, A. J. Coleman, R. N. Teague, B. C. Hearn, J. M. Martin, K. J. Robertson, E. A. Collard, S. J. Tate, M. C. Bjelke-Petersen, F. I. Button, J. N. Boswell, R. L. D. Question so resolved in the affirmative. Original question, as amended, resolved in the affirmative. Debate resumed from 5 May, on motion by Senator Teague: That the Senate oppose any aid from Australia to Vietnam so long as Vietnamese military forces are occupying Kampuchea and Laos. Senator LAJOVIC(New South Wales)(3.17) —I support the motion moved by Senator Teague, which states: That the Senate oppose any aid from Australia to Vietnam so long as Vietnamese military forces are occupying Kampuchea and Laos. I support this motion on two main grounds. First, I firmly believe that no aid in time of war to any country could be said to be humanitarian aid. The point is that when a country is in a war situation and is an aggressor, as Vietnam is in this instance, any aid which is supposed to be humanitarian is not humanitarian at all but is in support of the aggressor's regime and army. The second point I make in support of the motion is that this Government, in the speech delivered in this chamber on 21 April by His Excellency the Governor-General, said: My Government will seek to develop close working relations with our neighbours in South-East Asia and the South Pacific to contribute to the stability and security of our region. My advisers seek to ensure that relations with the member nations of ASEAN are placed on the firmest possible footing through closer and more frequent consultations at the highest level. He continued: My Government will maintain its close and wide-ranging relations with Japan, and continue to broaden relations with the People's Republic of China. The fact is that if Australia gives Vietnam aid at this time, while Vietnam is occupying Kampuchea, it would be totally contrary to the very spirit and ideals of the program as pronounced by this Government in the Governor-General's Speech . It would completely undermine our standing vis-a-vis the countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations. As we all know, ASEAN comprises Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. It is interesting to note the reaction of the diplomats of ASEAN countries in Canberra to the statement by Mr Hayden regarding one of the latest attacks in the Thai- Kampuchean border conflict. All representatives of ASEAN countries in our capital have strongly protested against the weak statement by Mr Hayden when he was supposedly condemning the Vietnamese attack. The fact is that all ASEAN countries are opposed to any aid being given to Vietnam until the Vietnamese pull their forces out of Kampuchea. It is interesting to note the reactions of the main ASEAN countries. The comments of the permanent head of Thailand's Foreign Ministry, Mr Asa Sarasm, are reported in an article which states: . . . that resumption of any Australian Government aid to Vietnam would be 'very harmful to our common effort to get Vietnam to agree to a political solution of the Kampuchea question in accordance with resolutions passed by the United Nations and the international conference on Kampuchea'. . . . Thailand would consider resumption of Australian aid to Vietnam in present conditions as 'a somewhat unfriendly act against the free countries in the region and ASEAN in particular'. . . . Australian assistance would help reduce the Soviet Union's economic aid burden to Vietnam and allow it to provide more military hardware to Indo-China. It would also help sustain Vietnam's 'resolve that what it is doing in Kampuchea is the right course and should be pursued. 'In short, Australian aid would help Vietnam continue its military occupation of Kampuchea and remain in Laos (where an estimated 50,000 Vietnamese troops are stationed) indefinitely.' The Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Arun Bunupong, is reported to have said to Mr Hayden when he was in Bangkok: . . . great care would be needed over when and how much aid was extended to Vietnam. A Press article states: Mr Arun said Thailand was not opposed to humanitarian aid to anyone, but there must be a definition of such aid. . . . Even humanitarian aid should be given at the right time . . . It should not result in anyone being able to divert their own resources for aggressive purposes, leaving the raising of the standard of living of its own people to the rest of the world. This is a fact. Whenever aid is given on supposedly humanitarian grounds to a country which is engaged in a war, that aid goes not to the people to whom it is supposed to go but to the people who are fighting the war. They are the ones who benefit from the aid. Let us look at the reaction of General Romulo of the Philippines when it was announced that Australia was considering giving aid to Vietnam. He strongly opposed even a possible resumption of Australian aid to Vietnam which, according to him, would give Vietnam another reason to continue with its territorial occupation and aggression in that area. General Romulo said : We believe that would be fundamentally wrong. Any aid will be interpreted by the Vietnamese as sympathising with their efforts . . . it would undermine ASEAN efforts to continue showing the Vietnamese that they are isolated in the world. We have to make them think they are world pariahs. That could make them think again about their Kampuchean policy. The Foreign Minister of Indonesia, Dr Mochtar, is also strongly opposed to the aid. He made it quite clear that ASEAN countries would protest strongly to Australia if Australia resumed aid to Vietnam. In the Governor-General's Speech the Government said that it would maintain its close and wide-ranging relations with Japan and with the People's Republic of China. It is interesting to note what the Chinese Premier said about supposed aid to Vietnam. When Mr Zhao was on the way to New Zealand and Australia he said: The most important thing now is for the international community to take effective measures to compel Vietnam to withdraw from Kampuchea. All major Western democracies and countries in our region are against any aid to Vietnam. While our Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Hayden, was in Paris, the United States Secretary of State, Mr Shultz, indicated that Washington was unwavering in its support for the Association of South East Asian Nations and the Chinese Government's demands for an unconditional withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Kampuchea and Laos. Everybody is against aid to the aggressor. Let us look at the Australian Labor Party socialists' attitude on this matter. We all know the stance of the left wing of the Australian Labor Party on this issue. The official ALP platform commits the Labor Government to resuming aid to Vietnam. The ALP platform also says that a Labor government: . . . should utilise its relationship with ASEAN to encourage all forms of dialogue between ASEAN countries and Indo-China. The question is: What will the left wing of the ALP do and how long will it be quiet about aid to Vietnam? It is also interesting to note that under the platform laid down by the ALP national conference last July, the Hawke Government is committed to recognising the rights of the East Timorese to self- determination and independence. It is strange that the ALP and the socialists are so keen on independence for East Timor while they are not interested in independence for Kampuchea. Where are the standards? That is a hypocritical statement. They are interested in the independence of one country only, while they could not care less whether the other country is occupied by an aggressor. It is fascinating to observe that the left wing of the Victorian Branch of the ALP pushed through a resolution while Mr Hayden was actually on a trip to talk to the ASEAN countries. The resolution reinforced the party's policy on the resumption of aid to Vietnam. Where is the Government standing on this point? Who is winning on this crucial question? We all know who are the members of the socialist Left in the ALP and we all know that the majority of them are just very clever academics. Let me read this quotation: Give an academic the delusion that he may play an historical role and you can turn any decent scholar into a public hazard. As the Russian proverb says: 'to have a fool is bad, but to have a fool with initiative is worse'. That is what is happening in the socialist Left of the ALP. Mr Hayden on his tour to South East Asia presented his six-point plan regarding the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Kampuchea. The reaction to his plan from General Romulo of the Philippines was quite explicit. He said that there was nothing new in that kind of plan and that the only plan acceptable to ASEAN was a United Nations resolution calling for a withdrawal of troops and for Kampuchean self- determination before any resumption of aid. I am suprised that the ALP and the socialist Left in this instance are not in accord with the United Nations resolution. They have their own point of view which is contrary to United Nations resolutions. Mr Hayden has suggested-I suppose backing down a bit-that any assistance in the future would be small and in the areas of agriculture or teaching programs. However, General Romulo said that even such a small gesture would be interpreted as backing for Vietnam. When Mr Hayden returned from his trip to ASEAN countries he said: The pitch I got from everywhere in South-East Asia, with great force and clarity, was that we should not resume aid to Vietnam. The Chinese were totally emphatic that resumption of aid to Vietnam, which is after all only symbolic, would encourage it to persist in its present policies over the occupation of Kampuchea. The Chinese view was that if Vietnam is serious in its protestations of peace and withdraws from Kampuchea, then China will negotiate its differences, but not before. The ASEAN view is similar. There must be a withdrawal of Vietnamese troops followed by some form of political settlement. It will be interesting to find out what 'symbolic aid' means. If it is only symbolic, what value is it to the people who ought to get it? Symbolic aid could be only a dollar. That is symbolic aid. Otherwise, any aid is more than symbolic , it is helping the aggressor in its aggression towards an independent country. Mr Hayden also said that in practical terms any aid, if Australia gives it, is a million miles down the track. How far is one million miles in socialist jargon? I would like to know that. The next phase was when Mr Hayden proposed his peace role in Vietnam. All the major countries-France, Belgium and the United States of America-rejected that proposal because they had already tried it out. The Vietnamese are just not interested in any peace plan at all. They are interested only in expanding their influence in their region. It will be interesting to see in the next month who is the ruler in the ALP Government. Is it the socialist Left or the Cabinet of Prime Minister Hawke? It will be interesting to see who works for the benefit of Australia and Australian interests in this region. Who is to maintain the credibility and standing of our country towards our neighbours? I support the motion and I oppose any aid to Vietnam. Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK(New South Wales)(3.37) —The Senate is debating the following motion: That the Senate oppose any aid from Australia to Vietnam so long as Vietnamese military forces are occupying Kampuchea and Laos. The test of any foreign policy in this country ought to be the following: What is the policy most conducive to bringing about the peace, welfare, health and prosperity of the people concerned? Which will give them more safety and preserve them from the ravages of war? I want to test the whole of what I say on that basis. Last year I was privileged to go to Thailand and talk to the Ministers and the Prime Minister of the Thai Government about the situation in Kampuchea. I was privileged, with their aid, to visit the borders of Kampuchea and to see the circumstances there, which were as they are today. What did I see ? I saw on the border of Kampuchea the Thai Government, which is a government of peace, a government with no aggressive tendencies towards those around it, committed to putting several military divisions to have an immediate defence preparedness to stop a series of events. Why is it necessary for Thailand to preserve its borders against Kampuchea? First of all, of course, there have been sorties and insurgencies by the Vietnamese across the border, creating the need to defend the border. Secondly, refugees have been fleeing across the border into Thailand. Thirdly, there is the need to protect those refugees who live in the camps in Thailand very close to the border. I was privileged to visit those camps. The Australian community should understand that there were then, and I believe there are now, some 192, 000 human beings, including families and young children, living permanently in those camps with no hope at all of moving out of them; they are caught there by the ravages of the Vietnamese war. I saw in those camps the most horrible sights of mutilated people with limbs amputated by land mines and by the explosive capacity of warfare. I saw, of course, the efforts of the United Nations to help in that regard. I went into the enclave with the United Nations people and saw some 42,000 young and old Khmer women and their children collecting their weekly rice and dried fish rations. They were collecting it under fear. While we were there a few hundred yards away some enemy mortar shells fell and killed and mutilated a number of people. There, clearly, was a situation that is intolerable in the human context. What is not understood-I want to direct my remarks to this-is the very nature of this matter. There is a belief in the community that the circumstances in this area have been created in the last few years. The trouble is that people have never understood that there are two quite different cultures of people in the area of Indo-China. Let me just sketch history. Over most of history there was no Vietnam as it is understood today. The belief that it was only the wickedness of the French wars, the Japanese wars and the recent Vietnamese war that divided Vietnam is a distortion of history. The first thing that must be understood is that what we knew as North Vietnam was for 1,000 years a province of Southern China. Until, I think, 939 it was a province of Southern China totally absorbed in the cultures of China. Its culture was and still remains, in its big wheel Buddhism, a Chinese culture. In the south in Laos, what we knew as Cambodia and what was South Vietnam, there was an entirely different culture, an Indianised culture which is called small wheel Buddhism. The people themselves have an affinity with culture and understanding. Over the years, the province known an Nam Viet, North Vietnam, was bringing its aggression down to the south and across to Kampuchea. I make the fundamental point that Vietnam has been the hereditary enemy of Kampuchea. The real threat has not been South Vietnam but North Vietnam. That has been the hereditary threat not in years immediately past but, indeed, over hundreds of years. Indeed, in the eighteenth century a double wall was built across Vietnam dividing North and South Vietnam. It was only in the passage of a few years that there was some kind of a concord between North and South Vietnam. We have allowed the unification by force of Vietnam. We have brought about the invasion into Kampuchea of some 200,000 Vietnamese. There is absolutely no reason for an outside aggressor to go into Kampuchea. It is a small country, a country of sturdy, attractive people. The Cambodians, or Kampucheans, in the last decade have had their population of seven million reduced by at least one million by bloody slaughter from all sides. The Kampucheans have undergone a series of conflicts. There was the Sihanouk regime up until about 1970. The right wing group displaced him, followed by the ugly Pol Pot regime. There has been trouble there. The fact of the matter is that the Vietnamese have moved in under a pretext. They have not just moved a handful of peacekeeping people to handle the six million people but have effected a military occupation, an occupation of some 200,000 people which has caused untold harm and untold hardship. Of course the Vietnamese boast today that they have the third or fourth largest military force in the world. Maybe they have. Of course, they are strongly supported by Russia. The fact is that now the Russians have been able to come out of their ice ridden port of Vladivostok-'Vladivostok' in Russian means eastern capital, but it is an ice-bound eastern capital-and they have come down to Cam Ranh Bay where they have military defences. It is no pretty report that one reads recently that the Soviets are building huge missile sites facing Asia. The bulk of Asia is non -nuclear. What do we find? We find that the Soviet Union is making provisions that could lead to the virtual doubling of its SS20 medium-range missiles targeted on Asia. The Soviet Union now has 108 of the missiles facing Asia, and, in the judgment of officials and experts, the new sites could accommodate about the same number. Why? What is the purpose? If indeed there are, apart from China , no nuclear powers in Asia, what a paradox it is that some people talk about a nuclear free zone when in fact there is a unilateral training of threat from that quarter. I want to make the essential points. First of all, Indo-China has not always been united or of the one culture and nor is it fact that a series of sorties by the French, the Japanese or the Americans have distorted that culture. Over history there have been a series of quite distinctive cultures. The North Vietnamese culture is a Chinese type of culture. Indeed, the Indian or Indianisation culture from Laos and Cambodia across South Vietnam is well described in history. For 1,000 years, North Vietnam, or Nam Viet, was a province of southern China. Indeed over most of the past 2,000 years, there was no unity between the two. I make the point again that the one great threat to and enemy of Kampuchea over the years has been Vietnam, and it has been recognised as such. Senator Georges —By whom? Senator Sir JOHN CARRICK —The history books are full of that fact. I will be very happy to give the honourable senator books to read which tell him the situation chapter and verse. The only unity of that area has been brought about by military force-the force of arms-by the Japanese, the French, and now of course by the Vietnamese. It is a very ugly thing indeed. I have described the conditions that I saw on the Kampuchean border and in the refugee camps, and the conditions in the feeding lines of the thousands and thousands of Khmer people-sturdy, happy people but all caught in the onslaught of war, and all of them literally threatened because some 200,000 Vietnamese troops are in that country. The primary task is to get a world consensus to try to force the removal of the Vietnamese from Kampuchea. There can be no solution to the Kampuchean problem until the Vietnamese forces are removed. Then of course there is the problem of getting a compromise and getting unity within Kampuchea. I sympathise with those who say: 'Look, the war is run by warlords; the people are being hurt; you must give food to and support the people'. But history is against doing that. The fact of the matter is that the more aid that is given to Vietnam in a civil way the more that country is free to turn its resources to military purposes. Vietnam is quite capable of feeding and clothing its people. In any case, it is a member of the Comecon-that is, the east European community-and could draw upon that community for resources. The certainty is that if we gave civil aid to Vietnam we would, however unwillingly and unconsciously, give Vietnam larger potential military muscle. The one thing we want to do is to send a message to the world that we believe the Vietnamese should get out of Kampuchea. It is part of the domino situation. Why would the Vietnamese be there? They have no reason to be there. Therefore, the essential situation is to give it no help, however unwittingly, to aid itself. Honourable senators must recognise that we are talking about countries that have had proud traditions of national identity and culture that have been destroyed. We are talking about people who live in fear of death and disease, a nation which has lost a million people by bloody murder, including civil war, in recent times. This is a horrible thing; it must not be allowed to continue or to escalate. I therefore support the motion. Senator GEORGES(Queensland)(3.50) —I entered the chamber to do some paper work without interruption, only to hear the remarks of Senator Sir John Carrick. Senator Lajovic —Didn't you listen to me? Senator GEORGES —No, but I do not doubt that what Senator Lajovic had to say would have been in the same emotive terms as those used by Senator Sir John Carrick. For a person of compassion-I believe Senator Sir John Carrick to have been and still to be a person of compassion-his reading of the situation in Indo -China is quite hard to understand. Senator Sir John Carrick —It is historically accurate. Senator GEORGES —No, it is not historically accurate. I think the honourable senator reads text books with a particular bias. He has not bothered to get a balanced view of the tragedy of Indo-China, a tragedy which we imposed upon them . By 'we', I mean the Western powers. When we consider the number of times the Indo-Chinese people, in particular the Vietnamese people, have been betrayed, we note that time and again they have been given certain understandings by international communities, and those understandings have been betrayed. When we consider that point we should have sympathy for the position in which the Vietnamese people find themselves. In 40 years, they have been forced into a position of being dependent on one of the major powers because they have been denied by the other major powers the assistance which they needed to recover from the long years of war. I know that Senator Sir John Carrick would not have had the time-none of us here seems to have the time to watch various documentaries that appear from time to time on television-to see the documentary entitled The Ten Thousand Days War which was so vivid in its description of what happened and the misfortune which befell the Indo-Chinese people. Had he seen that documentary, his views today might have been differently expressed. What the Vietnamese people needed and what we refused to give them is understanding. We have allowed ourselves to be caught in an unreal animosity that has forced the Vietnamese people to depend upon the support of the Soviet Union because they receive no support from anywhere else. Before they entered Comecon, the trade bloc, they sought to reach some agreement with the countries in their area. They had depended upon a commitment from the United States that they would receive considerable aid after the war to reconstruct, and they did not receive that assistance. They were then left completely dependent upon the Soviet Union; and the Soviet Union has not failed them. Make no mistake, the Vietnamese did endeavour to reach a non-aligned position. They needed it. They depend very much on that sort of support from their neighbours. Their neighbours , the ASEAN countries, have refused that support. Those countries are the ones to which we are turning for advice as to what we should do in giving aid to Vietnam. When one looks at those countries and the regimes which control them, they would be the last countries we would approach for advice as to what we should be doing in regard to the very vexed question of giving aid to Vietnam. It troubles me that we are not prepared to make a decision to give to Vietnam the small amount of aid that we previously gave it. It was humanitarian aid. If I remember correctly, one expression of that aid was a cattle breeding station in the hills behind Hanoi. It was aid for a very useful and practical purpose. It gave no assistance to any military effort which the Vietnamese might have been engaged in or were forced to engage in. If honourable senators look at the history of Vietnam, if they watch documentaries concerning Vietnam and read of the human experiences in Vietnam, they might recall the complaint of one Vietnamese woman who said: 'The Americans have made beggars of the Vietnamese children'-by Americans I include ourselves-'prostitutes of the Vietnamese women and communists of the Vietnamese men'. It sticks very firmly in my mind that our lack of understanding of the problems which the Vietnamese faced over the 40 or 50 years of struggle, our failure to understand them properly, has perhaps forced them to accept a political solution to their problems to which some of us might not be sympathetic. We must accept a considerable amount of blame. I find it terrifying and unacceptable that we should not be prepared to give aid except with the advice of the United States or the ASEAN countries. Senator Lajovic —Or France. Senator GEORGES —Or for that matter, France, because the record of France in Vietnam or Indo-China does not bear describing. The techniques that the Vietnamese learnt and imposed upon their enemies were forced upon them in a way by some of the French forces in Vietnam. We cannot allow ourselves to go back and consider France's record in that country and the way it imposed oppression on the Vietnamese and Indo-Chinese people as a whole. I find the motion extraordinary, coming as it does from within the Senate, a House of the Australian Parliament representing the Australian people. I find it extraordinary that we should take such an inhuman approach. The conditions of aid appear to be that no aid shall be given until the Vietnamese withdraw from Kampuchea. Let us look at who is responsible for the situation in Kampuchea at present, and recognise and clearly understand the reason the Vietnamese armies remain in Kampuchea. The integrity of Cambodia was destroyed in the first place by ourselves, by the clandestine and illegal bombing and by the penetration of our forces into that country. Let us also understand that what is occurring in Kampuchea at present is a result of support from one of the most horrific regimes of modern time, that is, the Pol Pot regime. The Pol Pot regime received strong support from the People's Republic of China. Make no mistake, the People' s Republic of China, in its power struggle with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, opposed the spread of Soviet influence into the Indo-China peninsula and was prepared to support one of the most horrific regimes of modern time, the Pol Pot regime, in order to prevent Soviet expansion in that area. As a result, a whole people were sacrificed by the Pol Pot regime. If I recall the situation clearly, the Vietnamese incursion into Kampuchea can be compared to the Tanzanian incursion into Uganda to depose another of the dictators who could be described in the same terms as Pol Pot. There is not the same sort of criticism of the Tanzanian incursion into Uganda as there is of the Vietnamese incursion into Cambodia. It was necessary, in view of what was occurring in Kampuchea for the period of that regime. I feel strongly about this subject. One ought to understand the Vietnamese position and the advice that Vietnam was receiving at the time of the last push towards Saigon when the Soviet Union was saying to the Vietnamese: 'You would succeed. What will happen to you will be the same as happened at the Tet offensive. You will fail'. The Vietnamese were receiving the same advice from the Chinese, but for a different reason-because the Chinese did not want them to succeed. The Chinese have continued to apply pressure on Vietnam through the forces which supported and represented Pol Pot. In my mind the People's Republic of China stands condemned for supporting and continuing to support a repressive regime in order to maintain its opposition to Soviet expansionism. The Vietnamese people are victims of its continual pressures in the Indo-China peninsula. The Soviets are the other people who are advising that we ought not be giving aid to Vietnam. I suggest that honourable senators understand and give some sympathy to the Vietnamese people and, in understanding and giving sympathy, do not give support to the proposition before us. We should be giving aid in spite of the advice that we have so far received. We should understand the situation as it exists. We should be encouraging the Vietnamese to withdraw, but in order for them to withdraw we must give support to the existing Government in Kampuchea. My understanding is that at present we refuse to give recognition to that Government. We refuse to give any more than humanitarian aid to Kampuchea. We should be giving far more than that in order to stabilise that Government and to create the conditions which would lead to a Vietnamese withdrawal. The Vietnamese are supporting a federation of the states of Indo-China. Does anyone here object to those people having a federation who, in spite of their different racial backgrounds- Senator Sir John Carrick —If they wish to. Senator GEORGES —They do wish to. Let us create conditions by which they could reach that decision themselves. Let us create the pre-conditions, by some understanding of the difficulties which they face. Let us try to free them from dependence on any one of the super-powers. Let them make their decisions and be free to operate without complete dependence which may lead to dominance from a particular power. We can only do that if we give them some encouragement and the scope to look elsewhere for support. We should not continually create barriers and press for motions such as the one we are discussing. That can only prevent them from being anything but dependent on a super-power for their very existence . In spite of what the honourable senator has said, at present the Vietnamese live in conditions of great deprivation. The amount of support that they are now receiving from the Soviet Union is far less than what they used to receive. In fact the Vietnamese people are worse off since the war ended than they were before because they are not getting the same flow of aid. That is why they need encouragement and support, not opposition. A high priority ought to be given to aid to Vietnam. I regret to say that there is hesitation on this side as well as direct opposition from the Opposition in this chamber. I find it highly regrettable that there is any hesitation at all. We ought to be giving aid and, because it is limited aid and only token aid, it ought not to be withheld for any reason. We should take the firm step of immediately giving aid to Vietnam in order to encourage other countries to do the same and so reduce Vietnam's reliance upon the Soviet Union, which from time to time comes under substantial criticism in this place. Senator ELSTOB(South Australia)(4.7) -Two years ago the honourable member for St George (Mr Morrison) and I visited Vietnam and Laos. We were part of a parliamentary delegation visiting China and Japan, and on the way back Mr Morrison, a Minister for Defence in the Whitlam Government, and I decided to go to Vietnam and Laos. I was very interested in Vietnam. In the early days of the Vietnam war I objected to any intervention in that country. It was a civil war and I believed that any intervention by the Western powers would only drive the Vietnamese people further into the arms of Russian-type communism. Had Vietnam been left alone it would have finished up with a socialist system of government, very similar to that of Yugoslavia, and it would have been in a better situation than it is today. I found a great deal of poverty in Vietnam. There is very little development in agriculture or civil works. All the emphasis is placed on the defence forces-the army and the air force. It has one of the finest defence forces of any country in the world. There is no doubt about that. It has the finest trained troops and probably more battle-trained troops than any other country. Its military equipment is as good as that of any other nation. The Western world has forced these people into this situation. I think it is a great shame people have to rely so much on their defence forces. They fear the world. The Vietnamese have no love for the Russians; I found that out when I was there. The Vietnamese had several arguments with the Russian authorities. It is my belief that if the Vietnamese people were left alone in peace for a period of 10 years their emphasis on the army would be reduced, as it should be. Countries such as Australia should provide civil aid to help that country but we should not do everything. We are providing aid to Laos. I inspected four or five pumping stations on the Mekong River. People there are very happy. They are co-operating in the aid projects. We made certain recommendations. Wherever we went, in Laos or Vietnam, we took embassy staff with us and reports were sent back to the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Tony Street. We recommended that the people there should be left alone. If they were, there should be less emphasis on war. If we and other powers gave Vietnam civil aid, more specialists would be taken out of the defence forces and employed on civilian construction, agriculture, irrigation channels and so on. No country will reduce its military power while it feels, rightly or wrongly that it is under threat. The Vietnamese people feel that they are continually under threat. While they perceive that threat to be there I believe that Vietnam is a danger to our region. Both sides of the political spectrum in Australia should be trying to build bridges and bring peace to this region. It is very necessary to do that. I do not always agree with America. I am not anti-America; I am not anti-anybody. We have a system in this country that is probably unique. We do not overpower a lot of smaller and middle class nations as the United States and Russia do. Australia is in a better position to negotiate and bring about peaceful settlements. I certainly want to see the Vietnamese out of Kampuchea, and we should try to work towards that end. Any country should have the right to decide what type of government it should have. It is not good to take a love or hate stand. Nothing is absolutely white or black. We should try to build bridges and bring about peaceful negotiations in our region. While there is poverty in any area of the world we cannot have peace-and I am convinced of that. While people feel that they are under threat from a number of nations they will not reduce their military power. Military power is a real danger not only to Vietnam but also to all other countries in that region. The only way to reduce that emphasis in Vietnam is to leave the Vietnamese in peace, get them interested in civil construction and redeploy their technicians away from the army. In 10 years the Vietnamese army would be reduced and it would not be considered a threat by any of the member countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations or their neighbours. We should seriously think about how we give aid. Sensible ways can be found through all this mire. Australia should be playing a leading role in building bridges and reducing poverty. It is in our interest. We are a trading nation, and the quicker ASEAN countries, which after all are in our area, achieve a reasonable standard of living the better it will be for everybody. I do not think a hard line should be taken. When politicians go into this region they should pay visits to many of these countries. At least that would give them some insight into what is going on. When we had talks with the Vietnamese and Laotian governments we took along our embassy people. In that way, nothing is hidden. That is the way it should be done. I believe that we should have some independent thoughts on these matters. We should not follow lines that are laid down by other nations. Senator KILGARIFF(Northern Territory)(4.16) —I support the motion: That the Senate oppose any aid from Australia to Vietnam so long as Vietnamese military forces are occupying Kampuchea and Laos. I was very interested in the comments made by Senator Sir John Carrick. Senator Sir John Carrick is the one person who has considerable experience of South East Asia. Not only has he visited South East Asia in the last few years to see for himself the problems that presently exist, but also he has known the people since World War II when he was a prisoner of war there. With his experience, I would be quite prepared to accept the viewpoint that he has put forward in the Senate today. Honourable senators opposite have commented that the people of Vietnam are a complete unit, that they fear the world and their neighbours and that aid should be given to them. Those honourable senators have failed to look inside Vietnam. If they had done so, they would have seen that this militaristic Government oppressed its people in the first place. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese have been forced out of Vietnam because of their Government's attitude to them. We know full well that very many people in Vietnam do not have work and they have difficulties in getting supplies and rations. As I have said we know that hundreds of thousands of people have been forced out. Many tens of thousands of Vietnamese boat people have been lost. The boats have been either wrecked or taken by pirates. Many boat people have come to Australia. In fact, there are many tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees in Australia now. If we spent some time with them, perhaps we would learn more about the situation and find out the reasons why they have had to leave their homeland and their families. Honourable senators would find that they have been forced out by these oppressors-the Vietnamese Government. I believe there is sympathy for the people of Vietnam and for what they are going through now. But surely there is only one way in which this matter can be rectified to bring peace to South East Asia. The Vietnamese Government, not with its defence forces as has been suggested but with its forces that have attacked Kampuchea and Laos and brought misery to a very large number of refugee camps, should retire to within its borders, cease its militaristic action, and stop attacking the refugee camps over its borders. If the Vietnamese Government took this action there would be quite a rush by countries within South East Asia to give aid to these unfortunate people. I refer to the little people of Vietnam, the people who are being oppressed and held down by their Government. One of the problems of course is that Vietnam, in accepting the aid of Comecon, the East European organisation, has allowed-as I think Senator Georges said-the Soviet tentacles to come into South East Asia in the same way as we have seen these tentacles going into Afghanistan. Perhaps our senses have been blunted by the horrific stories that appear weekly in the Press-that tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan are killed by these Soviet forces. I used the word ' blunted' but I should have said that we are appalled and horrified. Although we have seen so much, we do not really appreciate the misery in that country. It has been said-this has not been refuted-that something like $3m a day in military aid goes into Vietnam day after day and week after week. Naturally, when one sees that amount of aid going into Vietnam one is assured that it must have one of the best attack forces in the region. Naturally, as a result, the countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations are fearful of the situation. It is also very clear that these ASEAN countries-Australia is a part of that family-are concerned with the attitude of the present Government. Who would not be? They look upon Australia as a country of stability, a country that is showing all the signs of wanting to assist, to be a part of the South East Asian family and to be more and more a part of the region. Suddenly we say that we are considering giving aid to a country that those ASEAN countries can look upon only as an enemy because of its continuing attack on one of its unfortunate neighbours. I hope-it is quite obvious that the ASEAN countries hope-that the Australian Government will not pursue this course upon which it has embarked. China has opposed Australian aid. The Chinese Premier has told both Mr Hayden and Mr Hawke , on their recent visits, of this strong Chinese opposition. If the Government seeks to resume the aid surely this downgrades ASEAN's importance in Australia's foreign policy priorities. One can conceive the problems the Labor Government now has because of left wing pressures. Obviously, the left wing has sympathy for the Vietnamese Government and the action that Government is taking. If there is any doubt about the dangers of the Vietnamese invasion, we have only to look at its destabilising influence in this part of the world. It is most intersting to note, when we start considering how this Vietnamese fester, sore or boil is causing so much concern in this region because of its destabilising influence, the statement of the former Labor spokesman on foreign affairs, Mr Lionel Bowen, on 11 September 1982. He said: The Australian Labor Party takes the view that generally the presence of armed forces in a country, other than one's own, heightens international tension. That is a very true statement. One can only hope that in time to come the Federal Government will recognise the truth of what Mr Bowen has said and ensure that, at present, no aid will be given to Vietnam. If aid is given to Vietnam it will encourage the Vietnamese people. It will take off the pressure in so very many ways. It will allow them to divert money to military purposes from areas to which aid has been given. Senator Georges —Come on! Senator KILGARIFF —Of course it will. All the direction of effort within Vietnam goes towards its military build up and military support for its attack on these countries. So any aid that we give now will be only a foundation for further efforts in its militaristic attitudes towards its neighbours. I hope that the Labor Government will get the message not just from this motion, but also from the people of Australia who are extremely concerned and from attitudes of its friends in the ASEAN countries. Perhaps the Government will do much better to give aid where it is more needed in the Third World which does not compromise Australia's defence and foreign policy objectives. Senator McINTOSH(Western Australia)(4.26) —I have never heard so much hypocrisy in my life or seen so many honourable senators with such short memories. Do honourable senators opposite remember the five million people who were murdered by Pol Pot? Do they remember those days? Senator Kilgariff —I am remembering the people being murdered now. Senator McINTOSH —Yes. The honourable senator has a short memory for the five million who were murdered then. The previous Government knew months before what was going on in Kampuchea but never lifted a finger to assist the people. The Vietnamese were in Kampuchea. I am not quarrelling about their motives, but the fact is that they went into Kampuchea and they stopped murder. It is no good saying we will not give aid to Vietnam because it will continue to have forces in Kampuchea. That again is hypocrisy by Opposition members. If ever a nation was forced into the Comecon camp, the Vietnamese nation was. They were squeezed out of the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and any other forms of assistance by Australia and America which was owed to the Vietnamese. Nevertheless, they stopped another five million people from being murdered on top of the five million already murdered in Kampuchea. We are talking about stopping aid to Vietnam in the hope that the Vietnamese will withdraw their troops. Who will then be put in? Do members of the Opposition want Pol Pot back? Do they want to be allies with the Association of South East Asian Nations which believes Pol Pot should return? I sincerely hope the Vietnamese do not pull out of Kampuchea until such time as there is a proper plebiscite by the people to choose for themselves who they want, and it certainly should not be Pol Pot. The memories of the Opposition members are short; they have convenient memories . We are talking about aid to assist the Vietnamese troops to continue in Kampuchea. What is the difference between aid and trade when it comes to assisting a country? The previous Government continued to trade with the Russians while bleating about Afghanistan. Is that not assisting them to carry on there? Instead of crocodile tears running down Opposition senators' faces about what has happened to Afghanistan while they are trading with the Russians, they are complaining about a bit of humanitarian aid to the Vietnamese people because of what is going on in Kampuchea. But they conveniently forget what went on in Kampuchea. To draw a red herring-- Senator Hill —Nobody is forgetting. Why do you say that? Senator McINTOSH —Because of honourable senators' attitude. It is only the left wingers, according to the previous speakers. I think that is rather insulting to a lot of people who will not associate with the left wing, but they are just humanitarians who realise the situation, who are crying for a plebiscite to take place. They would like the Vietnamese troops to come out but they certainly do not want Pol Pot back in again. There is no way I would agree to the recognition of Pol Pot irrespective of what the five ASEAN nations do. A red herring is drawn about Timor. I do not hear honourable senators opposite crying about the Indonesian troops in Timor. I feel that this whole motion was really a red herring in the first place. To continue talking in the hypocritical way that honourable senators opposite are about stopping the little bit of humanitarian aid to the Vietnamese people and thinking that that, for some reason or other, will assist to get the Vietnamese troops out of Kampuchea again is hypocritical as Pol Pot would be put in the place of the Vietnamese. There is no doubt about that in my mind. I feel that this motion from the very beginning was nothing but a red herring. Honourable senators opposite have their facts mixed up from beginning to end. They obviously do not know the history of what took place in Kampuchea or they conveniently forgot what took place. Senator HILL(South Australia)(4.33) —The Senate is debating a motion this afternoon in the following terms: That the Senate oppose any aid from Australia to Vietnam so long as Vietnamese military forces are occupying Kampuchea and Laos. This motion was moved some time ago by Senator Teague, and the debate has been continued today. There are considerable areas of agreement on both sides of the chamber despite the last contribution. In particular, I accept what Senator Georges has said, that this is a vexed question. It is a question requiring careful judgment on an examination of all the circumstances. We, on this side of the House, contrary to the belief of Senator Georges, have sympathy for the Vietnamese people. I appreciate, and my colleagues appreciate, that they have been in a state of war almost continuously since 1949; in fact, historically long before then. So we have sympathy for the Vietnamese people. We also have great sympathy-I remind the Senate-for the people of Kampuchea who have obviously suffered considerably under Pol Pot. We never hear any honourable senator on this side attempt to legitimise the performance of Pol Pot. I suggest that honourable senators should look back through the speeches made by the then Foreign Minister, Mr Street. They will see a continual condemnation of the activities of Pol Pot. I think it is fair to say that in considerable aspects we are in agreement with what Senator Elstob has said. We accept that Australia's role in many places in the world should be to build bridges and bring about peaceful negotiation. That has been Australia's attitude to the Kampuchean crisis. We have looked for a peaceful diplomatic resolution of that problem. That was our objective in Government and it remains our objective in Opposition. I want to contribute briefly to this debate by firstly looking at the principle of aid. I am speaking of development and humanitarian aid. I do not think there is any question that any of us are talking about military aid, but I would like to put my views on that subject as a matter of principle and then attempt to apply those views to the situation of aid to Vietnam in current circumstances and, from that, to reach certain conclusions. I anticipate that those conclusions will support the motion moved by Senator Teague. My immediate reaction, as a matter of principle, is that, if there are people starving in Vietnam, we have a moral responsibily to help them. That is my attitude to humanitarian aid and I take that stand in relation to any country in the world. Similarly, I would also normally say that, if people are suffering from poverty, we should be willing to assist with development aid, notwithstanding the political complexion of the donee. That political complexion may not be what we regard as desirable. Nevertheless, we have an international responsibility to assist in those cases. That attitude has been reasonably consistent with that of the previous Government. The reason for this attitude, firstly, is that I accept discontent will increase with misery. If we can relieve or reduce misery by contributing economic aid, we will contribute to reducing the discontent and therefore, will be acting for the betterment of the donee people. Secondly, I believe each nation prospers by the prosperity of others. Therefore, if we contribute to self -sustained economic growth, we lessen the dependence of such countries on others . That policy eventually leads to the introduction of trading markets. I remind the Senate that over 70 per cent of Third World trade is now with developed nations. So I believe economic aid is of benefit to Australia and the developed world from that point of view. Thirdly, I support economic aid to underdeveloped countries because of the potential for closer, more meaningful relations with the West. I believe this can only assist Australia's security. That is particularly so in view of the deplorable record of the Soviet Union with respect to economic aid. I remind the Senate that its total contribution to economic aid is only 0.04 per cent of gross national product, which is not a record of which the Soviet Union should be proud. Of course, that is largely made up of military aid. That gives the West an opportunity to influence Third World countries by its attitude of being willing to contribute to the development of those countries. That spirit was recognised by former Foreign Minister Peacock, in an address to the Australian-Asian Association on 13 September 1976, when he stated: . . . we believe that it is important that the actions of others do not weaken the forces working towards moderation, co-operation and concentration on internal development, and do not limit their range of choices by making them highly dependent on the Communist great powers for the aid they need. For that reason, as a matter of principle, I support the giving of economic aid to underdeveloped nations. However, whilst I normally support humanitarian and development aid, I concede that there is always a danger that the aid will not achieve the designed objective-for example, in relation to humanitarian aid, it will not be used for the purpose for which it was intended but rather will be used for such purposes as feeding troops. Similar considerations apply to development aid. I will reflect upon my experiences, as have other honourable senators today. I particularly recall the situation in Somalia and Ethiopia, where approximately 30 per cent of GNP in each country is spent on the military forces. Both countries are now greatly supported by the Western industrialised world. It is beyond dispute that some aid goes directly to sustain the military forces. It might be said that the provision of aid also indirectly allows such a high percentage of GNP to continue to be provided for military purposes. It is a difficult question. I concede the great reservation that, if we cut out or reduce economic and humanitarian aid to those countries, the population would not be any better off. Would there be sufficient pressure upon government to redirect a proportion of that massive expenditure which is currently spent on military causes? This is the great dilemma with regard to foreign aid, a dilemma to which there is no easy answer, which requires a careful evaluation of all the circumstances, and in the case of Vietnam, which is the subject of this debate, it is obviously a dilemma which requires evaluation of all the circumstances concerning Vietnam's involvement in the occupation of Kampuchea. Now that I have explained my attitude towards aid, I move to look specifically at the subject of this motion. I remind the Senate that the motion does not state that the Senate opposes aid to Vietnam, but that it opposes aid so long as Vietnamese military forces are occupying Kampuchea and Laos. There has been some confusion in the debate today, particularly on the part of Senator McIntosh. I had the impression that the Opposition was being criticised for opposing aid to Vietnam. That is not true. Senator Teague, in moving the motion, indicated from authoritative sources that there are approximately 180,000 Vietnamese troops in Kampuchea at the moment and 45,000 Vietnamese troops in Laos. Those are the circumstances in which we are looking at the question of reintroducing aid. I have never seen it disputed that foreign aid, particularly in the military form by the Soviet Union, enables Vietnam to maintain the huge occupying force in neighbouring countries. It is reasonable to assume that the Soviet Union is giving such major support for reasons which are to the advantage of the Soviet Union. Apparently, that reason is the development and building of a foothold in South East Asia, presumably both to strengthen its military position in relation to China and to be in a stronger military position in relation to the whole South East Asian and Pacific regions. The reinstatement of Australian aid must be considered in light of all of those circumstances. I remind the Senate that, although aid first commenced to a Communist regime under the Whitlam Government, under the Fraser Government in December 1976 it was not only continued but also increased in size. That has been forgotten. The former Government is being condemned by the present Government in this debate for not being prepared to accept our humanitarian responsibilities to Vietnam. It is clearly being forgotten that, under Fraser, aid from Australia to Vietnam was increased. In December 1976, the Fraser Government announced that Australia would provide aid worth $6m over a three-year period primarily for livestock and a dairy product factory. So development aid was being offered. That policy was pursued by the Fraser Government for two years. It was only cancelled on 24 January 1979, upon Vietnam's invasion of Kampuchea. It was cancelled as part of a strong response by Australia and other Western nations to that invasion. Of course, the occupation of Kampuchea continues. Circumstances are roughly the same today as they were at the time of the invasion. I accept statements from people such as Russell Rollason of the Australian Council for Overseas Aid who has emphasised that until 1979 Australian aid programs in Vietnam, such as the beef cattle development and the dairy products factory, were contributions towards overcoming malnutrition, especially among children. I accept that. I would very much like-I am sure all honourable senators on my side would-to see a situation in which Australia can reasonably resume giving aid to Vietnam for humanitarian reasons. I would say that most of us do not believe that a policy of isolating Vietnam is in Australia's best interests. Debate interrupted. Consideration resumed. The CHAIRMAN —The question is that proposed new paragraph (d) of clause 82 (1) be inserted. Senator HARRADINE(Tasmania)(4.47) —I will not keep the Committee for long because I am aware of the problems involved with printing and trying to get this legislation through. I just flag the issue that if we have a community affairs officer surely the Government must realise that in the mind of the public that is now the person to go to with complaints on a range of issues. It would seem logical to clothe that person with the responsibility of receiving the complaints in respect of program standards if, as I have pointed out, a program was otherwise offensive. I admit that of course anyone can contact the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, preferably in writing, with a logical explanation of the reasons that he considers the program was otherwise offensive . Anyone can do that. As has been evidenced by statements made in the Parliament , the ABC does not respond well or in a really considered fashion to those complaints. I just feel that this would be the appropriate person to whom, in the first instance, these complaints as to program standards should be addressed . I just hope the Government will take this matter into consideration and that, when it comes back to amend this legislation, it does so with a recognition of this proposal. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry and Commerce and Minister Assisting the Minister for Communications)(4.49) —There is no hostility to Senator Harradine's suggestion. I have indicated to him that we are not prepared to accept the amendment at this stage, but we are certainly prepared to examine it in the context of a general re-examination of these provisions at a later stage. Amendment negatived. The CHAIRMAN —The question is that Senator Harradine's amendment (2) be agreed to. Senator HARRADINE(Tasmania)(4.50) —I have moved my second amendment which seeks to delete clause 82 (2). This amendment clothes the community affairs officer with the right to refuse to investigate a complaint if it is his opinion that the complaint is frivolous, vexatious or not made in good faith and that the complainant does not have sufficient interest in the subject matter of the complaint. This matter has been given a canter over the field and I do not wish to debate it again. I raise the point that this sub-clause clothes the complaints officer with, in my view, too much of a bureaucratic power. If, as is sometimes the case, the complaints commissioner sets a large number of complaints which he may consider to be vexatious or nuisance-type complaints, the principal community affairs officer, under the proposition in my next amendment, need not notify each of the complainants if, having regard to the number of complainants, it would be burdensome so to do. Even a crackpot-I suppose that is a value judgment; who is to say that we are not crackpots-surely has a right to complain. I propose that we delete that sub-clause. The CHAIRMAN —Is there any objection to my putting amendments (2), (3) and (4) together? Senator CHANEY(Western Australia-Leader of the Opposition)(4.51) —I indicate very briefly on behalf of the Opposition that we propose to oppose the amendment to sub-clause (2) which is presently before the Committee but to support the subsequent amendment to insert a new sub-clause. I would prefer that the amendments be taken separately. I do not know whether we will go to a division on this matter. I do not know the attitude of the Australian Democrats. I formally indicate on behalf of the Opposition that we do not support this amendment. We think it is a useful provision although, of course, in practice some of the difficulties and dangers Senator Harradine has mentioned may occur. I hope the Government will again be prepared to look at that provision in the light of actual operating experience. However, we can see some value in having the subsequent paragraph added to the Bill which simply ensures that complainants learn the result of their complaint unless there has been some undue burden placed on the officer concerned. The CHAIRMAN —In view of those remarks I intend to put amendment (2) separately and amendments (3) and (4) together. Senator CHIPP(Victoria-Leader of the Australian Democrats)(4.53) —The Australian Democrats very strongly support the thrust of what Senator Harradine has just said. We, too, are very apprehensive that this sub-clause gives an extraordinary amount of discretionary power to community affairs officers. In particular, we are concerned that under the provisions of clause 82 (2) (b) a community affairs officer has the discretion to determine whether a complainant has a sufficient interest in a subject. That seems to us to give enormous discretionary power to a community affairs officer. However, we have been guaranteed by the Government and by the Minister for Industry and Commerce ( Senator Button) who is also the Minister Assisting the Minister for Communications-this is on the record-that when the first reports of the community affairs officers hit Parliament which, I assume, will be in August 1984, the Government will be revising this section in the light of those reports . Because of that guarantee, at this stage we would go along with the Government and not vote for Senator Harradine's amendment to remove this sub-clause. But we do share his concern. Amendment (2) negatived. The CHAIRMAN —The question now is that Senator Harradine's amendments (3) and (4 ) be agreed to. Senator HARRADINE(Tasmania)(4.55) —My amendment (3) really should be supported by the Government because it provides the reporting mechanism whereby the community affairs officer notifies a complainant about what has happened to his complaint. That is fair enough. Someone complaining about an error of fact in a program, to become aware that the community affairs officer has decided that the complaint is justified and that the Managing Director has ensured that the Corporation makes a prompt apology or retraction, will have to watch television- ABC television, mind you-all day and all night. Presumably what I am proposing here will be done by the community affairs officers. All I am suggesting is that it be included in the legislation that the Principal Community Affairs Officer notify each complainant of his decision and the reasons for the decision in relation to the complaints. I know that the argument against that is that a whole lot of complaints will cost the ABC too much in postage stamps and would be very burdensome. That is why I have proposed new sub-clause (4B) which states : Sub-clause (4A) does not require the Principal Community Affairs Officer to notify each of the complainants if he is of the opinion that, having regard to the number of complainants, it would be unduly burdensome to do so. I think that is reasonable. I also think that is probably what will occur anyhow . I see no reason why the Government should not go along with that. I will seek leave to withdraw amendment (4), but before doing so I wish to make the point that I knew that this matter was covered somewhere in the legislation. I have gone through it again and I believe it is probably covered by the definition of 'television program', which is 'images and associated sounds intended for reception by the general public', and the definition of ' broadcasting program'. So, I assume that my amendment (4) is not now required. If I am wrong, the Government could attend to that in the Budget session. Therefore, I seek leave to withdraw that amendment. Leave granted; amendment withdrawn. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry and Commerce and Minister Assisting the Minister for Communications)(5.0) —Having examined the definition of 'television program', I believe Senator Harradine's view with regard to the withdrawn amendment to be correct. If we are not correct, we would certainly be prepared to look at the situation. Amendment (3) requires the Principal Community Affairs Officer to notify complainants of decisions and of the reasons for decisions. There can be no objection to that. I think Senator Harradine, with the second part of the amendment, gets into the difficulty that he accused us of getting into this morning. He said that if a community affairs officer had to deal with too many of these complaints he might have to make a decision that, because of the postage or time involved, he could not notify all complainants. That is another example of the elitism of which Senator Harradine accused us this morning. A community affairs officer would have to make a judgment to answer say, A, B and C but not to answer the rest because too many are involved. I am not criticising Senator Harradine for that. I recognise the quite genuine attempt to get round a practical problem. I am just saying that there are difficulties in writing provisions at relatively short notice and construing them. The Government has no substantive problem with the intent of Senator Harradine' s provision that the community affairs officer should notify complainants. I only remind him-in a sense, he covered one of these points himself-that if the community affairs officer finds a complaint established, the rectification of that complaint is published on Australian Broadcasting Commission programs and, of course, there is a requirement to report to Parliament annually. I do not see either of these things as reasons for rejecting Senator Harradine's amendment. We reject it on the basis that the Government had relatively short notice of it. I think Senator Harradine will concede that. We are quite prepared to examine the spirit of it in the context of a review of these provisions at a later stage , but we cannot accept the amendment today. Senator CHANEY(Western Australia-Leader of the Opposition)(5.2) —I make it clear that the Opposition supports this amendment of Senator Harradine. We agree that he picks up the difficulty in proposed new sub-clause (4B) which he was complaining about with respect to the discretion given in the earlier sub-clause . But on balance we think this is a sensible provision. While noting the Government's reason for not accepting it, we believe that it would not add to the burden of administering the section and would be an additional safeguard for complainants. Senator HARRADINE(Tasmania)(5.3) —I really must respond because the Government obviously has no objection to what is contained in this proposition other than that it did not receive the proposition until recently. Well, 'recently' was about midday yesterday. I really feel that that is sufficient time for the Government to consider it. At 5 o'clock today the Government had had 36 hours notice of the amendment. The amendment is unexceptionable. It is probably what will occur anyhow. It is not, as Senator Button said, an application of elitism; that is to say, that certain complainants will be told and other complainants will not be told. The point of elitism that I raised this morning dealt with equality of access to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in regard to complaints. We can ring the Chairman of the ABC and get through. Members of the ordinary rank and file can ring the Chairman of the ABC but will they get through? That was my point this morning. The only point I make in proposed new sub-clause (4B) is with regard to, say, a substantial write-in campaign whereby the ABC gets hundreds of thousands of letters on the same issue. The Principal Community Affairs Officer has to report to Parliament. But if he is of the opinion that, having regard to the number of complainants, it would be unduly burdensome so to do, he is not required to make the notifications. Presumably this would be in the event of a complaint being unjustified. If it were justified, of course, the procedures that are laid down in clause 82 (5) would apply. I simply ask the Government: Is it or is it not a fact that this Committee is debating legislation which has already been printed and is ready to go to the House of Representatives without amendment? If that is the way we are to deal with legislation I think it is an insult to this chamber. If this sort of argument about the House of Representatives rising, shooting through and leaving the Senate is used next week, if we cannot move amendments to vital legislation next week on that excuse, that will be an insult to each and every member of this chamber. Senator Hill —And the people who have put us here. Senator HARRADINE —And the people who have put us here; so far as I am concerned , let not the Government raise that argument next week. I presume that that is what it is doing here. It accepts the gravamen of my argument on this amendment but it is not prepared to allow it to go through, presumably because it is all cut and dried, because up to page 52 of the Bill is at the Government Printing Office about to be printed and when the Printer gets the message it will be printed. Question put: That the words proposed to be inserted (Senator Harradine's amendment) be inserted. The Committee divided. (The Chairman-Senator D. J. Hamer) Ayes . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Noes . . . . . . . . . . . 29 —— Majority . . . . . . . . . 5 —— Bjelke-Petersen, F. I. Kilgariff, B. F. Boswell, R. L. D. Lajovic, M. E. Carrick, Sir John Lewis, A. W. R. Chaney, F. M. MacGibbon, D. J. Collard, S. J. Messner, A. J. Crichton-Browne, N. A. Rae, PeterDurack, P. D. Reid, M. E. (Teller)Guilfoyle, Dame Margaret Scott, D. B. Hamer, D. J. Teague, B. C. Harradine, B. Walters, M. S. Hill, R. Watson, J. O. W. Jessop, D. S. Withers, R. G. Button, J. N. McClelland, DouglasChilds, B. K. McIntosh, G. D. (Teller)Chipp, D. L. Maguire, G. R. Coates, J. Mason, C. V. J. Coleman, R. N. Primmer, C. G. Cook, P. F. S. Ray, RobertCrowley, R. A. Reynolds, M. Elstob, R. C. Richardson, G. F. Evans, Gareth Robertson, E. A. Evans, Jack Ryan, S. M. Foreman, D. J. Sibraa, K. W. Gietzelt, A. T. Tate, M. C. Giles, P. J. Walsh, P. A. Grimes, D. J. Zakharov, A. O. Haines, J. Jones, G. N. Missen, A. J. Hearn, J. M. Martin, K. J. Question so resolved in the negative. Clause, as amended, agreed to. Remainder of Bill-by leave-taken as a whole, and agreed to. Bill reported with amendments; report adopted. Bill (on motion by Senator Button) read a third time. Consideration resumed from 17 May, on motion by Senator Gietzelt: That the Bill be now read a second time. Question resolved in the affirmative. Bill read a second time. The Bill. Senator CHANEY(Western Australia-Leader of the Opposition)(5.15) —I ask the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Senator Button, again to respond to the question raised by Senator Harradine as to whether the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Bill and the Australian Broadcasting (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill are printed and ready for submission to the House of Representatives. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry and Commerce and Minister Assisting the Minister for Communications)(5.16) —I am quite unable to answer the question in respect of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill. Insofar as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Bill is concerned, I am unsure. Bill agreed to. Bill reported without amendment; report adopted. Bill (on motion by Senator Button) read a third time. The PRESIDENT —I have received the following message from the House of Representatives requesting the concurrence of the Senate: Message No. 51 MR PRESIDENT, The House of Representatives transmits to the Senate the following Resolution which was agreed to by the House of Representatives this day and requests the concurrence of the Senate therein: That the resolution of appointment of the Joint Standing Committee on the New Parliament House be amended by inserting after paragraph 3 the following new paragraph: '(3A) That the committee consider and report on the use of the Provisional Parliament House after it is vacated by Parliament.'. H. A. JENKINS SPEAKER House of Representatives, Canberra, 25 May 1983 Motion (by Senator Button) agreed to: (1) That the Senate concurs in the Resolution transmitted to the Senate by Message No. 51 of the House of Representatives relating to the variation of the resolution of appointment of the Joint Standing Committee on the New Parliament House. (2) That the foregoing Resolution be communicated to the House of Representatives by Message. The PRESIDENT —I have received the following message from the House of Representatives requesting the concurrence of the Senate: MR PRESIDENT, The House of Representatives transmits to the Senate the following Resolution which was agreed to by the House of Representatives this day and requests the concurrence of the Senate therein: (1) That the following matters be referred to the Joint Committee on the Broadcasting of Parliamentary Proceedings for inquiry and report: (a) the televising of the proceedings of the Houses of the Parliament and their committees in the present and the new Parliament House; and (b) the radio broadcasting of the proceedings of the Houses of the Parliament and their committees including the continuous and simultaneous broadcasting of both Houses. (2) That the committee, for any purposes related to this inquiry, have power to send for persons, papers and records. H. A. JENKINS Speaker House of Representatives, Canberra, 26 May 1983 Motion (by Senator Button) agreed to: (1) That the Senate concurs in the Resolution transmitted to the Senate by Message No. 50 of the House of Representatives relating to a reference to the Joint Committee on the Broadcasting of Parliamentary Proceedings. (2) That the foregoing Resolution be communicated to the House of Representatives by Message. Bill returned from the House of Representatives with a message intimating that it had made the amendment requested by the Senate. Bill (on motion by Senator Button) read a third time. Ministerial Statement Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry and Commerce) —by leave-I wish to make a statement on the economy and seek leave to have the statement incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The statement read as follows- ECONOMIC STATEMENT Introduction It is now just over a month since representatives of governments, employers, trade unions and other sections of the Australian community met in this place, as participants in the National Economic Summit Conference, to exchange views on the serious problems facing Australia and to discuss how to deal with those problems. Since then, the Government has given intensive consideration to many of the major issues discussed at the Summit and referred to in its communique. Following the general agreement reached then for the establishment of an Economic Planning Advisory Council, we have had further discussions with representatives of other governments, of the trade unions and of business, and have decided upon the detailed arrangements for the Council. Legislation to give effect to those arrangements will be introduced in the House in the current session. The Economic Planning Advisory Council will therefore shortly be a reality and through it we shall continue the process of information sharing and consultation initiated at the Summit. Similarly, we are participating, along with employers, unions and other governments, in conferences before the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission which have been called in accordance with the request in the Summit communique to develop the option of a return to a centralised wage system. In other specialised forums we have furthered the process of consultation with a view to reaching agreed solutions to the problems confronting particular industries or regions. Such processes must lead in the end to policy decisions by each of the participants, including by governments. As the Prime Minister said in his opening address to the Conference, this Government cannot escape and does not wish to escape its primary and fundamental responsibility for the economic and social policies of the nation. Since the Summit we have been pushing ahead with the necessary policy decisions to give effect to our basic objectives of promoting economic growth and creating additional employment. Tonight I outline the decisions we have reached on substantive changes to expenditure and taxation programs and associated monetary policy issues. We have been determined to act with speed so that any uncertainty as to the broad nature of our intentions should be resolved as soon as possible and the processes of recovery set in train. Equally, however, we have been determined not to rush into decisions which require more thorough study and deliberation. We have no intention of indulging in the wholesale reversals of policy which have been all too frequent in this country in recent years and which have done much to generate uncertainty and shatter not only the confidence of business but also the aspirations of thousands of unemployed Australians. The decisions which I shall shortly announce should be taken as indicative of the directions in which we will be moving in the months and years ahead and, in particular, in the Budget for 1983-84 to be brought down on 23 August. We have of course also been guided by the nature of the economic problems highlighted in the Summit discussions-most particularly, the parlous budgetary situation which we have inherited. This background requires further elaboration before I turn to our specific decisions. Agreements from the Summit As reflected in the communique, widespread agreement at several levels was reached among Summit participants. First, there was agreement on the basic facts of the economic crisis. Naturally, individual perceptions and emphases differed somewhat, but there was broad recognition: That unemployment is unacceptably high and is still rising, and that the burden of unemployment has fallen unequally upon the various groups in our society; that inflation must be brought under control if the economy is to recover and lasting jobs are to be created, a view since heightened by the release of the March quarter consumer price index figures; that profits are depressed to historically low levels and that recovery must come here, too, if economic prosperity is to be restored; and finally that, particularly when the economic cake has been shrinking, moderation in claims for a share of that cake is required, a recognition that underlies the need for burden sharing which has been central to our decisions now to be announced. Secondly, there was substantial agreement about the factors which had contributed to our economic malaise and which must be addressed if that malaise is to be overcome. In particular there was widespread recognition of the role of : Unrealistic expectations, generated for political ends, which had resulted in large increases in real wage levels for some and unemployment for others; high interest rates, resulting from erratic and inconsistent application of monetary policies in a high inflation environment; and the pervasive but largely unavoidable consequences of the recession abroad and drought at home. Finally, there was agreement on the general approach necessary to deal with our problems. Sustained economic growth must be restored and, contrary to the policies of the previous Government, inflation and unemployment should be tackled simultaneously. That is, of course, a very demanding approach. The interrelationships between inflation and unemployment were widely acknowledged in the Summit discussions. To combat inflation and unemployment simultaneously cannot merely involve allotting one policy to reduct inflation and another to tackle unemployment. On the contrary, in these as in other regards policies must be complementary and mutually supportive. The Economic Context As I have said, participants at the Summit were in general agreement in their assessment of the current economic situation. Because of that agreement and because such a wealth of information was made public at the Summit, it is not necessary for me to repeat all that now. I should, however, note in passing the more significant information which has become available since the Summit and briefly review the economic outlook as we presently see it. Recently released statistics indicate that: Price inflation, as measured by the consumer price index, remained high in the March quarter; wage increases moderated in the March quarter and real wages declined slightly-however, average weekly ordinary time earnings for full time adult workers were still 2 per cent higher, in real terms , than a year earlier; employment continued to fall in April and, after allowance for seasonal influences, unemployment continued to rise; and the balance of payments has strengthened with capital inflow remaining high. That latter point-the strength of capital inflow-appears to be associated, at least in part, with some strengthening of optimism and confidence since the Summit. In particular: The somewhat better prospects for the international economy have received further confirmation, including at the meeting of senior Ministers from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries held in Paris last week; widespread rains have broken the worst drought in many areas; the flow of housing finance has continued at the higher level established in February; and interest rates have fallen. As I noted in my address to the Summit Conference, we expect some improvement in economic activity in the course of 1983-84 with the main impetus coming from: The fiscal stimulus implicit in the Commonwealth Budget for 1982-83 and in prospect for 1983-84; the improvement in the international economy; a marked slowing in stock decumulation so that a greater proportion of increased demand will be met from additional production; the improved prospects for farm production and exports; the pick-up in dwelling construction already under way; and finally, but of fundamental importance, the improved prospects for ongoing moderation of income claims as the prices and incomes accord is implemented. Private sector spending is not expected to improve within that time frame and business fixed investment is expected to fall substantially further before it picks up. If the expected pick-up in total activity is to be sustained beyond 1983-84, it will be a central task of policy to ensure that this imbalance is corrected; that is, that growth spreads through the private sector as well as the public sector. The expenditure and revenue decisions we have reached have had that consideration very much in mind. We are aware that the improvement in demand will take some time to lead to additional job creation. Accordingly we have given particular emphasis to the early introduction of direct job creation schemes. At the same time our decisions, overall, have been directed to the ongoing requirement of improving the general economic climate. Given that approach, and the implementation of our incomes policies, we would expect the pick-up in activity to be accompanied by a significant reduction in inflation and an improvement in profit levels. Budget Policies I turn now to the general objectives we have pursued and the general principles we have applied in reaching our present decisions. At the broadest level, as I have said, the objective has been to frame our budgetary policies to contribute both to reducing unemployment and to winding back inflation. In operational terms, that means looking to fiscal policy to stimulate employment directly but without placing intolerable burdens on the conduct of monetary policies or distorting the general economic environment needed to support the prices and incomes accord. Achieving the right balance is, of course, no easy task. The Government is well aware that if the balance were not right-if the Budget were expanded too rapidly-there would be increased pressures on interest rates and on the balance of payments. Should that occur, any direct increases in employment flowing from the Budget would be offset-perhaps more than offset-by indirect falls in employment as private sector spending decisions were curtailed . That said, we have come to the judgment that a substantial increase in Budget programs and hence the Budget deficit from 1982-83 levels can occur in 1983-84 without incurring those risks. Fundamental to that judgment is our determination to see the prices and incomes accord implemented along the lines agreed at the Summit and to see that the accord is adequately supported by appropriate monetary policies. I shall have more to say on that later. We believe that inflationary expectations are already on the wane. It is critical to the success of our expansionary fiscal policies that they remain so. We have had to judge how large the 1983-84 Budget impact should be to meet the requirement of stimulating employment without detracting from our efforts to reduce inflation. And we have to do that in the context of a prospective deficit for next year approaching $10 billion on the basis of the ongoing programs of the previous Government. We have said categorically-and I maintain-that such an outcome is simply not on. It would entail too many risks for the policy of sustained growth that we have in mind, risks connected with interest rates and the balance of payments, and indeed with the safe conduct of the prices and incomes accord. In order to provide for productive job creation activities, while minimising those risks, we have therefore been obliged to offset the additional expenditures involved by rather greater reductions in the previous Government's programs. In approaching that task we have been heavily influenced by the guidance given by the Summit. In particular, we have focussed upon the central concept of equality of sacrifice and, where savings have had to be found, we have sought them in areas where those affected can most readily afford to shoulder the burden. In taxation, our long-standing policy has been to restore equity. We are committed to providing the Commissioner of Taxation with the legislation necessary to achieve that end. In the Budget sittings we will introduce further legislation and will continue to support the Commissioner in this and all other possible ways in ensuring that the tax burden is once again correctly spread across the community. Without this action we cannot expect the community to share with us the view that we all have an obligation to pay our fair share of taxes. Without this action the opportunities for taxpayers to opt out of the tax paying system will continue to grow as they began and were sustained under the previous Government. It is our overwhelming conviction that such a burden sharing approach is in the interests of the Australian community at large and particularly those most affected by the economic recession. Policy Decisions In this light the Government has reviewed many of the programs of the previous Government and is proposing a number of new programs. We have placed emphasis on creating new jobs, on increasing activity in the housing industry, on directing assistance to those in need and on removing unwarranted concessions. Many programs we have inherited are ill-suited to meet the current economic problems which Australia faces. They are also poorly designed to meet the needs of low income earners. We found that a substantial proportion of the costs of tax concessions announced in and immediately prior to the 1982-83 Budget by the former Government-amounting to around $3,000m-first come to account next financial year . The Liberal Government which preceded us went beyond the limits of fiscal responsibility in increasing commitments to outlays and tax expenditures and reducing taxation through 1982 in a desperate attempt to retain office. But even more reprehensibly, it concealed the extent of the fiscal imbalances which it was creating from the Australian people, and arranged for the bills for its extravagance to be presented a year later, in 1983-84. When we have raised these points before, Opposition members have said that they would have changed their policies had they been re-elected. Perhaps they would have; the Australian people remember the fistful of dollars before the 1977 election which was taken back after the election. I have no doubt that the Opposition will find fault with some of the measures that we are announcing tonight. But they cannot have it all ways. If they say that they would taken steps to reduce the 1983-84 Budget deficit by as much as we will do in this statement, or more, then they accept our measures or propose alternatives. What would they have done? What would they have done for job creation and housing? What tax expenditures would they have amended? I look forward to hearing their alternatives. I outline below the major initiatives of the Government from this initial review. Details of all affected programs are summarised in a paper I now seek leave to have tabled. Further information is to be provided to Parliament by relevant Ministers. Retirement Incomes Retirement incomes are heavily supported from the Budget, both directly through the provision of age and Service pensions and indirectly through generous tax concessions for occupational superannuation. On the outlays side, some of the assistance is directed to high income earners because of the income test-free component for pensions of persons aged 70 and over. On the revenue side, the $2 billion or so of assistance for occupational superannuation goes mostly to people who are neither needy nor poor and largely fails to achieve one of its principal objectives-the promotion of more effective self-provision in retirement. This is because benefits are principally being taken in the form of lump sums rather than pensions. The present tax provisions also facilitate tax avoidance arrangements under which an employee's pay is deferred so as to be taken in a lump sum termination payment at the end of his or her employment in a particular job. Against this background, the Government has undertaken a comprehensive review of existing policies relating to retirement incomes and has decided to take three significant measures to rationalise the present system. These measures are designed to ensure that outlays on pensions are more effectively directed to those who need them, that tax concessions for occupational superannuation achieve their purpose of encouraging genuine provision for retirement incomes, and that retirement benefits provided in different forms are treated on a fairer basis than in the past. First, the Government has reviewed the taxation treatment of certain lump sum payments which are presently exempt from tax entirely or are subject to tax on only 5 per cent of the amounts received. In general, and subject to certain exceptions detailed in a paper I now table, lump sum payments received after tonight for services after tonight will be subject to taxation-in most cases at the standard rate of tax of 30 per cent-unless converted into a pension or annuity or rolled over into another superannuation fund within a short time. In order to encourage retirees to use lump sum benefits to secure an income in retirement, such payments will be exempt from tax entirely if converted into a continuing retirement income in the form of a pension or annuity. That part of a lump sum which comprises a person's own contribution which have not attracted a tax rebate or deduction will also be exempt from tax. I emphasise that the proposed fuller taxation of lump sum payments does not apply to payments in respect of services up to the present time. This means that lump sum payments in the years immediately ahead to people who have been contributing to a superannuation fund for some time will continue to be largely exempt from taxation. It also means, of course, that employees need not consider retiring before they would otherwise have done so in order to ensure that the lump sum benefits they have already earned are treated according to the present tax rules . Lump sum amounts in respect of services up to today, whenever in the future they are made, will enjoy taxation treatment no less favourable than they would have received if paid today. The changed taxation treatment of lump sum payments is estimated to yield only $15m in additional revenue in 1983-84, but thereafter gains to revenue will increase by approximately $50m a year to a peak of about $ 420m. Our second initiative in the area of retirement provision is that we have decided to take action to encourage people to convert assets, including lump sum retirement benefits, into regular incomes. To this end, we propose to amend the Life Insurance Act and the Income Tax Assessment Act along the general lines recommended by the National Superannuation Committee of Inquiry under Professor Hancock and the Taxation Review Committee, the Asprey Committee. This will make it possible for life offices and superannuation funds to sell annuities on more attractive terms than at present. We will also review present arrangements under which the return of capital component of an annuity is taken into account in the age pension income test. The changes we propose to the treatment of annuities, together with the proposed arrangements for exempting lump sum payments from taxation, if used to buy pensions or annuities, will assist retired people to obtain secure incomes during their retirement. The Government expects that these reforms will help to ensure that tax concessions for superannuation achieve their intended purpose, and reduce present incentives for people who have the capacity to provide their own retirement incomes to arrange their affairs so as to become eligible for benefits intended for the needy. Some technical aspects of the new arrangements in relation to the taxation of lump sum benefits, such as the precise method of determining the portion of lump sum entitlements relating to service before the date of announcement, and the action we propose to take to facilitate the sale of annuities, will be decided after consultation with interested parties, including the life offices and superannuation funds. The consultations will also canvass the possible introduction of new types of securities, including indexed bonds, which could assist the institutions concerned to meet the needs of retired people in ways that are consistent with the Government's objectives. The third major measure we have decided to take in relation to retirement incomes is to introduce an income test on the component of age and service pensions for persons aged 70 years and over which is presently paid free of any income test. Only persons with substantial private incomes will be affected. Single pensioners with non pension incomes up to $200 a week, and married pensioner couples with non pension incomes up to $333 a week, will continue to receive the same pension as at present. Above these amounts, the current income- test-free component will be reduced by $1 for every extra $2 of non pension income received. Entitlement to part pension will therefore continue for single persons aged 70 years or over with non pension income up to about $303 per week and for married couples with non pension income up to about $505 per week. The proposed new arrangements will come into effect from 1 November 1983 and are estimated to reduce Budget outlays by $167m in 1983-84. For decades successive governments have grappled with the problem of providing decent support for the aged. That problem has been almost totally bedevilled by the way in which the available resources has been sprayed around indiscriminately. The measures I have announced tonight provide a firm basis for the development of a secure system of retirement incomes that aged people deserve. Repatriation Pensions In addition, we propose some changes in the method of disbursement of repatriation pension payments. These are currently paid by cheque fortnightly in advance, or by direct credit to a nominated bank, building society or credit union account twelve weekly in arrears. The Government has decided that from 23 June 1983 all direct credits of repatriation pensions will be made fortnightly in advance. Letters outlining the conversion and explaining the arrangements will be sent to veterans. Health The Government's election health policy statement made it clear that the rebate for basic health insurance premiums would be abolished to help finance the Medicare arrangements. It will be abolished in respect of contributions for basic health insurance coverage after 30 June 1983. Premiums paid in 1982-83 to provide coverage up to 30 June 1983 will attract a rebate in assessments for the 1982-83 income year. The resultant savings in taxation revenue are estimated at $95m in 1983-84 and $550m in 1984-85. At present, the Commonwealth contributes to the Hospital Benefits Reinsurance Trust Fund to assist hospital insurance organisations to help meet the cost of the insured chronically ill. The Government's election health policy statement made it clear that on the introduction of Medicare the Commonwealth would reduce its contribution to the Fund. In view of the impending introduction of Medicare, and the budgetary situation, the Government is to reduce by $80m to $20m the intended contribution to the Hospital Benefits Reinsurance Trust Fund in 1983-84 . Under the pharmaceutical benefits scheme there are a number of multi-branded pharmaceutical products which bear different rates of subsidy. The Government has decided that for such generally equivalent pharmaceutical products, the price differential between the highest and lowest price brands should be reduced as soon as possible to no more than 5c. Savings in 1983-84 are estimated at $6m. Education An income test is to be applied to the living allowance payable to full time adult migrant education program students. This will bring treatment of such payments into line with payments to part time students of the program and other equivalent allowances. Savings in 1983-84 and in subsequent years are estimated at around $3m. Industry-Transport The maximum cost differential payable by consumers for the freighting of certain petroleum products, at present 1c a litre, will in future be indexed in line with increases in the consumer price index. As an initial step, the differential will be increased to 1.1c per litre on 1 June 1983. This measure will save about $10m in 1983-84. In lieu of an increase in air navigation charges during 1983-84, the rate of excise on AVGAS and AVTUR will be increased by 2c a litre from 1 July 1983. This will ameliorate the sharp deterioration in the rate of recovery of costs incurred by the Government in the provision of aviation services. This increase will yield $15m in 1983-84. Proposed expenditure in 1983-84 on the redevelopment of the Brisbane Airport has been reviewed and estimates have been reduced for 1983-84 by $20m to an estimated $50m. The target date for completion, 1987, has not been affected by this revision. The Government has decided to suspend and defer certain projects under the aerodrome local ownership plan and to institute a thorough review of the costs and benefits of the plan. Savings in 1983-84 are estimated to be $8m. We shall provide $5m in 1983-84 to complete initial design and route identification works on the Alice Springs to Darwin railway. Commonwealth assistance to the Northern Territory is very generous. In 1982-83, total per capita payments to the Northern Territory will be about $5,600-about five times the average level of per capita payments to the six States. In the light of this , and the significance of the rail project to the Northern Territory, we believe the Northern Territory Government should share with us the cost of constructing the railway. We intend to proceed on the basis that the Commonwealth and the Northern Territory contribute 60 per cent and 40 per cent respectively to construction costs. Part of the Commonwealth's contribution would be funded by transferring about $60m currently allocated to upgrading the Stuart Highway in the Northern Territory. Should the Northern Territory not accept this approach, the Commonwealth would be prepared to provide, in place of the railway, a high standard road link from Alice Springs to Darwin by 1987 and additional rail facilities for Alice Springs to provide an efficient transport alternative. The Commonwealth is proceeding this way in light of the prevailing budgetary situation, and the fact that it is plainly uneconomic to proceed simultaneously with both the construction of the Alice Springs-Darwin railway and the major upgrading of the parallel road link. Communications The Government has taken an in principle decision to sell up to 49 per cent of its equity in Aussat Pty Ltd to allow private sector participation in the ownership of the national domestic satellite communications system. The sale will be subject to an appropriate spread of shareholding and to the development of satisfactory arrangements being in place to protect the public interest, which may include regulation of satellite services to ensure co-ordination with terrestrial services. The Government is to increase the interest rate payable on that part of the interest bearing capital of Telecom Australia which is still subject to a 10 per cent per annum rate. The increase will provide $100m in 1983 -84. Telecom will determine-with the consent of the Minister for Communications -how to fund this additional payment and the need for an expanded capital program in 1983-84. As an illustration, in a full year the additional interest charge could be met by a one cent increase in the cost of local calls, a commensurate increase in short and medium distance subscriber trunk dialling charges and a $10 increase in annual telephone rental fees. As noted in the paper prepared for the Summit on price surveillance by the Government: Public utility prices need, of course, to be high enough to cover operating costs, to provide an adequate return on capital, and to produce sufficient internal funds to finance new investment without undue reliance on loan markets: But the community would not expect prices to be raised to accommodate unauthorised wage demands or as an expedient to raise revenue for other Government purposes. Moreover, when introducing the paper I said that the Government was: Not seeking to encourage uneconomic pricing arrangements: Public utilities, like private corporations, must earn their keep. Other Industry Measures The Government has decided to terminate the special depreciation arrangements for storage facilities for petroleum fuel and the taxation concessions available in respect of conversions or replacements of oil-fired and liquefied petroleum gas-fired plant. These incentives were introduced to provide a short term boost to investment in these areas following the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war in 1979 . That purpose has been achieved and the concessions will now be terminated. Since the 1977-78 income year the primary producer averaging provisions have had the effect that tax is calculated at the rate on average income only in years when current income exceeds average income. Ordinary rates are applied in other years. Those arrangements-sometimes described as automatic in-out averaging-attracted criticism for several reasons. The most obvious objection is that they went beyond the objective of removing tax effects of fluctuations in incomes, and gave taxpayers with access to averaging a clear tax advantage over others. As well it became advantageous for those with access to averaging to have their taxable incomes fluctuate and disadvantageous to do anything to stabilise them. That made it impossible for the income equalisation deposit scheme to operate as intended; the in-out averaging threw the system out of gear . Commencing with the 1983-84 income year the rate on average income will be applied every year. The present arrangement limiting the amount of non-primary production income which is subject to averaging will remain. It is estimated that this measure will yield about $15m in 1983-84 and $20m in subsequent years. There are some unsatisfactory features of the income equalisation deposit scheme other than those caused by the present averaging arrangements. The Government is developing a new IED scheme to provide an incentive for farmers to set aside in good years money for use in poor years. Approval of the Loan Council will be sought for its introduction, with its first application to deposits after 31 August 1983. Some features of the scheme will be outlined in a separate statement which I now table. The measure is expected to cost less than $1m in 1983-84; the budgetary effect in later years will depend on the response to the new scheme. Under the depreciation measures announced by the former Government on 19 July 1982, depreciation over either 5 years or 3 years was to be allowed under the general depreciation provisions. As part of that package, the period of depreciation of certain primary production plant, including improvements for the storage of hay, grain or fodder, was reduced from 5 to 3 years. The Government this week introduced legislation to honour the previous Government's announcement last year that these provisions would apply from 19 July 1982. However, the Government considers that the reduction to 3 years goes beyond what is reasonable. It is clearly anomalous when compared to the deductions for capital expenditure allowed to other industries. Accordingly, the deduction period for those plant items is to revert to 5 years, with effect for plant acquired under a contract entered into after today or commenced to be constructed by the taxpayer after today. The Government is mindful of the cash flow problems of many farmers this calendar year in the aftermath of the drought. The extension of the period of depreciation for primary production plant affected by this measure will not have a large effect until the 1984-85 financial year, mainly the first half of 1985. Revenue from this measure is estimated to be $9m in 1983-84, rising to $44m in 1984-85, $89m in 1985-86 and $128m in 1986-87. Following a comprehensive review of the previous Government's water programs, we have decided not to proceed with the supplementary program of the previous Government's proposed Bicentennial Water Resources Program. However, in its preparation of the 1983-84 Budget, the Government will be considering a continuation of the previous Government's National Water Resources Program which has been in operation since 1978-79. We have also decided to allocate funds under our employment generation initiative for the establishment of a Country Towns' Water Supply Improvement Program, and we will be discussing guidelines for this important program with the States in the near future. The Government is seeking Loan Council approval to allow the Australian Wheat Board to borrow overseas to help finance its advance payments to growers. This will allow the Board to reduce hedging costs on overseas sales and to take advantage of any lower overseas interest rates. Subject to Loan Council approval , the Board will be able to borrow overseas up to an annual limit of not less than 50 per cent of its prospective net borrowing requirements. Approval will also be sought if borrowings beyond that level are judged to be appropriate in any year in the light of the prospective monetary situation, the prospective borrowing requirement and borrowing costs. Thus, there is no further need for the interest subsidy which has previously been provided to the Australian Wheat Board's borrowing. Accordingly no subsidy will be paid after 30 June 1983. Savings are estimated to be $19.8m in 1983-84 and about $30m in subsequent years . Housing Following discussions at the Summit, the Government has moved quickly and positively to ensure that housing will play a major role in economic recovery. We have been encouraged in this task by the strong co-operation from State governments, the housing industry and the financial institutions. Our plan is responsible. Assistance will be directed only to those in need. We will avoid the risk of overheating in the industry. After very careful consideration the Government has decided to seek to achieve house commencements at an annual rate of 130,000 to 135,000 in the second half of 1983-84. The housing industry, including the building unions, have clearly indicated to us that this rate should be achievable without significant resource constraints and wage or other inflationary pressures. This will be sought by measures designed to lift both public and private dwelling activity. We will retain the option for the States to nominate part of their Loan Council funds for use in public housing under concessional terms and conditions. So long as we are confident that this does not lead to any diminution of effort by the States in this area of acute need, direct Commonwealth funding for public housing will be increased from $333m in 1982-83 to $500m in 1983-84, an increase of 50 per cent. We will implement our election promise and introduce the First Home Ownership Assistance Scheme from 1 October 1983. This will provide, on an income tested basis, assistance of up to $7,000 for a family with two or more children, $6,500 for a family with one child and $5,000 for other eligible first home buyers. This subsidy will enable lower income home buyers to borrow more, thus reducing the deposit gap, or to reduce the repayment burden, or both. The new scheme will be subject to the same income test as that applying under the existing Home Deposit Assistance Scheme. The maximum grants will be available to home purchasers with a family income of up to 135 per cent of average weekly earnings with assistance tapering to zero at 155 per cent of average weekly earnings. The test applies to taxable income in the year before purchase. For those purchasing in 1983-84 the limits applying to taxable income in 1982-83 are $24,300 for a full grant tapering to zero at $27,900. In deciding upon this new scheme, the Government has reviewed the operation of the existing schemes of assistance for home buyers and concluded that they are neither efficient nor effective in targeting assistance to those in most need and in providing a stimulus to the housing industry. In addition, because of the multiplicity of arrangements and their complexity of operation, the existing measures have proved so confusing to home buyers that, in many instances, benefits are not being taken up. The Government has decided therefore,with one important qualification, to terminate or phase out the operation of existing schemes. The existing Home Deposit Assistance Scheme will be terminated from the date of commencement of the new First Home Ownership Assistance Scheme. Eligible first home buyers who purchase between today and the introduction of the new First Home Ownership Assistance Scheme will be able to apply for assistance under the Home Deposit Assistance Scheme. Total outlays on the Home Deposit Assistance Scheme, until its termination, and the new First Home Ownership Assistance Scheme will be $120m in 1983-84, increasing to $165m in 1984-85. Consistent with our policy of directing Government assistance to those most in need, we will be terminating from 30 June 1983 the housing interest rebate introduced last August by the Fraser Government. This was a highly inequitable scheme, the great bulk of assistance going to high income earners able to take out large loans. The losers were the prospective home buyers on a modest income who received little assistance if they were able to buy a home and none at all if they could not. They will gain from tonight's measures, which will have the effect of putting home ownership within the reach of many more Australians. In order to meet our social commitments and obligations, we will continue the special home loan interest tax rebate introduced in March 1982 for low income first home buyers who enter the scheme on or before 30 September 1983. The scheme will continue on an income tested basis with the income limits set at the same level as the new First Home Ownership Assistance Scheme. This will ensure that the lower income first home buyers, who have entered home ownership at a time of high interest rates, will continue to receive assistance to the end of their fifth year of first home ownership. No new entrants to that scheme will be accepted after introduction of the new First Home Ownership Assistance Scheme. The full or partial abolition of the previous government's schemes will save $ 130m in 1983-84 and $420m in 1984-85. In addition to the steps taken to stimulate demand the Government is concerned to ensure that there is an adequate supply of housing funds at reasonable interest rates. We have received assurances from the banks and building societies that they will be able to increase their lending significantly in 1983-84 and against the background of our target rate of commencements, we will be consulting further with financial institutions regarding the availability of housing finance. Other Tax Expenditures and Concessions Under an anti-avoidance measure introduced by the former Government, unmarried minors currently pay tax rates of 46 per cent or higher on unearned income above $1,040 per annum. The original announcement indicated that the threshold would be $416, but it was later set at $1,040. The $1,040 threshold has come to be exploited in many tax minimisation schemes, and a reduction in it is necessary to control this. The threshold will be reduced to $416 from the beginning of the 1983-84 income year; the new shading-in range will be from $417 to $1,372. The measure will yield nothing in 1983-84 but $70m in the first full year. A concessional rebate at the standard tax rate is available to taxpayers on the excess of expenditure over $1,590 on certain eligible items such as superannuation contributions, life insurance premiums, net medical expenses, education expenses and private rates. The rebate costs over $100 per annum but only about 10 per cent of taxpayers derive any benefit from it. It has been decided to increase the threshold amount of eligible expenditure for rebate purposes to $2,000 with effect from the 1983-84 income year. This is expected to result in a gain to revenue of $11m in 1983-84 and $70m in 1984-85. It has been decided to abolish, as from 1 July, 1983, the rebate available on up to $1,000 of dividend income of individual taxpayers which was introduced in the last Budget. While some features in the taxation treatment of dividends, resulting from the interaction of the personal income and company income tax systems, have been criticised in recent studies, such as the Asprey and Campbell reports, the Government does not believe that the dividend rebate introduced by the previous Government was an appropriate or equitable response. In some circumstances the rebate would aggravate rather than reduce inequities. Indeed, it has much in common with a measure which the Asprey report described as an ' unacceptable alternative to the present system'. Abolition of the rebate is expected to increase revenue by $75m in 1983-84 and $105m in 1984-85. Friendly societies do not currently bear tax on investment income from their life insurance and disability and accident insurance business. This has placed friendly societies at a distinct advantage over life insurance companies and has been a growing cause for concern. With the assistance of tax exemption their business has grown rapidly in recent years, and has involved policies of a kind which are of a concern from tax avoidance viewpoint. The Government has decided that the exemption for friendly societies on life, disability and accident insurance business will be terminated in respect of 1983-84 and later income years. Measures will be introduced to impose tax at a level comparable to that on the non-superannuation business of life insurance companies. Further details will be announced at a later date. This measure will not affect revenue in 1983- 84, but will add to it in 1984-85 and later years, and preserve revenue which would otherwise be forgone. Generally, interest payable to non-residents from Australian sources is taxable under withholding arrangements at the rate of 10 per cent of the gross amount. There are some exceptions to this rule, two of which were criticised in the Campbell report as having discriminatory and distorting effects. Those two are the 'Australian Entity' exemption and the exemption for interest on borrowing by the Australian Industry Development Corporation. The Government has decided that interest arising on moneys borrowed under contractual obligations entered into after tonight by 'Australian entities' as defined in the present legislation and by the Australian Industry Development Corporation will be subject to interest withholding tax. Interest on existing loans will continue to be exempt. Exemption will continue to apply to interest on widely held overseas loans of a 'bearer bond' nature, borrowings by the Commonwealth and State governments, and borrowings by Commonwealth and State authorities where the Treasurer is satisfied that the authorities are not in direct competition with private sector enterprises. It is estimated that this measure will yield $12m in 1983-84 and $ 26m in 1984-85. Under section 77 of the Income Tax Assessment Act losses from exempt activities such as gold mining may be deducted against the taxpayer's income from other sources. From the commencement of the 1983-84 income year those losses will not be deductible. The Government is concerned at the potential that this provision has for tax avoidance uses, of which there are already indications. This measure does not change the current exemption of gold mining income from taxation. Labour and Employment The Government is to introduce legislation in the current session of Parliament to establish for a period of three years a Community Employment Program. In 1983 -84 $300m will be provided for this program. It has also been decided to introduce a Private Sector Assistance Program to replace the Special Youth Employment Training Program and to increase funding for other manpower and training schemes. Overall, some $733m will be allocated in 1983-84 for these activities, an increase of $383m or about 110 per cent over 1982-83. The $300m provided for the Community Employment Program, together with $100m for continuation of the wages pause program in 1983-84, will be allocated to projects which have the capacity to provide new jobs, particularly for those most disadvantaged in the labour market. The objective will be to generate a level of activity in 1983-84 consistent with supporting in a full year 70,000 full time jobs for an average duration of six months. It is intended that the projects supported will lead to improved local community facilities and services, including improved roads and country water supplies. All levels of government and community organisations will participate in the Program, and projects will be selected through joint Commonwealth-State consideration. Special arrangements will apply to projects in the Australian Capital Territory and projects to be conducted by Commonwealth departments and authorities. The Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations (Mr Willis) will be making a detailed statement on the job creation initiatives by way of a second reading speech on the introduction of the relevant legislation. Overview of Fiscal Measures The new expenditure initiatives I have just announced will add an estimated $ 557m to outlays in 1983-84. The savings I have just announced on the expenditure and tax expenditure programs of the previous Government are estimated to total $ 985m in 1983-84. These decisions take into account the fact that we have a longer term structural Budget problem arising from the policies of the previous Government. We shall have to deal-and we shall-with that problem and, in this connection, I direct the attention of honourable members to the longer term savings involved in many of the measures announced tonight. In total the figures indicate that, on the basis of present estimates, gross savings on the policies of the previous Government will increase to an estimated $2,036m in 1984-85 and to $2,190m in the following year. Those are significant savings and represent an important initial contribution to the task of implementing the Government's priorities within the context of responsible fiscal policies. I stress again that we view the implementation of our policies, and the review of those of the previous Government, as a continuing process in which the decisions announced tonight should be seen as the initial steps. That process will be furthered in many ways, including in discussion with State governments in the Premiers Conference and Loan Council meeting at the end of June. In that context, we will be looking to increase the State authorities' domestic or overseas borrowing programs for 1983-84 to ensure that, in conjunction with other measures, there will be scope for real growth in those authorities' capital expenditures next year. Concluding Remarks Mr Speaker, I wish to underline the importance which our Government places upon the success of the prices and incomes accord and the monetary policies necessary to support it. By reducing the Budget deficit for 1983-84 below that implied by the policies of the previous Government we will be reducing the financing task and hence the burden upon monetary policy. But that financing task, and that burden, will still be considerable-and will be coming on top of a monetary situation which our predecessors had for some time allowed to drift and which, as a consequence, is already most unsatisfactory. To take only the current financial year, the previous Government set itself a target for growth in the money supply, M3, of 9-11 per cent for 1982-83, but by March this year that target was already virtually out of reach. In the 12 months to March, M3 increased by 12.4 per cent and the average increase for the year to date was already at the top of the previous Government's target range. Yet the monetary expansion effects of the last Budget are heavily concentrated in the current half year. That is to say, with the real push in monetary expansion from the Budget only just recently coming through, the monetary target had already been allowed to drift out of reach. Monetary growth as rapid as the current level of 12 per cent or so is not consistent with this Government's objectives and prompt action is necessary to bring it down. Accordingly, and in keeping with the previously foreshadowed timetable, the Treasury is announcing this evening the details of a bond tender considerably larger than had previously been thought likely to be necessary. The tender will be for an amount of $1,500m , which is $400m larger than any previous tender. I trust that this will indicate to all concerned our determination to pursue appropriate monetary policies-not merely, as was the case with the previous Government, by rhetoric, but by action. We are determined, as I have said, to achieve a monetary environment in which our prices and incomes accord will succeed and non-inflationary growth can be sustained. I would like to dwell for a moment on that latter point-the requirements for success of the prices and incomes accord. In particular, I want to deal with the criticisms which have been levelled at the Government from some quarters because it did not, in the course of the Summit, give more support to the type of wage outcomes contained in scenario C rather than those in scenario A. To refresh our memories, I note that Scenario A assumed a national wage case in the second half of this calendar year leading to a general wage increase of about 3 per cent, to be followed by a return to indexation of wages in the first half of 1984; scenario C, on the other hand, assumed that the wages pause would be continued to the end of 1983, with only partial indexation to follow thereafter. Accepting all the qualifications which must be placed on such exercises- qualifications which I went out of my way to stress in my own address to the Summit Conference-it is true that scenario C indicated both lower inflation and lower unemployment than did scenario A. The Government does not question that conclusion. We have promoted the need for wage restraint and that approach found acceptance by all participants in the Summit. But it is necessary to look not just at immediate requirements but also at the institution of a prices and incomes policy which can be sustainable over the longer term. Many of Australia's economic problems in recent years were created by the deliberate tactics of the previous Government around the time of the 1980 election in generating unrealistic expectations regarding the magnitude of the wage increases which industry could afford. It would be equally dishonest and equally disastrous-because it simply would not be sustainable-if we went to the other extreme and sought to deny any wage increases at all this year. That would indeed be, to quote Samuel Johnson, a triumph of hope over experience. It is true that the degree of understanding of these issues has been enhanced by the Summit and subsequent discussions. It is equally true that there is still a long way to go and much more to be done to foster that understanding. It is the Government's view, therefore, that in this as in other matters, there must be a sense of proportion, a sense of balance. The Government, for its part, has pursued that balance-in its approach to the budgetary decisions I have announced tonight and, as I have just indicated, in its approach to the prices and incomes accord. Unless the same balanced approach is pursued by all, however, the consensus reached by the Summit will not endure. In concluding, therefore, may I refer again to the notion of equality of sacrifice which is implicit in the prices and incomes accord and which, as I have already noted, has been a guiding principle in the budgetary decisions I have now announced. I cannot stress too strongly the fundamental importance of that principle in the current economic circumstances. Some of the changes we have made to the previous Government's programs were overdue and would have been desirable in any circumstances. Some, however, will result in the removal of benefits which might perhaps have been justified in better times. It is the Government's belief that the Australian ethic of a fair go provides the will to share the burden. This was the message that the Government received at the Summit. There is no practical alternative to a fairer sharing of restraint if we are to return to a healthier economy in which living standards can rise and jobs can become available to all Australians. The Government believes that the measures announced tonight provide for a reallocation of incomes and opportunities which is both fair and conducive to economic recovery. With the consistent application of the principles underlying tonight's measures to our further Budget deliberations and monetary policy decisions, we believe that Australia is now well positioned for national reconciliation, reconstruction and recovery. I commend the measures to honourable members. Attachment A MAY STATEMENT OF ECONOMIC MEASURES: FUNCTIONAL SUMMARY ESTIMATED OF ADDITIONS TO AND SAVINGS ON THE 1983-84, 1984-85 and 1985-86 BUDGETS Additions (+) Savings (-) 1983-84 1984-85 1985-86 $m $m $m Education- Income testing of living allowances payable to full-time Adult Migrant Education Program students undertaking TAFE and On-arrival and On-going courses -2.97 -2.97 -2.97 Health- Reduction in the Commonwealth's contribution to the Hospital Benefits Reinsurance Trust Fund *-80.00 *-80.00 *-80.00 Abolish income tax rebate for basic health insurance from 1 July 1983 *-95.00 *-550.00 *-575.00 Reduce to no more than 5 cents the difference in prices for multi-brand pharmaceuticals -6.00 -6.50 -7.00 *-181.00 *-636.50 *-662.00 Social Security and Welfare- Reinstitute income test for age and service pensions paid to persons aged 70 and over -167.00 -188.00 -167.00 Pay certain repatriation pensions a fortnight in advance to bring into line with other repatriation pension payments -43.00 +27.00 +30.00 Tax, generally at standard rate, certain lump sum payments received after announcement in respect of services provided after date of announcement -15.00 -70.00 -120.00 -225.00 -231.00 -257.00 Housing- Terminate, from 1 October, 1983 the Home Deposit Assistance Scheme -50.00 -90. 00 -90.00 Establish, from 1 October, 1983 a First Home Ownership Assistance Scheme +80.00 +165.00 +190.00 Provide additional funds for Welfare Housing + 127.00 * * Terminate, from 1 July 1983, the (Budget) Housing Interest Income Tax Rebate Scheme -50.00 -175.00 -175.00 Terminate, from 1 October 1983, the ( March) Housing Interest Income Tax Rebate while preserving some continuing benefit to low income earners -30.00 -155.00 -190.00 +77.00 *255.00 *265.00 Economic Services- A. Transport and Communications Increase in rate of excise on aviation fuel (avgas and avtur) by 2 cents a litre to reduce the deterioration in the rate of recovery of costs of aviation services -15.00 -15.00 -15.00 Reduction in proposed expenditure on Brisbane Airport -20.00 -1.00 . . Suspend and defer elements of the Aerodrome Local Ownership Plan -8.00 -0.50 . . Alice Springs-Darwin Railway Construction with 60% Commonwealth: 40% Northern Territory share of construction costs -20.00 -29 .80 -45.50 Sale of 49% of Commonwealth's 100% equity in AUSSAT -24.30 -11.00 - 1.50 Telecom and Australia Post-increase interest rate on interest bearing capital -101.00 -101.00 -101.00 -188.30 -158.30 -163.00 B. Water Supply Electricity and Gas Not proceed with the Supplementary Water Resources Program -70.00 -70.00 -70. 00 C. Industry Assistance and Development Allow Australian Wheat Board to borrow overseas; remove the subsidy payable to the Board for additional cost of commercial borrowings in Australia vis a vis Reserve Bank borrowings -19.80 -29.30 -29.30 From 1 June 1983, increase from 1c to 1.1c a litre the non-subsidised part of the cost of freighting certain petroleum products. Index the 1.1c a litre in line with CPI increases -10.00 - 11.00 -12.00 Primary producer averaging-abolition of in-out provisions; Income Equalisation Deposits-increase interest rate -15.00 -20.00 -20.00 Extend the period, from 3 to 5 years, over which primary producers can depreciate certain plant and equipment -9.00 -44.00 -89.00 Terminate special depreciation allowance for petroleum storage from date of announcement . . -10.00 -10.00 Terminate special tax concessions for conversion of oil-fired and LPG-fired plant from date of announcement . . -15.00 . . Section 77: Transfer of losses from tax exempt activities to be terminated . . n.a. n.a. -53.80 -129.30 -160.30 D. Labour and Employment Terminate the Special Youth Employment Training Program -35.40 -89.90 -96.20 Establish a Community Employment Program involving additional outlays of which: Jobs on Roads ($70m) Commonwealth Departments' and Authorities' Projects ($50m) +300.00 +447.00 +453.00 State/Local Government/Community Authorities' including water Projects (around $180m) Additional Allocation for Manpower and Training Programs (including Private Sector Assistance Program) +50.40 +315.00 +357.10 +356.80 General Public Services- C. Foreign Affairs and Overseas Aid Reduce the planned activities of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs at overseas posts -0.27 -0.27 -0.27 Other Tax Expenditures and Concessions- Reduce current $1040 threshold of income of minors to $416 from 1 July 1983 . . -70.00 -70.00 Increase, from 1 July 1983, the bloc concessional rebate level from $1590 to $2000 -11.00 -70.00 -75.00 Abolish, from 1 July 1983, the $1000 Dividend Rebate -75.00 -105.00 -115.00 Remove exemptions from interest withholding tax for interest from borrowings by AIDC and from interest on borrowings which pass the ''Australian Entity'' test -12.00 -26.00 -33.00 Place the income tax treatment of Friendly Societies in respect of their life insurance and their disability and accident insurance business on a par with that of life insurance companies . . n.a. n.a. -98.00 -271.00 -293.00 TOTAL *427.34 *1 397.24 *1 516.74 * These gross savings will form part of the financing of Medicare. * Additional outlays in later years will be determined in the Budget context each year. * See footnotes (*) and (*). . . No additions/savings expected. n.a. Figures not available. Attachment B SUPPORTING STATEMENT BY TREASURER, THE HON. P. J. KEATING ON NEW TAX ARRANGEMENTS RELATING TO RETIREMENT LUMP SUMS The Government proposes, with effect after today, to change the income tax rules that apply to those lump sum retirement and kindred payments which are currently assessable as to only 5 per cent of the amount paid. In this category are payments from superannuation funds on retirement through age or invalidity or on earlier cessation of an employment, 'golden handshakes' and other severance payments, contractual termination payments, payments for unused sick leave and amounts, other than bona fide redundancy payments, paid in compensation for loss of office or employment. Certain other lump sums which have their origin in untaxed remuneration or other income but under existing law are not taxed at all , will also be brought within the new arrangements. The following measures are proposed: (a) new tax arrangements shall apply to certain lump sum superannuation and other entitlements received after today in respect of services after today; (b) the lump sums so affected shall be: (i) those which fall within the provisions of the existing law under which 5 per cent of retirement or termination amounts is included in assessable income, except that no change will be made to the tax arrangements relating to bona fide redundancy payments as set out in sub-paragraph (c) below; and (ii) certain kindred payments which are not taxed at all under existing law such as- (A) amounts received in full or partial commutation of a pension; (B) lump sums received by the executor or dependants of a deceased person if those payments represent unused annual leave or long service leave, or amounts from superannuation funds that would be within the new arrangements if they had been received by that person while living; and (C) distributions from a superannuation fund during an employee's service that are made in accordance with the fund's rules; (c) the Commissioner of Taxation will be authorised to determine whether a payment is a bona fide redundancy payment on the following bases: (i) a principal element in determining whether a lump sum is a bona fide redundancy payment will be that the recipient's employment has been prematurely brought to an end as part of a reduction in the work-force of the employer or the group of which the employer forms part, and that there is no arrangement for the re-employment of the person; (ii) payments between closely associated persons, such as a lump sum paid by a private company to a shareholder of the company would not qualify; and (iii) a lump sum will qualify as a bona fide redundancy payment only to the extent that it exceeds the amount which the person would have received had he resigned or retired from the employment; (d) subject to anti-avoidance rules, there will be no change in the taxation treatment of capital sums received in consideration of an agreement not to compete against a former employer or by way of compensation for loss of income through personal injury; (e) that amount of lump sum superannuation and other entitlements which is in respect of services after the date of announcement will generally be assessable in full except that: (i) no tax shall be payable on such an amount to the extent that it represents the return of a person's own superannuation contributions made after the date of announcement, where those contributions have not attracted a tax rebate or deduction; and (ii) amounts will generally be taxed at no more than 30 per cent, except that the tax rate will be 46 per cent of that part of the fully assessable amount which is between $125,000 and $225,000 and 60 per cent of that part of the fully assessable amount which exceeds $225,000; (f) a lump sum which is converted into a pension or annuity, or which is ' rolled over' into another superannuation fund within a short time, will be exempt from tax. CANBERRA19 May 1983 Senator BUTTON —I move: That the Senate take note of the statement. Debate (on motion by Senator Chaney) adjourned. Ministerial Statement Senator GARETH EVANS(Victoria-Attorney-General) —I seek leave to make a ministerial statement concerning the report by Professor G. G. Merideth on Legal Aid Cost Comparison-Salaried and Private Lawyers and to move that the Senate take note of the statement. Leave not granted. Senator GARETH EVANS —On a point of clarification, this has been the subject of discussion between the relevant Minister, Senator Durack, and myself. There was a ready acceptance, I understood, by Senator Durack that the statement would be put down and that it would not be debated. If the Leader of the Opposition ( Senator Chaney) would only consult with the ministerial colleagues it might be possible to have some civilised arrangements in this place which would stick. The PRESIDENT —Order! I ask again: Is leave granted? Senator CHANEY(Western Australia-Leader of the Oppostion) —by leave-I have just been told by the shadow Attorney-General-not the Minister, as he has yet again been described by the Attorney-General (Senator Gareth Evans)-that he had a discussion and that he asked that the Government should conform to the practice of the two-hour rule. But he is agreeable on this occasion to the statement being incorporated. I looked around and saw that the shadow Attorney-General was not in his place at the time. In accordance with earlier discussions where the suggestion was that it would be introduced with much less than two hours leave was refused. I make it quite clear that the Opposition regards the maintenance of the two-hour rule as important. It was insisted on by the now Government when it was the Opposition. It is the means by which the Opposition is enabled to apprise itself of the content of important government statements and to make a sensible and considered response when they are brought down. It is an important point of principle. That was the basis on which I refused leave. In accordance with the arrangement made with the shadow Attorney-General, the Opposition grants leave. Leave granted. Senator GARETH EVANS(Victoria-Attorney-General) —As the Chairman of the Commonwealth Legal Aid Council, Mr Justice R. Else-Mitchell, says in his foreword to this report, for at least six years there has been a debate in Australia on the relative cost of delivering legal aid through private lawyers or by salaried lawyers employed by legal aid agencies. This debate has assumed a new urgency because the cost of legal aid is escalating in a manner which now seems to be almost out of control. Let me illustrate. Since 1979-80 Commonwealth payments for private lawyers have increased in real terms by 80.2 per cent whereas the number of cases handled by private lawyers during that period has increased by only 27.1 per cent. Expressed in money terms, total direct expenditure by the Commonwealth on legal aid has risen from $21.3m in 1979-80 to an estimated $51.44m in 1982-83, a cumulative increase of 141.5 per cent, and payments to private lawyers have risen from $14.679m to an estimated $35.181m, a cumulative increase of 139 per cent. I have had a table prepared showing the actual yearly increases since 1979-80 in both the numbers of cases handled and the amounts-adjusted for consumer price index increases-paid to private lawyers. The escalation in expenditure, accompanied as it is by a much lesser increase in the number of cases being handled, is most alarming. I seek leave to have the table incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The table read as follows- COMMONWEALTH PAYMENTS TO PRIVATE PRACTITIONERS 1979-80 to 1982-83 Net percentage Percentage increase increase after CPI Number of Year to Value of Year to Year referrals year Cumulative payments year Cumulative $ 1979-80 47,901 14.679m 1980-81 52,913 10.4 10.4 18.360m 13.6 13.6 1981-82 56,269 6.3 17.5 24.007m 19.5 35.8 1982-83 (estimate) 60,900 8.2 27.1 35.181m 32 .7 80.2 Senator GARETH EVANS —It is obviously essential that legal aid be delivered in the most efficient and economical manner possible, and one way-although by no means the only way-it has been suggested this could be achieved is by delivering a greater proportion of aid through salaried lawyers. The matter was first seriously raised in 1974 in the report of Professor Ronald Sackville on Law and Poverty in Australia. It was later raised by the then Attorney-General, Mr Ellicott, in an address to the Western Australian Law Summer School on 18-19 March 1977 following a study in the Australian Legal Aid Office and the New South Wales Public Solicitor's Office. Considerable impetus was given to the debate by the study in 1980 by officers of the South Australian Legal Services Commission which concluded that the cost of delivering legal aid by salaried lawyers rather than through referrals to private practitioners was up to twice as cheap in civil cases and three times as cheap in criminal cases. Senator Tate raised the question of a study into the comparative cost of providing legal aid services by salaried legal officers as opposed to private practitioners at the Senate Estimates Committee hearing on 13 October 1978. He and other honourable senators have raised the matter at each six-monthly Senate Estimates hearing since then. Following these expressions of concern the then Commonwealth Legal Aid Commission determined in March 1979 to undertake such a study. A feasibility study was undertaken and the study itself commenced in March 1981. Although it was estimated originally that the study would be completed in August 1981, the final report was not presented to the council until late 1982. In his foreword to the report, Mr Justice Else-Mitchell comments adversely on the delays. The report has now been published by the Commonwealth Legal Aid Council and is available for distribution. It does not, however, appear that this report will constitute the last word on the subject, notwithstanding all the time and effort that have gone into its production. I invite honourable senators to have particular regard in this respect to the comments made by Mr Justice Else-Mitchell in his foreword where he indicates that in its present form the report will not assist in determining whether a particular matter should be allocated to a private lawyer or to a salaried lawyer. I am concerned that this study does not appear to have settled the debate as it was originally designed to do. Senator Georges —I thought you were going to incorporate that? Senator GARETH EVANS —I am incorporating the appendix to it. I have only two or three pages to read, so hold on to your horses. It seems clear that a methodology exists which will allow comparisons to be made and the report does contain formulae which, if applied correctly, would provide the answers sought. But unfortunately it fails to apply those formulae in such a way as to arrive at conclusions that can be generally accepted. The basic conclusion reached by Professor Meredith is that there are no significant differences in the costs of delivering legal aid as between private and salaried lawyers. This conclusion appears, however, to be rendered quite unsafe by a number of considerations including inconsistencies in the application of data in comparable calculations, doubts about whether the sample of private lawyers chosen was properly representative, inclusion of non-comparable costs (for example the cost of administering referred matters within the Commissions) in some comparisons, and sundry arithmetical errors. I have prepared a detailed commentary, which is appendix A on the main conclusions in the report and seek leave to incorporate this and a further appendix in Hansard at the conclusion of this statement. Among the interesting conclusions to emerge from this analysis is that, whereas to have case work done by in-house salaried lawyers costs $31.24 per hour, the cost of salaried lawyers engaged in administering the supervising cases assigned to private lawyers is $54.83 per hour. The primary objective of the present Government's legal aid policy, faced as we are with the necessity to pare expenditure to the bone, is simply to make the existing legal aid dollar go further. While I recognise, of course, that the private profession has played and will continue to play a very important role in the delivery of legal aid services it seems that the time has come to review delivery methods, with a view to placing significantly greater emphasis on the role of the salaried service so long as the evidence points to the greater cost effectiveness of this approach. The Government's aim in funding legal aid must be to promote equal access to the law in an economically efficient and effective way, rather than to provide guaranteed levels of income to the private profession: However, in a time of significant unemployment among qualified practitioners any moves to develop the salaried service should not simply be seen as reducing opportunities for the private legal profession, so much as creating new opportunities for the profession as a whole in the salaried service . The review of legal aid to which I have referred will not be restricted to this aspect only. Legal aid funding is not a bottomless pit. It is necessary to examine all facets of practice and expenditure in an endeavour to find ways in which legal aid can be made more cost effective. Increases in real terms of the magnitude of 80 per cent in three years cannot be allowed to continue. In this context, the establishment-presently under consideration-of a new national legal aid commission continuously to co-ordinate and monitor legal aid services is of great importance. This Commission will have the essential function of monitoring the availability of legal aid State by State, ensuring the best use of available finances and promoting uniformity in eligibility criteria for Australians seeking legal aid. The Commission would be assisted by information from the national legal aid statistics collection which will commence in about April 1984 after installation of a computerized office system in all legal aid commissions and the Australian Legal Aid Office. This joint Commonwealth-State venture is currently under way. I table this report in full awareness of its deficiencies and confusions. I am disappointed that it has not put an end to the long-lasting debate. Definitive conclusions must await the implementation of the national legal aid computer system, the collection of comprehensive data and its proper analysis, and it seems unlikely that this can occur before mid-1984. I trust that there will be constructive discussion on the issues I have raised here today. There is much which can be done in this regard, and I am sure that there will be a good measure of disinterested and self- critical analysis by lawyers themselves as we together seek the solution which best promotes the public interest. As I indicated in the course of the statement , there are attachments to it which I seek leave to have incorporated in Hansard . Leave granted. The documents read as follows- Appendix A COMMENT ON REPORT'S CONCLUSIONS Summaries of the 8 specific conclusions drawn by the report and set out in Chapter 1.4 (page 7) and Chapter 4 (Page 57) are set out below, together with comments on each. First Conclusion: Much of the Australian literature fails to evaluate the total costs associated with alternative legal aid delivery systems and therefore includes invalid comparisons between the alternative systems. Although this claim is repeated several times, none of the literature which studies these cost comparisons is examined in the report. Four sets of findings are referred to (pp. 28-29), all to the effect that salaried work is cheaper than referrals to the private profession. There is no attempt to analyse or evaluate these findings or the methods adopted to achieve them, but merely a generalised assertion that they fail to take into account the total cost of legal aid agencies necessary to support the work of salaried lawyers. The four sets of findings referred to are derived respectively from the 1976 and 1977 Annual Reports of the N.S.W. Commissioner for Legal Aid Services, the 1978 paper prepared by the N.S.W. Public Solicitor's Office on duty lawyers' services and the 1980 study by the Research and Education Section of the Legal Services Commission of South Australia. In fact each set of findings does take into account costs other than the direct salary and salary-related costs of lawyers. Moreover, all the other relevant studies cited by Professor Meredith in his bibliography do purport to include all direct and indirect costs associated with legal aid delivery. Second Conclusion: Cost differences as between salaried and private lawyers can be expected given differences in personnel efficiency, organisational structure, fee scale bases and the approach taken by professionals. While this conclusion may be unexceptionable, it does nothing to advance the state of knowledge as to the cost of delivery through salaried or private lawyers, and contradicts some of the basic assumptions upon which the study was undertaken (pp. 3-5). Levels of efficiency, quality of work, structure of legal aid bodies and the manner of service delivery were supposedly all assumed constant for the purpose of conducting this cost comparison. Throughout the entire report, however, these factors are put forward as reasons for varying results, which confuses the issue considerably. Third, Fourth and Fifth Conclusions: Total cost per person, total cost per professional and cost per lawyer hour are similar for legal aid agencies and private practices i.e. differences in the costs of delivering legal aid are not significant. These conclusions clearly must be read in the context of the method of calculation adopted. It does appear that dividing the total operating cost of a Legal Aid Commission (not including the actual amounts paid to private lawyers) by the number of people employed by that Commission produces a figure for cost per lawyer similar to that obtained by dividing the total operating cost of a private law office by the number of people employed in that office. It does not, however, necessarily follow that the costs of delivering legal aid by these two methods are therefore similar. There are several problems inherent in the method used by the consultant to obtain these figures, and further problems in the specific material relied upon. In particular: (i) There must be significant doubt as to whether the sample of private solicitors' offices used is in fact representative of solicitors' offices in N.S .W. Table 3 (p. 20) shows offices ranging in size from 11 to 130 lawyers, yet information supplied by the N.S.W. Law Society shows that over half of all firms in N.S.W. consist of sole practitioners. Furthermore, there is no indication as to the mode of selecting the 16 legal practices comprising the sample used for Tables 1 and 3. (ii) There is no indication of the sources for the figures on total operating costs of legal aid commisions (Table 2), although the figures would appear to derive from the annual reports of the respective commissions. Moreover, there are unexplained differences in the figures used in Tables 4 and 5 (''cost per professional'' for South Australia in 1980-81 is shown in Table 4 as $83,416 and in Table 5 as $72,037), and arithmetical errors in Tabe 1 (at items 3 and 16) and Table 3 (at item 3), all of which must affect the validity of comparisons made therein. (iii) No explanation is given of how the figures for ''cost per effective legal aid lawyer hour'' in Table 8 are arrived at. The only other figures in the report which would seem relevant to such a calculation are those contained in Table 4 for total operating cost per professional. When, however, those figures are applied to this calculation, they produce strikingly different results from those set out in Table 8. (iv) The consultant was specifically requested to restrict his study of referrals to private lawyers to the actual cost to the legal aid commissions: i. e. what amounts were paid by way of costs to private lawyers, rather than what it cost the lawyers to undertake the task. The report repeatedly addresses the latter which, although relevant and useful information, is of much less immediate concern to the funder of legal aid than the former. (v) The cost per salaried lawyer for Legal Aid Commissions as set out in the report (Tables 4 and 8) does not reflect the actual cost of delivering legal aid case work by salaried lawyers. In calculating this cost, the report has included in the base figure for the relevant costs of a Commission some items which would not constitute part of the overheads of a private law firm and others which bear no relation to the delivery of legal aid by the Commission. These items include advertising, public educational material and activities, and the costs of administering assignments to private lawyers. Such items should not have any place in a comparative calculation of the cost per lawyer hour; if they are included, they should at the very least be separately identified. (vi) The figure used for the amount of chargeable time spent by lawyers in an average year varies throughout the report. For example, at page 21 1300 hours per annum is used to calculate cost per professional hour for both private and salaried lawyers; at pages 37 and 38 1063 and 1472 hours are used in the alternative to calculate salaried lawyer costs in legal aid commissions; and at pages 48 and 49 (Table 10) 1650 hours per annum is used in relation to N.S.W. Legal Services Commission salaried lawyers. Table 7 (page 35) shows yet another figure of 1635 hours per annum. There is no adequate explanation for the variations between these figures nor for how the figures themselves were arrived at. (vii) Pages 25 and 26 compare the differential cost of a salaried lawyer (the total cost of appointment of an additional salaried lawyer) with the private lawyer mark-up rate (the salary mark-up applied to the lawyer's salary to determine his charge-out rate per hour of client work). The ''rule of thumb'' formulae used here-salary + 90% for salaried lawyers and 2.5 times salary for private lawyers-are not adequately explained, but are used to support a finding that the differential cost and mark-up rate ''may be similar''. In any case, this conclusion is of no value to the cost comparison in question. Although these formulae may be applied in a global sense, the differential cost or mark-up rate of a lawyer will vary widely as between individual positions, since that cost or rate will differ according to the nature of the job. For example, duty lawyers do not need large support staff and therefore the differential cost involved in appointing an additional duty lawyer will be considerably less than that of appointing a lawyer who will require significant support staff. (viii) The use in Table 10 of 1650 hours as the annual effective time worked by ''in-house'' lawyers assumes an efficiency in excess of 100% if the figure in Table 7 of 1635 lawyer hours per annum is accepted as the base. This compares with an apparent efficiency of 79.5% for private lawyers who are assumed (page 21) to allocate 1300 hours of the total of 1635 per annum to client legal services. Thus the hourly costs calculated for ''in-house'' lawyers are too low. Sixth Conclusion: From the data supplied by the New South Wales Legal Services Commission, actual cost per salaried lawyer hour varied from $29.24 to $52.67 depending upon the specific activities of the lawyer and costs of agency departments. The staff of the New South Wales Legal Services Commission undertook the difficult and time-consuming task of collecting the data sought. This was the only empirical study carried out during the project but, unfortunately, the data obtained does not appear to have been properly used. It should be said at the outset that time recording systems were not implemented in the New South Wales Commission during this study, nor was any attempt made to sample cases and record accurate hours for handling these cases. Rather an estimate was made of the proportion of time spent by each staff member in the various defined activities, namely, general administration, general legal services, pre-assignment activities and post-assignment activities. The data obtained from this study forms the basis of Table 10. The conclusion reached on the basis of Table 10 is that 'the total costs per lawyer hour varied from $29.24 for post-assignment in-house activities to $52.67 for post- assignment referral activities'. An analysis of Table 10 prepared for the Legal Services Commission of New South Wales by its research section shows, however, that the data is not utilised correctly. The relevant extract from that analysis is, with the Commission's approval, attached as Appendix B to this Statement. A revised Table 10 has been prepared by my Department in the light of that analysis which corrects the identified errors in the original, and in particular uses a figure of 1,300 hours per annum for the effective salaried lawyer time. The figure of 1,300 is that used by Professor Meredith for private lawyers (p. 21). REVISED TABLE 10 SHOWING CORRECT ALLOCATIONS(Legal Services Commission of N.S.W. ) Data Analysis Pilot Study November 1981-April 1982 Post assignment General Pre- activities General legal assignment administration services activities In-house Referral 1 Salaries-Lawyers $90,269 $141,630 $114,723 $736,224 $67,978 2 Salaries- Administrative staff $292,101 $60,780 $59,030 $166,047 $101,119 3 Overhead: Staff related $37,855 (See Item 8) 4 Overhead: General $285,177 (See Item 8) 5 Public Solicitor Work (ex salaries and overhead) . . . . . . $170,543 . . 6 Referral work (ex salaries and overhead) . . . . . . . . $2,392,262 7 Direct costs $382,370 $202,410 $173,753 $1,072,814 $2,561,359 8 Allocation of all overheads (based on salaries) $84,787 $45,030 $38,540 $200,000 $37,323 9 Total costs $467,157 $247,440 $212,293 $1,272,814 $2,598,682 10 Lawyer time allocation 7.84% 12.31% 9.97% 63.97% 5.91% 11 Lawyer hours 1300/lawyer year 650 /half year 4,994 7,841 6,351 40,749 3,765 12 Direct cost per lawyer hour $76.57 $25.81 $27.36 $26.33 $44.91* 13 Total cost per lawyer hour $93.54 $31.56 $33.43 $31.24 $54.83* * Excluding payments to private lawyers As can be seen, the revised Table 10 shows that the hourly cost of salaried lawyers engaged in ''in-house'' case work is $31.24 while the cost of salaried lawyers engaged in administering and supervising cases assigned to private lawyers is $54.83 per hour. This is a significant result. Nevertheless, to enable the desired cost comparison to be made, it is necessary to add the actual cost of private referrals i.e. fees and disbursements paid by the Commission, to the cost to the Commission of administering and supervising such referrals. Table 11 (Page 52) provides some information in this regard but it is wholly unsatisfactory as a basis for comparison. The table refers to only 2 cases, of 100 and 90 hours duration respectively. The source of the data in relation to these cases is not disclosed-it was not obtained from the Legal Services Commission of New South Wales-and the cases cited would appear not to be typical . For example it is known from other studies that over half of all family law matters take less than 5 hours of lawyer time to complete, yet the family law case in Table 11 is recorded as having taken ninety hours to complete. Moreover, the amount of time spent in supervision by Commission lawyers seems to be excessive in both cases. It is difficult to understand how Professor Meredith could seek to derive general conclusions from the evidence of two isolated cases , the basis for the selection of which is not even indicated. Failing a thorough analysis of the accounts received by the Commission from private lawyers, some guidance for the purposes of comparison can be derived from the hourly rates which were being paid to the private profession under NSW legal aid costs scales during the relevant period (November 1981 to April 1982). Those hourly rates were as follows: Family Law Act-$47 Duty Lawyer in Courts of Petty Sessions-$35 Conferences (Junior Counsel)-$48 District Court matters-$55 These hourly costs, which average out at $46.25, are significantly different from the $31.24 hourly cost of salaried laywers doing in-house case work. In addition, the cost to the Commission of referring and supervising at a rate of $ 54.83 per hour each matter referred to a private lawyer must be taken into account. On the basis of the data collected for Professor Meredith, the research unit of the NSW Legal Services Commission estimates that the average salaried lawyer time spent per matter on this referral and supervisory function is 2.7 hours, so that an average figure of $148.04 for administrative expenses of the Commission must be added to each account received from private lawyers. In summary the comparative costs to the Legal Aid Commission are as follows: cost of salaried lawyers doing in-house case work-$31.24 per hour. average cost of matters assigned to private lawyers (in four areas for which hourly rate figures are available)-$46.25 per hour. cost of salaried laywers administering and supervising work assigned to private lawyers-$54.83 per hour, and at an average 2.7 hours per account, $148.04 to be added to each private lawyer account for administration. Seventh and Eighth Conclusions: Many assumptions were necessary to enable valid comparisons to be made between the two delivery systems, due to the absence of time-cost date from legal aid agencies; no universal conclusion can be reached that one system always cost less to the legal aid fund than another; and each aid case must be examined individually to determine whether cost would be minimised by handling it in-house or by referring it to a private lawyer. The terms of reference for the study included a requirement that time-cost data be collected from legal aid commissions. It is unfortunate that, due in some measure to the manner in which Professor Meredith conducted the early part of the inquiry, he was not able to persuade legal aid commissions to embark upon an extensive data collection exercise and thus the collection was ultimately restricted to the NSW Legal Services Commission. It is also unfortunate that he did not conduct a study of accounts received by that Commission or seek any information relating to accounts paid. He was therefore not able to provide any formula or method which could be used by legal aid staff to analyse private lawyer accounts so as, in his words, ''to decide whether the cost to the funder of a legal aid matter would be minimised by handling the matter in-house or referring the matter to a private lawyer''. Appendix B Extract from Analysis of Meredith Report by Y. Reuben, Research Officer, Legal Services Commission of New South Wales, March 1983 ''Modifying Methodology given available data As noted previously time-recording systems were not implemented in New South Wales nor was any attempt made to sample cases and record accurate hours for handling these cases. Modifications were made to the methodology which negated the necessity to perform these tasks (pp. 44-46). All the modifications outlined, except for number 7 (p. 45) appear reasonable, if an assessment of costs per lawyer hour is being calculated for defined areas of work e.g. time devoted to supervision of referral work or time spent on actual casework. Modification number 6 states: ''assuming salary allocations relate to hours worked, an approximation of professional lawyer time could be made based on salary allocation. A direct cost per lawyer hour can therefore be calculated'' (p. 45). Given this assumption, direct cost per lawyer hour could be calculated for all five areas of work covered, as salaries were apportioned for each individual employee according to the amount of time devoted to all 5 areas. To calculate the total cost per lawyer hour, overhead costs must be allocated across all staff and work areas. However, only overhead costs should be allocated and not salaries related to General Administration as is advised in modification number 7. Administrative support costs for the 4 legally related work areas have already been taken into account and are presented as ''Salaries: administrative staff''. The salary figures found under General Administration are totally unrelated to legal aid work. They arise from the fact that staff are employed in a government department which is subject to a range of requirements applying throughout the public service, e.g. guaranteeing equal opportunity in employment, providing staff development programmes and complying with public service personnel requirements. Like activities would not be performed by private firms in the main and costs attributed to general administration should be kept quite distinct from the other 4 work areas which directly represent the provision of legal aid. Administrative support costs related to legal aid activities are accounted for and it is these costs that are relevant to the cost comparison and not the costs attributable to the general administration of a large public service organisation. These costs are only relevant if the total cost to funder is being examined. Then the total cost of the legal aid agency would be compared to the total cost of private firms and total cost of general administration would have to be taken into account. As this was not part of the researcher's brief any costs related to general administration should be identified but kept quite distinct from the costs related to the provision of legal aid. This error has a marked effect on the resulting total costs per lawyer hour increasing them unnecessarily as shall be seen when Table 10 (p. 49) is examined . The approach outlined in modification number 10 (p. 46) seems quite valid if a substantial number of cases are examined, and might in fact produce guidelines for legal aid managers deciding on the assignment of particular cases to in- house staff or private firms. Unfortunately this was not done by the researcher as shall be seen when Table 11 (p. 52) is examined. Illustration of Cost Comparisons for Legal Aid Agencies A summary of the data provided by the New South Wales Legal Services Commission is outlined on pages 46-50. Examples of legal aid cases and time spent by private practitioners and in-house staff were never requested from the New South Wales Legal Services Commission and it is unknown where the data contained in pages 51-53 has come from. Looking however at the data that was supplied by the Commission, it should be pointed out that post-assignment activities and consequently salaries for all individuals were divided into: civil, criminal indictable, criminal petty sessions and visiting justice/mental health committal work for in-house staff; and civil, criminal, children and prisoners for referral staff. This was done in an effort to provide enough detail to enable costs per lawyer hour to be calculated for particular areas of case-work, e.g. cost per lawyer hour for civil in-house work as compared with criminal indictable matters. It is evident from Tables 9 and 10 (pp. 48 and 49) that these sub-divisions have been ignored and only aggregate figures for in-house and referral work have been utilised. It is unclear as to why this was done and is in fact very unfortunate since little comparative use can be made of cost per lawyer hour for in-house work when fees paid to private practitioners vary so much depending on the particular area of work involved. For example for civil matters, solicitors are paid 80% of scale while in the criminal areas daily lump sum payments are made. Also, the cost of referring work to the private profession varies according to the type of case. The analysis of the data supplied is presented in Table 10 (p. 49). The error concerning allocation of 'general administration' salaries in addition to general overheads has been noted in discussion of modification number 7. The error is evident in Column 1 of Table 10. The salary figures of $90,269 and $292 ,101 should remain distinct and only the figures related to overheads of $37,855 and $285,177 (totalling $323,032) should be allocated across the work areas. A proportion of overhead costs must therefore be allocated to all 5 work areas and not just the 4 legally related activities as was done by the researcher. Once the correct allocation has been carried out costs related to each of the 5 work areas are clearly defined, each with a component for salaries and overheads , with general administration costs distinct from the areas related to the provision of legal aid. Direct and total cost per lawyer hour can then be calculated according to the formula outlined. It can therefore be seen when the correct figures are substituted in Table 10 that the Total Costs per lawyer hour are substantially less than the amounts appearing on page 49 of the report. There are however two points which must still be raised that would once again have an effect on Total cost per lawyer hour. The first deals with the omission of $105,680 worth of expenses related to salaries, covering workers' compensation and payroll tax. This figure was supplied to the researcher but does not appear anywhere in the report. This amount should be added to overhead costs thus increasing this component to $405, 680. This would raise the total cost per lawyer hour slightly. For example for pre-assignment activities, the cost becomes $26.34 and for in-house work, $24.61 . The second point concerns the researcher's use of 1650 lawyer hours per year to calculate direct and total costs per lawyer hour. Previously 1300 hours was used , at a later point various efficiency rates were examined ranging from 1063 hours (65% effective) to 1472 (90% effective) and yet here 1650 hours are used. This would represent over 100% efficiency according to the effective hour scale used by the researcher. This inconsistency is inexcusable and leads to substantial confusion as to what effective lawyer hours per year should in fact be. A reasonable number of hours might be 1300 per year (80% on the efficiency scale) rather than 1650. This would increase direct and total costs per lawyer hour accordingly. For example, direct cost per lawyer hour for pre-assignment activities would equal $27.36 and $26.33 for in-house work. Total costs per lawyer hour using correct allocation of overheads (including salary related expenses) results in $33.43 for pre-assignment activities and $31.24 for in- house work. The matter of effective lawyer hours must be clarified before any comparative use can be made of a cost per lawyer hour. Once these issues have been clarified it would be useful to conduct an analysis of the data supplied to the research in its orginal form i.e. with divisions of in-house and referral work into legal areas. This would result in more meaningful cost per lawyer hour dependant on legal area.'' Senator GARETH EVANS —I move: That the Senate take note of the statement. Senator DURACK(Western Australia)(5.31) —I wish to make a few preliminary remarks in relation to this statement and the report on 'Legal Aid Cost Comparison-Salaried and Private Lawyers'. I will then seek leave to continue my remarks at a later date when this matter is brought on for proper and full debate. The report that Senator Gareth Evans has tabled and the statement that he has made on it are an important matter for discussion in the Senate, in the community and amongst the legal profession. They deal with the very difficult and important question as to what is the most effective way of delivering legal aid and, in particular, the way in which the most can be made of the limited funds that are available for legal aid. As the statement indicates, there was a great increase in the funds made available for legal aid in recent years by the previous Government during the period when I was Attorney-General. Demands for legal aid were growing very greatly during that period. Unfortunately, the increased funds available, though well in excess of the cost of living during that period, were not really reflected in a similar increase in the number of cases that could be handled. So, that is certainly a matter which exercised my mind very considerably. I notice that the Attorney-General (Senator Gareth Evans ) is concerned with the same problem. One major debate that has gone on-indeed I might even say raged-not only just the last few years but for many years, since the establishment of the Australian Legal Aid Office, has been on the question whether legal aid can be delivered more efficiently by salaried officers or by reference of the matters to the private legal profession. When I say 'more efficiently', I use that term in its broadest sense. Of course, matters may be able to be handled more cheaply by one method or another, but that is not to say that, in the broad analysis of cost benefit and so on to the client, one or other method can be clearly shown to be the more efficient. I think it is fair to say that Senator Evans and other honourable senators who have been particularly interested in this matter have a somewhat preconceived notion that the employment of salaried lawyers would be the better way of delivering legal aid. Some years ago, as the statement records, this question was referred to Professor Meredith for determination. Everybody hoped that he would determine it once and for all. Despite the length of time that he has been engaged upon it and the consideration that has been given to this matter, in the first place by the former Commonwealth Legal Aid Commission and referred back to Professor Meredith, the final result as Senator Evans said is inconclusive. That may not be a criticism of Professor Meredith. Of course I have not had the time to study his report or to have any advice in relation to it. However, the difficulties that he has experienced, the time that he has taken to report and now the inconclusiveness of it may well reflect the great difficulties that there are in making any definitive judgments about whether salaried lawyers or lawyers in private practice are able to deliver legal aid more efficiently. This question cannot be decided only by statistical analysis. Larger questions are at stake. I am pleased that Senator Evans, in his statement, recognises the fact that the private legal profession must always have a major role to play in the delivery of legal aid. It is clear that over many years the private profession has, without any real payment to speak of, provided legal aid to people who could not afford it. In recent years, because of the increase in public funds for legal aid, members of the private profession have been recompensed to some extent for the work that they do. Probably the amounts that have been paid for the work, although seemingly large, are not anything like the recompense that lawyers can obtain from their ordinary private paying clients. A very considerable public contribution continues to be made, not necessarily by all members of the legal profession by any means but by a significant number of lawyers in private practice. I would be disturbed if, in the long term, there were a policy which phased out the contribution that the private profession were making to legal aid by a steady increase in the number of salaried lawyers. I do not know whether the Attorney-General's statement-this report-or the Government's policy portends that, but I am concerned that it may do so. I am familiar with the arguments by many people, particularly from the Government side of the Parliament which indicate that they favour the delivery of legal aid by salaried lawyers rather than by the private profession. I am pleased that the Attorney-General has indicated that there will be a continuing role for the private profession. How big a role that will be is, I think, the crux of this whole discussion. I look forward to considering this report in detail and to debating further this important question in this chamber when we return in the Budget Session. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. Senator Georges-Mr Deputy President, I have risen on several occasions to get the call to put an important motion before the Senate. I have not got the call possibly because Ministers have taken it upon themselves to get the call in preference to me. That may be their right, but there is an order of business which, I think, indicates that I should have got the call some 20 minutes ago. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —If the honourable senator is refering to the business sheet, I should by rights call Senator Colston before him because Senator Colston's name is before Senator Georges's on the list. Nevertheless, it is the custom to give Ministers priority. Senator Georges-If Senator Colston has been disadvantaged he will want the call now and I should follow him. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —I will give the call to a Minister in preference to an honourable senator tabling a committee report. To clear this matter up I will call Senator Colston and then I will give you the call. Senator Gareth Evans-Mr Deputy President, I am delighted to take my place in the queue. I came into the chamber, looking at the revised order of business, and I saw that Senator Button was to follow me. I found that Senator Button was making his statement so I assumed that the other matters had been dealt with. I yield-as they say in the United States Senate-to my colleague Senator Georges and indeed to all others who are ahead of me in the queue. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —I call honorable senators in accordance with the business sheet. I call Senator Colston. Senator COLSTON(Queensland) —I table additional information received by Estimates Committee D and seek leave for it to be incorporated in the Hansard record of the Committee's proceedings. Leave granted. Senator GEORGES(Queensland) —by leave-I move: That so much of the Standing Orders be suspended as would prevent such senators as are members of the Joint Statutory Committee of Public Accounts attending meetings of the Committee during sittings of the Senate for the remainder of this period of sittings. I will explain to the Senate the difficulty that the Joint Committee of Public Accounts now faces because of the revised sitting times. It was on the advice of the people who were responsible for altering the sitting hours of the Senate that the Senate agreed to the revised times. However, what has now happened is that the meetings of a number of committees-- Senator Peter Rae —Those hours have destroyed the committee system. Senator GEORGES —Why does the honourable senator not put that case forward? Let me put it strongly. The ability of the Public Accounts Committee to hold meetings is now difficult and that is the reason that we have put this motion before the Senate. The motion relates only to meetings for the remainder of the present period of sitting. However, unless something is done about the sitting times, this motion may need to come before the Senate at regular periods. Senator Collard —The Senate will not agree to it. Senator GEORGES —If the Senate does not agree to it we will have to look at the Act under which the Public Accounts Committee operates and to see whether that Act has precedence over the Standing Orders of the Senate. At this stage I am not prepared to argue whether that is the case. The work of the Public Accounts Committee is important to the Parliament. Its practice has been to sit on two days of the week from four to five hours on a Tuesday and at least two hours on a Thursday morning. The revised sitting times make that impossible and the work of the Committee is now hindered. If that is what the Senate wants let honourable senators say so and we can take up the matter and have a full debate on it. Having said that, let me get back to the point that I was making. When an honourable senator has a motion to move in this place his right is equal to the right of anyone else, including a Minister. I suggest that what happened this afternoon ought not to happen again. It is not satisfactory for Ministers to be making their own arrangements privately, sometimes without the benefit of the Whips. I know from experience that that is often the case. Ministers should not come to those private arrangements. Senator Collard —Is this on behalf of the Whips union? Senator GEORGES —Yes, it is on behalf of the Whips union. It is not satisfactory to have honourable senators sitting around waiting for their moment to move what are sometimes important motions-I suggest that this motion is-seeing their rights usurped by others and their precedence disturbed. Senator Gareth Evans —We have acknowledged that. Senator GEORGES —Well, remember it. Senator DURACK(Western Australia)(5.46) —On this occasion the Opposition will agree to the motion moved by Senator Georges but we make it quite clear that we are opposed to such motions and facilities of this kind being granted by the Senate. There is a long-standing view that Senate committees should not sit during the periods that the Senate is sitting. I do not know about any threats by Senator Georges that his Act will overrule the Senate. I think many honourable senators might be concerned about that suggestion or the possibility that that may be so. I do not want to prolong this debate, particularly as Senator Georges has been kept waiting for so long by one of the Ministers. The Opposition supports the motion, but we make it quite clear that this should not create any precedent. Question resolved in the affirmative. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —May I respond to a point made by Senator Georges concerning the calling of Ministers and Government back benchers, I will call a Minister if he stands. If he seeks leave and the Government back benchers do not want to give him leave the remedy is in the back benchers' hands. Senator Georges —Mr Deputy President, may I speak to that? The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —No. Senator Georges —Mr Deputy President, you have made a statement. I wish to speak to that statement. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —The honourable senator has no right to speak to a statement, except by leave. Senator Georges —Mr Deputy President, I seek leave to make a personal explanation because I have been misunderstood. Leave granted. Senator GEORGES(Queensland) —Mr Deputy President, I believe you may have misunderstood me. I did not challenge your right or your authority to call a Minister. I objected because Ministers rose and thereby frustrated their back bench. I was not reflecting upon the Chair but upon the Minister concerned. If that is clear I am satisfied. Senator PETER RAE(Tasmania)(5.48) —by leave-I move: (1) That paragraph (8) of the Resolution of the Senate of 22 April 1983 establishing the Select Committee on Statutory Authority Financing be varied to read as follows: That the Select Committee report to the Senate on or before 25 August 1983. (2) That, if the Senate be not sitting when the Select Committee has completed its report- (a) the Committee may send the Report to the President, or, if the President is unable to act due to illness or other cause, to the Deputy-President; (b) the Report be deemed to have been presented to the Senate and the President or the Deputy-President be authorised to give directions for its printing and circulation; and (c) in such event, the President or the Deputy-President lay the Report upon the Table at the next sitting of the Senate. (3) That the foregoing provisions of this Resolution, insofar as they are inconsistent with the Standing Orders, have effect notwithstanding anything contained in the Standing Orders. I move this motion for an extension of time on behalf of the Committee and with the full support of the Committee. In support of the motion I simply indicate that, as has been the experience of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts, there has been difficulty in this rather rushed period of getting meeting times and time in which to deal with matters. The Committee will simply have to use the recess period to complete its work. It just has not had sufficient opportunity to get together during the past weeks to determine the matter. Question resolved in the affirmative. Senator GARETH EVANS(Victoria-Attorney General) —by leave-I table the Government's response to a report on annual reports by the Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs. I seek leave to make a statement and to move that the Senate take note of that statement. Leave granted. Senator GARETH EVANS —On 26 November 1980 the Senate resolved that the Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs should consider and, if necessary, report on all annual reports of government departments and authorities, including statutory corporations, laid on the table of the Senate. On 23 September 1982 the Senate Standing Committee tabled in the Senate its report entitled 'Report on Annual Reports Referred to the Committee'. The report dealt with annual reports prepared by the High Court of Australia, the Attorney- General's Department and a large number of Commonwealth authorities covering either the 1979 and 1980 calendar years or the 1979-80 and 1980-81 financial years depending upon the basis adopted by the particular reporting body. The report contained only three recommendations. One recommendation, paragraph 30 of the report, related to the reports of the Attorney-General's Department and read as follows: Since the Annual Report of the Attorney-General's Department is the only place where the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General is systematically reported on, this part of each future annual report should be considerably expanded. Indeed, consideration should be given to the presentation of a separate report to be dealt with separately by the Parliament and by this Committee. That recommendation followed consideration of the treatment in the annual report of the Attorney-General's Department of the activities of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General. The Senate Committee noted that as at 30 June 1980 there were 40 items on the Standing Committee's agenda, only eight of which were mentioned in the departmental report; none of them in detail. The approach adopted by the Department in relation to the reporting of Standing Committee of Attorneys-General matters was to deal with only those matters that had been announced already by Ministers-Commonwealth, State or Territory. This approach had regard to the fact that discussions in the Standing Committee had always been conducted on a basis of confidentiality. The Standing Committee itself recognised the need for some publicity to be given to matters that had been considered. Originally, it was the practice for this to be done by means of an agreed Press statement. However, in February 1980 it was agreed that individual Ministers could issue a statement, if they wished, on the basis that it was for the Minister making a statement to avoid making disclosures which would be outside the spirit of confidentiality accorded to Standing Committee discussions. At the Standing Committee meeting on 26 March 1983 I informed my colleagues that I intended that there be a considerably expanded report to the Parliament of Standing Committee activities but that such report would be consistent with the existing procedures of the Standing Committee regarding confidentiality. The next annual report of the Attorney-General's Department will be prepared on this basis. Paragraph 28 of the report now being considered, dealt with the departmental response to criticisms of delays in the Legislative Drafting Division in relation to Australian Capital Territory law reform projects. The Senate Committee suggested increased staff resources for that Division and education of instructing departments. As to the former, there was a small reorganisation of the Division and a strong and successful recruitment campaign. Since the completion of recruitment, the Division's turnover of work has ensured that no backlog of work developed. As to the suggestion of educating instructing departments, it should be noted that the Division has always been ready to help departments with difficulties encountered in the preparation of drafting instructions and has provided such assistance on many occasions. Further, the Division has assisted in the running of courses at the Canberra College of Advanced Education for persons involved in work related to legislation, including the giving of instructions. The second recommendation, paragraph 52 of the report, read as follows: Because of the peculiar nature of the Ombudsman's function and the consequence that he may, on occasions, be embarrassed by the operation of Finance Direction 23/5, its application to his office should be reconsidered. Finance direction 23/5 has been withdrawn and its provision replaced by directions 13/7 and 13/8. Direction 13/8 applies to the certification that charges for legal expenses are fair and reasonable where the engagement of the legal practioner was undertaken by other than the Crown Solicitor's Office. The direction provides in those circumstances that the endorsement is to be made by the Crown Solicitor, or a Deputy Crown Solicitor or an officer appointed by the Crown Solicitor. While recognising that there are some few cases where resort to the Crown Solicitor for endorsement of the charges would raise problems of confidentiality for the Commonwealth Ombudsman the Government is unable to agree to an exemption from the direction for him. The Government is, however, prepared to minimise any such problems of confidentiality and in this regard the Crown Solicitor has indicated that he would be prepared to appoint the Registrar of the Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory to endorse such claims for legal costs as fair and reasonable. Where, however, the endorsement of such costs by the Crown Solicitor would not raise possible problems of confidentiality the Ombudsman will still be required to submit such accounts to the Crown Solicitor for endorsement. The final recommendation, paragraph 77 of the report, dealt with the staffing of the Law Reform Commission. That recommendation was as follows: The Government should give urgent consideration to the staffing situation in the Law Reform Commission with a view to providing the Commission with sufficient staff to properly discharge its important task of law reform. Since becoming Attorney-General, I have had a number of discussions with the Chairman of the Law Reform Commission regarding present and prospective law reform projects and the resources necessary to undertake them. I have agreed to certain staffing increases and my Department is taking the necessary action in that regard. The Government is committed to public accountability by Departments and authorities. The amendments to the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 currently before the Parliament ensure that annual reports are available for parliamentary scrutiny soon after the close of the reporting year and thus that the information provided is up to date. The report of the Senate Committee I am responding to was critical of the contents of many annual reports because of the brevity of the information contained in them. The Government will, as a matter of priority, review the accountability requirements to ensure adequate and meaningful reporting is achieved. The Government regards the monitoring of reports by this Senate Committee and others as vital if the full benefits of reporting are to be achieved. With the large number of reports tabled and the many conflicting demands on parliamentarians, there is insufficient time available to all of them to examine reports thoroughly and raise matters of concern. Careful scrutiny by the Senate Committee ensures that proper attention is paid both to the recommendations in reports and to the strength and adequacy of the reasoning upon which the recommendations are based. Finally, I wish to commend the Senate Committee on its report which is both informative and appropriately critical. I move: That the Senate take note of the statement. Debate (on motion by Senator Durack) adjourned. Senator HARRADINE(Tasmania) —by leave-I wish to make a personal explanation to correct an address recorded in Hansard. On 18 May 1983, as recorded at page 599 of Senate Hansard, I said: To be fair, the Premier of the day put forward the nomination when legislation such as this was not on the statute books and when he was prepared to build a dam, namely the Gordon above Olga, within the South West Tasmania nominated area . The latter mentioned adjectival clause is not correct. My attention has been kindly drawn to that fact by the then Premier, Mr Doug Lowe. Because I am concerned that what I say here adheres rigorously to the facts of the situation, I willingly take this opportunity to correct my statement made at that late hour of the night. Debate resumed. Senator DURACK(Western Australia)(5.59) —I speak briefly at the second reading stage of the Appropriation Bill (No. 5). There are expenditures in this Appropriation Bill and the other Bills we are debating cognately relating to both the Department of Defence and the Attorney-General's Department. Although there may not be any large expenditures involved which are of any great significance, the fact is that the opportunity has been taken during the Estimates committee debates to question officers of the Department of Defence regarding procedures that were followed within that Department. The Royal Australian Air Force received a request from the Attorney-General's Department to provide assistance in taking aerial photographs of South West Tasmania in which the Gordon below Franklin dam is to be constructed. The Senate will be very familiar with this whole matter and with many of the issues that have been raised. I think a number of the issues are still in some doubt. Certainly, there is clearly a lingering concern on the part of many honourable senators and many people in the community, particularly in Tasmania, about this whole somewhat bizarre episode. On 22 April this year, on a matter of public importance raised by me, the Senate gave close consideration to this matter. I do not want to re-open that particular debate, but I want to deal with some questions that have arisen since then and, in particular, the matters which arose from the Senate Estimates Committee E hearings of evidence from officers of the Department of Defence. These matters are of very considerable concern. I will say something about that a little later. I also want to refer to the role of the Attorney-General and the Attorney- General's Department in this matter and to the lack of oversight of procedures which undoubtedly occurred and the breaches of procedures in the Department of Defence which have undoubtedly occurred. I am concerned that these matters should be brought to the attention of the Senate because they present serious problems for the future. Questions can still be raised by the Parliament about the proper use of defence assets and the proper expenditure of appropriations by this Parliament in regard to the particular episodes that occurred on 7 April and 8 April this year. On 7 April the Mirage flight took place and on 8 April the flight and photography by the F111 took place. As I said, I do not think I need to recount the facts because they are well known to honourable senators. The first matter that is of considerable interest is the answers that were obtained during the proceedings of the Estimates Committee. Defence officers were asked how this whole matter came about, what set instructions under the Defence Act applied and why they were not applied. Some very interesting questions were asked and answers given in the Estimates Committee dealing with the Department of Resources and Energy. Senator Sir John Carrick asked a number of questions of the Division of National Mapping as to the availability of resources for photography of this kind. The first question which should be asked is: Why on earth did the Attorney-General (Senator Gareth Evans), the Department of Defence and officials of those two departments so readily come to the conclusion that the photography should be undertaken by defence assets rather than by other readily available resources-either resources of the Government or resources in the private sector? This question is of general importance and also particular importance. One set of the provisions of defence instructions makes it quite clear that any authority requesting the assistance of defence forces for civil purposes must assure the officers of the Defence Force who are dealing with the request that no other resources are properly available in the community to undertake a particular job. That is a very important principle with regard to the use of defence forces for civil purposes. We are talking about non-force situations. We are not talking about defence forces aid being given to quell violence in the community. That is a separate question. Nothing I say today relates to that situation. I refer to the use of defence forces for assistance to the civil community. The other set of instructions deals with aid to the civil power. There is not much doubt that the second set of instructions, namely, 'Defence Force Aid to the Civil Power', were appropriate. But whichever set of instructions applied, a threshold question must be determined as to whether it is appropriate in the circumstances for the defence forces to be used at all in this way. The matter seems to have first arisen in discussions that occurred between the Attorney-General (Senator Gareth Evans) and members of his legal team who were concerned with the proceedings against Tasmania for an injunction to restrain the work on the Gordon below Franklin dam. The question must then have arisen about defence forces being used. A very interesting minute dated 11 April 1983 has been tabled in the Senate from Mr Glare, a deputy secretary of the Attorney- General's Department. I suggest that that minute to the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department gives a very clear outline of what happened. I fully accept the terms of the report made by Mr Glare. It is very instructive and provides the basis for much of the concern that we have because of the way in which this matter was carried out. It appears that after the discussion had been held between the Attorney-General and his legal team the need arose to obtain evidence, presumably in a covert way, so as not, as Mr Glare said, to alarm the Tasmanians. It was decided that Mr Glare should be asked to telephone a personal contact that he had in the RAAF. So the matter started on the basis of an old boy network. Senator Evans has said that the photographic survey by the RAAF seemed a good idea at the time. It apparently seemed a good idea at the time that it should be done in that way. But it was really quite an improper way of going about such an important subject, because of the fundamental point that defence assets should not be used, except in exceptional cases, when other means might be readily available to do the job. It may be that in the end the use of defence assets for this purpose may have been justified. I do not know. It is not my purpose today to pursue that argument. I am concerned that no proper consideration was ever given to this fundamental question. Mr Glare discussed the matter with RAAF officers. He stated, in effect, that he telephoned a contact to inquire whether it would be feasible to obtain evidence, and it appeared it was feasible. He also made it clear that after discussions with operational people it was decided that the job would require a single pass by an F111 flying at 30,000 feet over the area. As I said, it is quote clear from answers that were given to Senator Sir John Carrick during an Estimates committee hearing dealing with the Department of Resources and Energy that the Division of National Mapping had aircraft available which were capable of undertaking high precision aerial photography. The Division of National Mapping also stated that organisations in the private sector were capable of providing the same service. The Division provided a list containing the names of nine organisations which, in its opinion, were capable of carrying out this work. Aerial photography required for national mapping purposes would seem to be of a sufficiently high standard to provide evidence in legal proceedings, even in a High Court case of such importance. One of the first matters of real concern is that the availability of such sources was not explored. It also has emerged during the course of this debate that the Australian Federal Police had chartered an aircraft to take photographs . I do not know whether the photographs taken were adequate. Certainly, aerial photography could be carried out by those means. It is probably reasonable to assume the private resources of the nine organisations to which the Division of National Mapping referred would have been perfectly adequate for the purpose. Perhaps the Division of National Mapping could have been engaged to carry out the work. That is another matter which could be debated. The worrying thing is the rapidity with which the old boy network was put into place. A decision was taken that the best way of taking the photographs was to use an F111 to make one pass over the area and take the photographs. We all now know that Mr Glare told the Attorney-General that the consent of the Minister for Defence (Mr Scholes) would have to be obtained. It is rather strange that the Attorney-General inquired of a non-legal officer of the Attorney-General's Department whether it would be necessary to obtain the Minister's consent. Mr Glare said he thought it was necessary. Apparently, the only reason why the Attorney-General spoke to the Minister for Defence was on the advice given to him by one of his few non-legal officers. Of course, Mr Glare's advice to the Attorney-General was quite correct. The Attorney-General then spoke to the Minister for Defence, who agreed with the Attorney-General that the flight could be undertaken. It was apparently put to him that it would be consistent with RAAF operational activities. Of course, the Minister for Defence asked that the matter be confirmed in writing. He did not get anything from the Attorney-General for two or three days after the conversation took place. By the time the Minister for Defence received the letter from the Attorney-General, the flights had taken place. At that stage , obviously there was nothing further that the Minister for Defence could do actually to put in train the agreement that he had made with the Attorney- General. Of course, that is exactly what happened. Mr Scholes did nothing. He may have agreed with the Attorney-General in principle that these flights should take place but he never did anything to authorise the flights. He gave no directions or instructions whatsoever in relation to the matter. The answer of the Minister for Defence to a question asked by Mr Groom in another place on 3 May is very instructive. The Minister for Defence said: The flights were not authorised by me personally. The negotiations took place on the basis of department to department requirements after the task was agreed between the Attorney-General and me. The flights in this instance were authorised in the same way as flights and activities of this nature are authorised for the purpose of aid to the civil community. We know that, in fact, these flights were not authorised in accordance with the ordinary procedures for aid to the civil community. The Attorney-General has admitted that there were breaches of the rules. He says that, somehow or other, that does not matter, which is also a very strange view for an Attorney-General to take. In fact, all that happened was that Mr Glare telephoned Group Captain Waterfield in the Royal Australian Air Force operations section and asked him whether these particular photographic exercises could be carried out. Mr Glare told Group Captain Waterfield that the Minister for Defence had agreed to them. Group Captain Waterfield, in answer to questions he was asked in Estimates Committee E, said that he did not know Mr Glare. He did not even recognise his voice. Yet, on receipt of a telephone call from somebody Group Captain Waterfield did not know and on the say so of that person that the Minister for Defence had authorised the exercises, Group Captain Waterfield set in train this whole operation. He referred the matter to other officers under him who were more directly responsible. These operations were carried out simply on the basis of that telephone call, with there being no checking with the Minister or any senior officers in the Department of Defence, with no checking being done as to what authority Mr Glare had to say that the Minister had agreed to the exercises and with no formal request having been received from the Attorney-General or the Attorney-General's Department. Really, this does reveal a most extraordinary and disturbing set of circumstances both in the way the Attorney-General's Department and the Attorney -General approached the matter and in the way in which, in fact, fairly senior officers in the RAAF section of the Department of Defence approached this matter . It was a most cavalier approach to a very important problem. This is a very serious matter indeed and very close controls should be applied. Indeed, under the instructions issued under the Defence Act very considerable controls are placed on the obtaining of Defence Force assets and services for civilian purposes. That is a most important assurance. Indeed, in our democratic society, the use of military forces for other than purely military purposes is a very sensitive matter. As I pointed out in the debate that we had on 22 April, for 100 years or more the House of Commons passed annually an army Act to give emphasis to this very sensitive issue. Therefore, the cavalier way in which this whole matter was approached is, I believe, greatly disturbing. I believe that it is the responsibility of the Minister for Defence to make an early statement on this whole matter and to make it quite clear which set of instructions he believes applied. As the Attorney-General says and as was confirmed in the Estimates Committee there has been quite some debate about the question of which set of instructions applied. Surely that point at least must be clarified immediately. As I have said, I have a belief about which set of instructions applied. But I think it is imperative that the Minister for Defence makes this clear and ensures that proper procedures are followed so that he can assure the Parliament that procedures have been laid down to avoid this cavalier approach to the use of defence assets occurring again. I quote for the Senate what the Chief of the Defence Force Staff had to say about this matter in the minute that has been tabled in the Senate. This minute was from Sir Neville McNamara to the Chief of the Air Staff. The minute states: . . . I now wish to advise you more formally of my concern regarding a number of aspects of the generation and handling of this task; in particular I am extremely concerned that the matter appears to have been handled as a routine task within your directorate of Operations and authorization given without yours or my knowledge. At the very least this action demonstrates a lack of awareness of the political sensitivities and even deeper consequences of the use of Defence Force assets in an issue such as the Franklin River Dam. As I have said, I think that matter is of great concern to the Parliament. I think the Minister for Defence should, at a very early date indeed, make a statement about the whole matter and clear it up. He should give assurances to the Parliament that this sort of action will not be allowed to happen again in the Department of Defence. The other matter to which I refer is the role of the Attorney-General and his approach to this matter. He does not seem to have given much thought to this very basic question, to the lawfulness of it or to what were the proper and, indeed, lawful procedures to give effect to his request. He seems to be very ready to brush it off as something for which he did not have any responsibility. He seems ready to brush off the matter because he had a conversation with the Minister for Defence who agreed that that was the beginning and the end of his own responsibility. But the Attorney-General is the chief law officer, the chief legal adviser to the Government. I would have thought that he should and would have been alert to the sensitivities of this matter. When all is said and done, a non-political officer, the Chief of the Defence Force Staff, was very alert to the political sensitivities of this matter. But the Attorney-General does not seem to have been alert to that element. He does not seem to have been alert either to the legal problems that could have arisen and to the legal procedures that should have been observed. The Department of Defence instructions are, in fact, issued under the statutory authority of the Defence Act. There must be some sanctions for breaches of these instructions. One cannot have instructions with statutory force and obligations arising under a statute which are just entirely ignored. Yet the proper way of going about this matter was ignored not only by officers of the Department of Defence but also by the officers of the Attorney-General's Department who were involved in this matter. I would have thought that, at the very least, these questions should have been in the forefront of the minds of officers of the Attorney-General's Department, if not in the forefront of the mind of the Attorney-General himself. This should be a matter of very considerable concern to the Senate. When we appropriate money for these departments, as we are doing here, we are entitled to an assurance that they will take a very much more responsible approach to questions of such importance, should a matter such as this arise again in the future. Senator TATE(Tasmania)(6.26) —I had not intended to enter this debate, but a few things ought to be said in defence of Group Captain Waterfield. Were it not known how to characterise and give weight to the utterances of the Opposition in this matter, the continued allegations against that young officer by the shadow Attorney would be potentially damaging to his career. That is the only reason I enter this debate. Group Captain Waterfield was brought before the Senate Estimates committee at the request of the Opposition and, as I understand it, at considerable difficulty to himself. It was not expected that he would be required to appear. But he did appear, perhaps an hour after the commencement of proceedings, when the request was made. He remained extremely calm, polite and co-operative in the face of the most hostile, not to say somewhat abrupt, questioning that I have seen a witness before an Estimates committee subjected to. It became so hostile at one stage that the Committee Chairman and the Committee rebuked one honourable senator. After Group Captain Waterfield had given an answer to the best of his ability, Senator MacGibbon asked: Were these flights within the normal and customary ambit of training operations of the Royal Australian Air Force-yes or no? It was like a magistrates court. The Hansard record continues: Group Capt. Waterfield-Yes. Senator MacGIBBON —Thank you. Senator GARETH EVANS —Are you happy with that? Senator MacGIBBON —No. The witness has got to live with that answer. Senator GARETH EVANS —I suggest that is an intimidatory remark and it should be struck from the record. Senator MacGibbon ought to be asked to apologise. CHAIRMAN-I ask for that remark to be withdrawn. Senator MacGIBBON —I withdraw it. Senator GARETH EVANS —I ask Senator MacGibbon to apologise to the witness. It is quite intolerable behaviour. Senator MacGIBBON —I apologise. I give him credit for doing so at the request of the Committee. My point is that this young officer, in the face of hostile questioning, conducted himself with a demeanour that was a credit to him. I think that small tribute should be paid. As to the substantive matters, Senator Durack put once again that Group Captain Waterfield acted in a cavalier manner in dispatching an aircraft as though it could have been done on the basis of a telephone call from any unidentified person claiming to be X, Y or Z from any phone box somewhere in Australia. In fact, as emerged from the evidence, Group Captain Waterfield responded, as he felt required to do, having been informed that the Minister had approved a task. He did not then dispatch an aircraft. As the evidence reveals, he determined that the matter should be passed to the appropriate tasking officer from Operational Command. He told the Operational Command tasking officer to contact the Attorney-General's Department to see about the details. In other words, there was a series of subsequent contacts between the tasking officer and the Department to determine the precise nature of the task to be undertaken. I think that sequence ought to be reconfirmed to the Senate. I turn to the letter from the Chief of Defence Force Staff. Senator MacGibbon, having put that letter from the CDFS, including the phrase, 'In particular I am extremely concerned that the matter appeared to have been handled as a routine task within your directorate', went on: The inference from that is very clear, that the CDFS did not regard this as a training flight. What is your comment on that? After some toing and froing it was determined by the Committee that it was appropriate that Group Captain Waterfield not be put in the position of having to draw an inference from the written remarks of the Chief of Defence Force Staff. That is my contribution. I simply felt that in defence of Group Captain Waterfield a little fuller revealing of the course of the evidence would be of advantage to the Senate. Senator WALSH(Western Australia-Minister for Resources and Energy)(6.31) —I do not propose to speak for very long. I apologise for not hearing all the speakers from the Opposition. I want to make a couple of brief comments. As I listened to Senator Durack's casuistry, I thought what a pity he was not as diligent in cleaning out the bottom drawers of the Crown Solicitor's Office in Perth as he is in chasing phantoms around the Senate for the nth time. His criticism of what he purports to regard as official negligence sits very badly when it comes from someone who presided, inert as a stuffed bullfrog, over the Attorney-General's Department while tax evaders stole billions of dollars from honest taxpayers, protected from the long arm of the law by the bottom drawer of the Crown Solicitor's Office in Perth. I want to comment on one item in Senator MacGibbon's speech, which was the other one I heard. I refer to the question of the airlines. Again I thought it was somewhat incongruous for a Queensland senator to be criticising Trans Australia Airlines for operating unprofitably-I interpolate that I am by no means an uncritical admirer of TAA-when to a significant degree the losses recorded by TAA are a direct function of its being forced to maintain unprofitable services in western Queensland with unsuitable aircraft, services which it is forced to maintain by what can be described only as blackmail by the State Government of Queensland. As regards his criticism of the two airlines agreement, I do not recall precisely who voted for that agreement when it was before the Parliament. But my recollection is that Senator MacGibbon was one of those then Government senators who voted for the two airlines agreement which he now has the audacity to criticise. If that is wrong, I will willingly retract and apologise, but my recollection is-- Senator MacGibbon —You will get the opportunity when you finish. Senator WALSH —If the honourable senator did not vote for it, I apologise. My recollection is that certainly the party of which he is member pushed that agreement through the Parliament knowing that, if it did not do so before the end of June 1981, it would not have the numbers to do so afterwards. Most of the speeches from the Opposition, of course, have nothing to do with the subject matter of these Bills which are to provide finance for the essential services of government for the remainder of this financial year. Senator MACGIBBON(Queensland) —by leave-I wish to make a personal explanation. To dispel the ignorance of the Minister for Resources and Energy (Senator Walsh) , I inform him that, if he checks the Hansard, he will find that I opposed the two airlines Bill in this chamber. I led the fight from this side against it because I believed it did not provide for commercial competition between the two airlines and, therefore, would reflect against the best interests of the flying public. We lost by one vote when that Bill was defeated. Question resolved in the affirmative. Bill read a second time. Motion (by Senator Walsh) agreed to: (1) That clauses 1 to 6 be postponed till after the consideration of the Schedule. (2) That, unless otherwise ordered, the Votes in the Schedule be considered in the same groupings and order as the departmental estimates referred to Estimates Committees A, B, C, D, E and F, respectively, as set out in the document circulated to honourable Senators. (3) That leave be given to Senators to move motions expressing opinions or making recommendations based on the Reports of the Estimates Committees; that such motions be moved when the appropriate Vote is under consideration; that where more than one motion is proposed in relation to a particular Vote, the motions may be debated together, but in all cases a motion or motions shall be disposed of before the Question is put on the Vote before the Chair; and that any Resolutions be reported when the Chairman makes his Report to the President at the conclusion of proceedings in Committee of the Whole. GROUP A Department of Industry and Commerce Proposed expenditure, $7,474,000. Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Proposed expenditure, $2,952,000. Department of Employment and Industrial Relations Proposed expenditure, $30,578,000. Department of Communications Proposed expenditure, $22,671,000. Senator PETER RAE(Tasmania)(6.37) —Lest it be thought that this place has not given as close attention to the function of the Estimates committees as it might have done, I wish simply to make the point that we are in an extraordinary situation. The appropriations being dealt with are the appropriations of a former government being carried through by a new government, neither of which is in a position to do very much about the inexorable process. Whilst there has been an opportunity to have some examination I think we can regard Appropriation Bill (No. 5) and Appropriation Bill (No. 6) as quite extraordinary in the normal process of the consideration of the work of Estimates committees and of the Senate in relation to Appropriation Bills. I do not wish to comment on the Bills other than simply to make that point so that it is on the record. It is an explanation why this has probably been the most low key Estimates procedure that this place has seen since the Estimates committees were introduced at the beginning of the 1970s. Senator COLEMAN(Western Australia)(6.38) —I wish simply to correct a matter which appears on page 19 of the Hansard record of the proceedings of Estimates Committee A of 10 May. It is heartening to see that members of the Press are reading Hansard. It happens all too infrequently. Under the heading 'Document A' I am reported as saying: I raise a question in relation to item 1 of page 9 of the explanatory notes. The Hansard report goes on to state: The reason given for the variation of $72,500 is an increase in the provision for hotel charges due to the different pattern of operations . . . In fact the amount requested for the hotel costs in relation to the Governor- General was $25,000, not $72,500. It is unfortunate that the comment attracted some attention in Bennelong's column in the Sunday Telegraph of 22 May which may have caused the Governor-General some distress. I apologise if that has happened . The amount should have been $25,000 and not $72,500 as is stated in the Hansard record. This is only the proof copy and I understand that the figure will be corrected in the final copy of the Hansard for distribution. Proposed expenditures agreed to. Proposed expenditures-Department of Social Security, $46,274,000; Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, $10,779,000; Department of Housing and Construction, $13,607,000; Department of Health, $18,108,000; Department of Resources and Energy, $4,154,000; Department of Trade, $7,709,000; Department of the Treasury, $8,323,000; Department of Primary Industry, $7,982,000; and Department of Finance, $22,968,000-agreed to. GROUP D Department of Education and Youth Affairs Proposed expenditure, $12,680,000. Department of Sport, Recreation and Tourism Proposed expenditure, $1,138,000. Department of Science and Technology Proposed expenditure, $19,610,000. Department of Home Affairs and Environment Proposed expenditure, $4,992,000. Department of Aboriginal Affairs Proposed expenditure, $2,486,000. Senator HAMER(Victoria)(6.41) —I wish to ask a few questions partly on behalf of Senator Martin, who is unable to be here, and partly on my own behalf, concerning the National Film Archive. They are of some urgency. I understand that Senator Ryan was given warning that these questions were to be asked. I think it is important that they be put on the public record. They concern the problem of the copying of nitrate film being undertaken by the National Film Archive. In the hearings of the Estimates committees last year-and again this year, I believe-it was pointed out that if the present holdings of nitrate film are not copied for preservation by the year 2000 it will be too late to preserve these films because they will have deteriorated irretrievably. First, have extra funds and staff been allocated, as the Estimates Committee recommended, for the copying program? I understand from the Director of the National Film Archive that $600,000 is required each year for the copying program to be achieved by the due date; that is, to the year 2000. What is the sum allocated to this program in the current financial year? What was the additional sum, if any, allocated in the Budget since last year? What is the number of full time qualified staff in the National Film Archive? Are these numbers sufficient to carry out the program? Have any additional full time staff been allocated to the National Film Archive since last year's Budget? The National Film Archive estimated that it needs to copy 700 cans of film this year to reach the year 2000 target. Will it have sufficient funds to copy this number in this financial year? If not, how many cans of film will it be able to copy? I am also concerned about reports that services of the film makers and the film industry in general have been severely restricted because of a lack of funds for the National Film Archive. Is there a prospect of further funds and staff being made available to the National Film Archive to rectify this problem? Mr Temporary Chairman, if these questions seem too detailed I emphasise that the matter is urgent and that Senator Ryan was given notice of the intention to raise these questions. Senator WALSH(Western Australia-Minister for Resources and Energy)(6.43) —I have been given a note which I think deals with the questions that Senator Hamer has asked. I did not have time to write down all the questions so if the answers are not satisfactory Senator Hamer should feel free to come back to me. The National Library Council has recorded its concern at the inadequacy of the resources available for film archive activities and for certain other Library activities. The Library has recognised the need to copy the deteriorating nitrate cellulose based film in its collection by the year 2000. Accordingly over recent years it has been allocating increasing resources of staff and funds for this purpose. Last financial year $150,000 was provided and this financial year $248,000 was provided. I acknowledge that that falls well short of the longer term target identified by Senator Hamer. The sum originally allocated for 1982-83 has not been supplemented. There are 10 full time staff, including some with long experience in the National Film Archive's activities. Since the Budget last year 16 part time positions have also been allocated to this work. No formal qualifications are required in film archives work generally. It is estimated that 250 cans of film will be copied this year of which 100 will be preservation copies. Fewer than 150 cans of film were copied in 1981-82. Access restrictions to the material in the National Film Archive were introduced because the staff could no longer service the rapidly rising demand. The lack of funds and equipment has limited the number of viewing copies than can be made and has curtailed access to the Archive's resources. I understand that in its 1983-84 estimate proposals the Australian National Library is seeking additional staff and funds for the Film Archive. The stage one extensions to the National Library building which are now being constructed include provision for a special storage facility for the preservation of master copies of Australian film. In closing, I should add that that bid will have to be considered in conjunction with all the other bids that will come from various departments and from other sources in the Budget context. Proposed expenditures agreed to. GROUP E Attorney-General's Department Proposed expenditure, $11,455,000. Department of the Special Minister of State Proposed expenditure, $11,998,000 Department of Foreign Affairs Proposed expenditure, $23,533,000. Department of Defence Proposed expenditure, $215,950,000. Department of Defence Support Proposed expenditure, $29,038,000. Senator WALTERS(Tasmania)(6.47) —I wish to speak in this debate on the expenditures considered by Senate Estimates Committee E. I propose to put some balance into what has already been debated this afternoon because there was nothing at all in what the shadow Attorney-General, Senator Durack, said that in any way reflected on the professional ability of Group Captain Waterfield. Group Captain Waterfield came before us, at the suggestion of members of the Committee . Senator Sibraa —He was treated disgracefully. Senator WALTERS —Indeed, Senator Sibraa was the Chairman and allowed the questioning to go on in the fashion that it did. Senator Sibraa —He was treated disgracefully. Senator WALTERS —He was not treated disgracefully, otherwise Senator Sibraa would have brought the questioning to an end. But at no stage did he attempt to bring it to an end. He considered it to be quite reasonable questioning. Indeed, I believe that it is to Group Captain Waterfield's credit that he was able to answer the questions in such an open fashion with the Attorney-General (Senator Gareth Evans), the responsible Minister in the Senate, sitting at the end of the table. To say that there was perhaps a little pressure brought to bear on Group Captain Waterfield by his Minister is putting it mildly. I asked Group Captain Waterfield what time he was telephoned by Mr Glare. According to the documents we had tabled, Group Captain Waterfield said that it was one o'clock. Later, because that answer did not fit in with what Mr Glare or the Attorney-General had said regarding the permission that was sought by the Minister for Defence ( Mr Scholes), Group Captain Waterfield was then asked whether he was sure it was one o'clock. He said: 'Well, I do not really know what the time was. I thought it was around one o'clock'. He was prepared to say he did not know. Maybe it was 3 o'clock, as Mr Glare had said. I asked Group Captain Waterfield why he thought it was one o'clock. I think his simple answer reflected the truth. He said: The reason I stated the time initially as being around one o'clock was that at that stage I thought I had received the call at about the tail end of our normal lunch period. That is an easy way in which to recollect the time. He believed he received the call around about the tail end of his normal lunch period. That suggests to me that it is around one o'clock, not 3 o'clock in the afternoon which would be well after the tail end of the lunch period. The suggestion that it might have been 3 o'clock was, I believe, because of pressure put upon him that it should fit in with the Minister's suggestion that he sought permission at a much later time. I believe this underlines very clearly that the Attorney-General had not even sought permission from the Minister for Defence when Group Captain Waterfield was telephoned and told that the Minister had given his approval. Group Captain Waterfield's recollection was that he received the call at one o' clock. Senator Gareth Evans said that he asked the Minister for Defence at the beginning of a Cabinet meeting. The Minister for Defence said that his recollection was after the Cabinet meeting. Mr Glare said that he thought it was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. There is a great deal of doubt about whether, when this streaker's defence started, the Minister for Defence had even been approached for permission to have these spy flights over Tasmania. Indeed, there was a meeting between Mr Glare and the Attorney-General. The Attorney-General, according to the tabled documents, asked Mr Glare whether there was any need to approach the Minister for Defence. Mr Glare said yes. He believed there was a need. He said he would telephone. A short time later Mr Glare was telephoned and told that permission had been given. That was some time after the morning meeting. There was an indication that the telephone call had taken place. The Attorney-General never made that telephone call. He said he saw Mr Scholes at the beginning of a Cabinet meeting. I believe that is a ridiculous way in which to go about seeking permission from the Minister for Defence. Any Minister would know that he has to get written approval before anything can take place. That written approval was never given. I believe there is very serious doubt that any verbal permission was given until well after the debacle was set in motion, even though Group Captain Waterfield had been told that the Minister had given permission. I felt very sorry for Group Captain Waterfield, sitting there with the Minister applying what I believe was pressure. If any disgraceful behaviour took place at that Estimates Committee meeting it would have been by the Attorney-General. Senator SIBRAA(New South Wales)(6.54) —I wish to speak because of some of the remarks made by Senator Walters. I am getting sick and tired of this nonsense that is being talked about spy flights over Tasmania. I think the matter ought to be put in its proper perspective. As far as I recall-I did not take part in the questioning at the time-the matter concerns a normal sort of flight that the Royal Australian Air Force undertakes all the time, as was revealed in the Estimates Committee hearing. Not one additional cent was spent. Not one additional minute was spent in flying. It was a flight by the Royal Australian Air Force over Australia. To call it a spy flight is the greatest lot of nonsense that I have ever heard. I ask Senator Walters whether she regards Tasmanians as Australians. The CHAIRMAN —Order! Senator Sibraa, I am afraid you cannot address questions to Senator Walters. Senator SIBRAA —I shall read some extracts from the Estimates Committee Hansard report. I have not had a lot of time to find them. At one stage I reminded the shadow Attorney-General that Group Captain Waterfield was not on trial and that he should not put questions to him in the way in which he did. I refer to two instances in which a relatively junior officer in the Air Force was treated in what I regard as a disgraceful manner. I refer to the transcript of Estimates Committee E, which states: Senator GARETH EVANS —I put it to you, Mr Chairman, that it is inappropriate and quite outside the normal parameters of the operation of the Defence Force anywhere for a junior officer to be required to comment on the inference of a senior officer's letter. CHAIRMAN-That was the point that I was about to take. I am appreciative of the fact that Group Captain Waterfield has come along here to answer questions. He did not have to come. I think that is a question which if he does not want to answer, he should not answer. Group Captain Waterfield-I would prefer not to answer that question. I have another example. Senator Durack directed this question to Group Captain Waterfield: Senator DURACK —Did you regard the flights, as you have told us, as special flights for those purposes? Group Capt. Waterfield-They were specially tasked. Senator MacGIBBON —I take up Senator Durack's point and remind the witness that this is a privileged meeting. Senator TATE —What is that supposed to mean? CHAIRMAN-I do not think any member of this Committee can attempt to put that sort of proposition to any of the witnesses here. Senator MacGIBBON —Would you allow me the courtesy of asking my question please? My question is: Were these flights within the normal and customary ambit of training operations of the Royal Australian Air Force-yes or no? Group Capt. Waterfield-Yes. Senator MacGIBBON —Thank you. Senator GARETH EVANS —Are you happy with that? Senator MacGIBBON —No. The witness has got to live with that answer. Senator GARETH EVANS —I suggest that is an intimidatory remark and it should be struck from the record. Senator MacGibbon ought to be asked to apologise. CHAIRMAN-I ask for that remark to be withdrawn. Senator MacGIBBON —I withdraw it. Senator GARETH EVANS —I ask Senator MacGibbon to apologise to the witness. It is quite intolerable behaviour. Senator MacGIBBON —I apologise. I think that those two instances-and I referred to a third-do not show the sort of treatment a junior officer from the Air Force should receive in front of a Senate Estimates committee. That is the reason I asked for an apology. I would not have raised this issue at all if Senator Walters had not commented on this instance in the first place. The CHAIRMAN —Before I call any other speakers on this matter I should point out to the Committee that this matter was aired during the second reading debate. I allowed Senator Walters to make some remarks and a rejoinder by Senator Sibraa. But I insist that any subsequent speakers on this matter relate their remarks to a particular aspect of the Estimates, rather than having a general debate. Senator MacGIBBON(Queensland)(6.58) —The Estimates Committee was faced with a most obdurate and impassive level of obstruction from the Attorney-General ( Senator Gareth Evans), the Minister representing the Minister for Defence, who was there at the time representing the Department. He did everything in his power to restrict the appearance of witnesses who were very relevant to the business before the Chair. It must be understood what was going on. It is quite wrong for the Chairman to put a different interpretation on the events to those that occurred at the time. The Chairman was there. If he does not like the way the meeting was conducted, that is his fault. He was in command, although I think that in reality Senator Gareth Evans was in command. The point is that Senator Evans was blatantly intimidating serving officers of the Royal Australian Air Force and trying to make them conform to a position he had adopted. At no stage did Senator Durack or myself do anything to harm or hazard the career of an officer of the Crown. We asked questions with great care. What we were after was the truth of what occurred. If honourable senators read the transcript of the Committee proceedings they will find that is borne out. Senator Evans clearly tried to intimidate and obstruct that Committee. That is the truth of the matter. Senator WALTERS(Tasmania)(6.59) —I will speak very briefly and relate my remarks to the Estimates. Senator Sibraa has just said that not one extra cent was spent on the flights; that they were normal flights. I quote one question and an answer. They read: Senator DURACK —Would it be in any way appropriate to describe that as a re- routed training flight? Group Capt. Waterfield-This is the Mirage flight you are referring to? Senator DURACK —The Mirage flight. Group Capt. Waterfield-No. That Mirage flight was specifically tasked. Senator WALSH(Western Australia)(6.59) —I think there is perhaps a bit of information I should supply here. The matter has been raised earlier on a number of occasions as to why a Royal Australian Air Force plane was used. At the Estimates Committee Senator Sir John Carrick, I think it was, asked whether the Division of National Mapping had planes available and whether they were suitably equipped. I have been advised that on 6, 7 and 8 April the aircraft, which is fitted with suitable photographic equipment and belongs to the Division of National Mapping, was located at Melbourne on standby for aerial photography in the Mildura area, but that the weather at Mildura was unsuitable at the time. Weather conditions permitting, National Mapping could have carried out aerial photography over the Franklin Dam site but it is unlikely that the Attorney- General's Department was aware of National Mapping's air photography capabilities as there had been no precedent. Debate interrupted. The CHAIRMAN —Order! It being 7 p.m., under sessional order I put the question: That the Chairman do now leave the chair and report to the Senate. Question resolved in the affirmative. The Chairman having reported accordingly- Remarks of Minister for Foreign Affairs-Tabling of Papers by Attorney-General Motion (by Senator Walsh) proposed: That the Senate do now adjourn. Senator MESSNER(South Australia)(7.1) —I draw attention to a story which appeared in the Adelaide Advertiser resulting from a recent interview that Peter Smark of the Melbourne Age had with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Bill Hayden. In the course of the interview, Mr Hayden was reported to have said: It was obvious that we were going to win. This is in connection with the election- I had never doubted it. I still believe that the election could have been won by our party led by anyone except a cripple. Of course there are some people in politics who have been crippled by their mates. I understand that the remark was widely reported in a number of newspapers around Australia and that the matter was given some prominence by the electronic media. Mr Hayden's reference to 'cripples' has caused concern, anguish and distress within the disabled community. I draw this matter to the attention of the Senate because it has occurred particularly in my own State. Over the past decade, governments, non-government organisations and the disabled community have been attempting to ensure that disabled people are accepted, without discrimination, into the wider community. I believe that efforts in this area have been generally successful. We have gone a long way towards removing from the minds of the general community the stigma or otherwise that was long associated with disabled people. In these endeavours exercises such as the International Year of Disabled Persons have been important in making us more aware of the disabled and assisting them to come out. This good work can and will be set back by a return to old prejudices. Terms like that unfortunately uttered by Mr Hayden feed those prejudices and should not be spoken or heard. It should be remembered that the community's expectations of the disabled are governed by labels and attitudes. In turn, the disabled individual's self-concept is moulded by the status accorded him and the expectations of him. Statements like Mr Hayden's have the effect of limiting these expectations and reducing their status. As a former Minister for Social Security, and a respected Minister, Mr Hayden should have known perhaps how disparaging such remark was. This week I wrote to the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) requesting that he obtain from Mr Hayden a withdrawal of his remark and an apology to the members of the community, particularly the disabled. I hope that that action will be quickly forthcoming. In conclusion, I should not have to point out to Mr Hayden the number of disabled people who have records of significant achievements in many areas of the community. Disabled people should not have to prove themselves, but if they must, I think that their achievements speak for themselves. I refer very briefly to a small poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins: Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals at that being indoors each one dwells; Selves-goes itself: myself it speaks and spells; Crying What I do is me: for that I came. If all Australians were to try harder to fulfil their own potential, as Hopkins urges, ours would be a better community. In reaching this goal there is much we can learn from the disabled. Senator WALTERS(Tasmania)(7.5) —I rise in this adjournment debate on a most unusual matter. I ask the Minister for Social Security, Senator Grimes, who is the Minister in charge of the Senate, whether he can accommodate my request. This is at least the fourth time when I have sought the papers that the Attorney -General, Senator Gareth Evans, promised he would table when I first asked for them on 11 May. I repeated my request at the appropriate Estimates committee hearing. I was told by the officer concerned that it would take two days to do so. That was a fortnight ago. I brought up the matter again this morning and I was assured by the Attorney-General that the papers would be tabled before the Senate adjourned today. I have just made inquiries and they have still not been tabled. Senator Gareth Evans has said on two occasions that he was sorry, he forgot. I take that statement at face value. I am quite sure that he is so snowed with paper in his Department that the matter has not crossed his mind. But surely to heavens there is someone in his Department whose responsibility it is to see that papers which are requested are tabled. I do not know whether it is arrogance on the part of the Department; but, if the Attorney-General does not have sufficient control over his Department to get the papers tabled, he should have. I ask again, with the greatest respect: Is it possible to have the papers tabled before we rise this evening? Senator GRIMES(Tasmania-Minister for Social Security)(7.7) —I will reply briefly to the two matters that have been raised tonight. I refer first to the speech by Senator Messner. I read the remarks attributed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Hayden, in the Adelaide Advertiser and I spoke to Mr Hayden about them. Of course, as Senator Messner said, the remarks were unfortunate. Mr Hayden, of course, regrets making them. But I am sure that Senator Messner, like any other politician in this place, has been unfortunate enough to make remarks like that in similar situations to those in which these were made. I assume that Senator Messner is genuine in his concern for the disabled people in the community by bringing this matter up tonight and that he is not just trying ot make political points and to embarrass Mr Hayden. It would be wrong of me to suggest that Senator Messner would do anything like that, although some would suggest that he might. In case that is what he was about, perhaps I should compare the speaker tonight with the person when he chose to refer to in this way in the Parliament tonight rather than to do so privately. Mr Hayden was a very respected Minister for Social Security. The Handicapped Persons Assistance Program in this country was developed and introduced by the same Bill Hayden who, as I say, was a distinguished Minister and always showed great concern for the disabled in the community. If one reads the speeches which Mr Hayden has made over the years, one will know that one of the people he has admired in the past and whom he quotes in speeches inside and outside the Parliament is President Roosevelt who inspired the world in his efforts from a wheelchair as President of the United States. I compare that with the actions of the former Minister for Veterans' Affairs who, when he held that portfolio, proceeded to sell off to a large extent the repatriation artificial limb facility. What has happened is that the costs of artificial limbs and appliances for the disabled in this community have increased to the extent that the present Minister has had to reverse the decision. I make those points. I think it is easy for any of us to speak in a pompous way as did the ex-Minister for Veterans' Affairs today and try to denigrate a man who has contributed far more to politics than he has or is likely to do in this community. Mr Hayden regrets the words that he used. He admits that he regrets the words that he used and he does not need speeches from Senator Messner to get him to do that. I will seek advice from the Attorney-General, Senator Gareth Evans, on what has happened to the papers which I believe he described in Question Time as being lost somewhere in the bowels of the Department. As the honourable senator said, he is busy and is snowed under with paper as the rest of us are. However, I am sure that, when he is reminded of the fact that he did say that they would be tabled today and they have not been, his impatience will be demonstrated to the officers who were responsible. I am sure that, now both of us are working on the matter, the honourable senator will get in the next few days the papers that she desires. Question resolved in the affirmative. Senate adjourned at 7.11 p.m. until 1.45 p.m. on Tuesday, 31 May 1983. The following answers to questions were circulated: Question No. 11 Senator Bolkus asked the Minister representing the Treasurer, upon notice, on 22 April 1983: (1) Which of the following Government authorities extend below-market interest loans to members of their executive, boards, or staff: (a) Aussat Pty Ltd; (b) the Australian Broadcasting Commission; (c) the Australian Manufacturing Council ; (d) the Project Australia Committee; (e) the Australia-Japan Foundation; and ( f) the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. (2) Have any loans at below-market rates been extended to the Western Australian businessman, Mr Denis Byrne Horgan. (3) Is Mr Horgan associated with all the authorities mentioned in the first part of this question. Senator Walsh —The Treasurer has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question: (1), (2) and (3) None of the bodies named in the question falls within the portfolio of the Treasurer. Accordingly, the honourable senator should redirect his questions to the Ministers responsible for the company, authority or body concerned; the Minister for Communications in respect of 1 (a) and 1 (b); the Minister for Industry and Commerce in respect of 1 (c) and 1 (d); the Minister for Foreign Affairs in respect of 1 (e) and the Minister for Science and Technology in respect of 1 (f). Question No. 19 Senator Bolkus asked the Minister representing the Minister for Foreign Affairs , upon notice, on 21 April 1983: (1) What is the normal manner in which Australian Ambassadors or High Commissioners are paid their salaries. (2) Are one or more Australian Ambassadors or High Commissioners been paid their salaries as a gross figure, without any tax being deducted, or in any manner different from the normal manner in which persons on the Government payroll receive their salaries; if so, who are the persons involved and what is the manner of payment involved. (3) What are the special circumstances involved in each case in which deductions have been varied pursuant to section 221D (1) of the Income Tax Assessment Act. Senator Gareth Evans —The Minister for Foreign Affairs has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's questions: (1) Australian Ambassadors and High Commissioners receive their salaries fortnightly through the Department of Finance salaries system which takes account of allowance entitlements and deductions for income tax instalments, superannuation instalments, Hospital and Medical Benefits Fund contributions, etc. Tax instalments are deducted in accordance with schedules prescribed in the Income Tax Regulations unless the Taxation Office directs otherwise. The Taxation Commissioner points out that, although the prescribed schedules are satisfactory for the majority of salary and wage earners, the law recognises that cases may arise where it would be inappropriate to make deductions at normal rates. Accordingly, section 221D of the Income Tax Assessment Act authorises the Commissioner to vary the amounts of tax instalments to be deducted to meet special circumstances of any case or class of cases. Where such a variation is approved, the employer concerned is notified in writing. (2), (3) and (4) The Commissioner of Taxation advises that the secrecy provisions of the income tax law prevent the disclosing of details of the affairs of particular taxpayers. Question No. 70 Senator Jones asked the Minister representing the Treasurer, upon notice, on 21 April 1983: Will the Treasurer consider introducing legislation to compel foreign corporations participating, or intending to participate, in resource projects in Australia, to process the raw materials domestically, where possible, to increase employent opportunities for Australian workers and to provide a boost to the Australian economy. Senator Walsh —The Treasurer has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question: The attractiveness of Australia as a location for resource processing depends on many factors, including relative profitability, availability of appropriate technology and proximity to final markets as well as the availability and cost of transport. It these factors do not favour processing in Australia, making processing a condition of foreign investment policy approval for proposed resource extraction would be likely to significantly reduce the attractiveness of resources extraction projects themselves and, thereby, to place in jeopardy the economic benefits that can accrue to Australia from foreign investment in such projects. The Government considers that processing will be undertaken when commercial circumstances favour processing in Australia rather than elsewhere and that compulsion is therefore an inappropriate means of encouraging foreign investors to undertake processing in Australia of Australian raw materials.