Monday, 30 March 1987 The PRESIDENT (Senator the Hon. Kerry Sibraa) took the chair at 2 p.m., and read prayers. The Clerk —Petitions have been lodged for presentation as follows: To the Honourable the President and the members of the Senate in the Parliament assembled. The humble petition of the undersigned electors of the Commonwealth of Australia respectfully showeth that: (1) Australians are offended by taxation evasion and welfare fraud which has the effect of increasing the taxation burden of honest Australians. (2) The community has shown its overwhelming support for the Government's decision to proceed with a national identification system known as the Australia Card. Your petitioners therefore pray that your honourable Senate will: continue the fight against taxation evasion and welfare fraud and restore fairness and equity to the tax and welfare systems by supporting the Australia Card Bill. by Senator Richardson (from 90 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled: The humble petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth: That we the undersigned, having great concern because of the spread of moral pollution in our nation call upon the Government to introduce immediate legislation: 1. To provide strict controls over importation, production, sale, hire or mailing of video-cassettes with the open sale of only G, PG, and M rated video-cassettes; and the total prohibition of the sale of R rated video-cassettes so that R rated films can only be viewed in an adult theatre by persons over 18 years. We totally reject the concept of ``X'' rated video cassettes which would allow the legal sale of hard-core pornographic films for screening in the homes of our nation, which endanger our children. 2. To dramatically improve the Federal Attorney-General's Guidelines for Classification of Video tapes/discs which restrict the importation, production, sale or hire, screening in private homes and mailing by Australia Post so as to include the total prohibition of any pornographic, obscene or blasphemous video cassette, or film containing child pornography, bestiality, sodomy, group sex, violent sex acts with women, such as rape and pack rape, sadism and torture, etc. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that your Honourable House will protect our society, especially women and children from moral pollution and its harmful effects. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Richardson (from 147 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned respectfully showeth that: 1. There is no legal barrier to the importation of X-rated videos into the ACT or to their sale in the ACT. 2. The Government has ignored the repeated protests of the Senate and the people of Canberra on this situation. 3. As a result X-rated videos are being sold from Canberra to other States, although they are banned in all States. Your petitioners therefore ask the Senate to put pressure on the Government to ban the importation and sale of X-rated video material. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Reid (from 60 citizens). To the Honourable the President and the members in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth: No. 1: That we are totally opposed to the introduction of the Australia Card or of any national numbering system. No. 2: That we consider that national compulsory identification will be intrusive, costly and ineffective in combatting tax evasion, illegal immigration and social security fraud. No. 3: That we are deeply concerned at Parliament's inability to provide effective and efficient methods to combat tax and social security fraud without resorting to expensive, ineffective and authoritarian measures alien to the Australian way of life. No. 4: That we call on the Parliament assembled to improve management of systems within the Australian Tax Office and other departments to crack down on tax evasion and fraudulent practices. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senators Sir John Carrick (from 61 citizens) and Puplick (from 19 citizens). To the Honourable the President and the members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth: (1) That we are totally opposed to the introduction of the Labor Government's Identity Card. (2) That this form of national and compulsory identification will be intrusive, costly for taxpayers and business and will not be effective in combatting the growing problems of tax evasion, illegal immigrants or social security. (3) That we are deeply concerned at the Labor Government's inability to provide effective and efficient methods to combat tax and social security fraud without resorting to expensive, ineffective and authoritarian measures which are alien to the Australian way of life. (4) That we call upon the Labor Government to improve management systems within the Australian Taxation Office and other departments to crack down on tax evasion and fraudulent practices. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senators Haines (from 33 citizens), Messner (from 90 citizens) and Reid (from 81 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 we strongly oppose the introduction of the `Australia Card' or any other form of National Identification Numbering System. We believe that the introduction of a National Identification Numbering System is not only totally unnecessary but is a severe threat to our civil liberties and privacy. We condemn the Government's actions on this matter, particularly as no reasonable nor responsible justification for the proposal has been forthcoming from the Government. We humbly pray that the Senate, in Parliament assembled, should reject any proposal for a National Identification Numbering System. by Senator Messner (from 124 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned shows: That we urge you to oppose the Australian Bill of Rights Bill because: We get no legally enforceable rights under the Bill. The Bill does not guarantee vital rights such as the right not to belong to a trade union, the right to own private property and not be deprived of it without just compensation and the right of choice between Government and non-Government school. The Bill gives Canberra extra powers to change our Federal system by the back door without a constitutional referendum. The Bill gives dangerous new powers to a Federal Government Commission. Your petitioners ask that the Senate, in Parliament assembled, should vote against the Bill of Rights, support Opposition amendments and seek a genuine public debate and a referendum on the Bill. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Durack (from 30 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia showeth: 1. That over 67,000 men, women and students enjoy the pursuit of their sport and recreation every year at the Anzac Rifle Range at Malabar and have done so since 1967. 2. The people of Sydney through their membership of 41 clubs headquartered at the Anzac Rifle Range together with a number of other community, school and commercial groups, the police and armed forces will lose this community facility if the Federal Government proceeds to sell the Range to private developers. 3. The Australian Bicentenary Fullbore Rifle Championships are to be conducted at the Anzac Rifle Range in April 1988 as part of the celebration of Australia's Bicentenary. Your petitioners most humbly pray that the Senate in Parliament assembled should ask the Federal Government to retain the Anzac Rifle Range for the continued use and enjoyment of the people of Australia. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Richardson (from 113 citizens). To the Honourable President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned respectfully shows: That we strongly support `The ACT Smoking and Tobacco Products Advertisements Prohibition Bill' introduced by Senator Evans, because it represents the first positive national step towards the eventual elimination of widespread serious ill health caused by smoking tobacco. by Senator Vigor (from 105 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The Petition of the undersigned respectfully showeth: That we consider the 2 per cent discounting of Commonwealth Occupational Superannuation Scheme pension adjustments on 10 October 1986 to be a serious breach of trust by the Government. The Commonwealth has reneged on an established commitment as incorporated in Commonwealth legislation and benefit promise pensions are not being paid in full. In particular we resent the long-term effect of the discounting. The pension loss is compounded throughout the life of a pensioner and surviving dependants-into the 21st century for many. We consider this Government-induced penalty to be out of all proportion to the short-term `extraordinary circumstances of the economy' given as the reason for the discounting. Your petitioners most humbly pray that the Senate, in Parliament assembled, should urge the Government to: 1. limit the pension discounting effect of the Superannuation and Other Benefits Legislation Amendment Act 1986 to the period 10 October 1986 to 1 July 1987 so that pensions are restored to the 9 October 1986 level as a base for the 1987 pension adjustment; and 2. consult with organisations representing pensioners before changing the terms and conditions of Commonwealth Occupational Superannuation Schemes. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Walters (from 23 citizens). Petitions received. Senator COONEY(Victoria) —Pursuant to standing order 109a, I give notice that, at the giving of notices on the next day of sitting, I shall withdraw Business of the Senate, Notice of Motion No. 1 standing in my name for 3 sitting days after today, relating to Fisheries Notice No. 174 and Notice of Motion No. 1 standing in my name for 5 sitting days after today relating to Meat Inspection Orders No. 4 of 1986. I seek leave to incorporate in Hansard a statement of explanation and correspondence relating to the Regulations and Ordinances Committee, both of which are quite brief. Leave granted. The documents read as follows- Fisheries Notice No. 174 This Notice prohibits certain fishing in Western Australia. The Minister for Primary Industry made it as an exercise of his discretion under the Federal Fisheries Act 1952 which empowered him to specify prohibited fishing equipment. The Notice specified the use of fishing equipment which did not comply with: (i) the requirements of a particular Western Australian Fishing Notice or any future substituted W.A. Notice; and (ii) the requirements of a certain licence issued under the Western Australian Fisheries Act 1905. The Committee raised with the Minister the question whether he had exercised his discretion lawfully by merely referring to unspecified equipment prohibited by current or future legislation of a State. The Minister informed the Committee that the Commonwealth and Western Australia had agreed shortly to conclude an arrangement whereby that State would manage the fishery in accordance with State law. Thus, federal measures, including the Notice, would soon cease to have effect. The Minister considered that the Notice gave effect to his intention to manage the fishery co-operatively in the interim. Having reconsidered the matter in the light of advice from its acting legal adviser Professor Dennis Pearce, the Committee has decided not to pursue the matter of legality. The Committee noted that section 49a of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 forbids regulations to which that Act applies legislating by reference to an instrument as in force `from time to time' (as is the case with the reference in the Federal Notice to possible future State Notices made in substitution for an existing State Notice). However section 8a of the Fisheries Act 1952, in applying certain sections of the Acts Interpretation Act to Fisheries Notices, does not include section 49a. There was therefore the suggestion that Parliament deliberately intended not to limit Fisheries Notices in the same way as regulations. The Committee is grateful to the Minister for his assistance with its scrutiny. Meat Inspection Orders No. 4 of 1986 These Orders help to consolidate rules relating to the inspection of meat. Orders 9, 10 and 11 provide that: (i) an authorised meat inspector could suspend work at certain premises if he or she was satisfied that this was necessary to ensure hygiene or facilitate an inspection; and (ii) that, where an inspector believed that premises were unclean or unsanitary he or she could by written notice require that remedial action be taken and that operations cease until such remedial action was taken. An aggrieved person could apply to the Secretary of the Department for a reconsideration of these decisions, with a further right of appeal to the Administrative Appeal Tribunal. The Committee noted that these were large and necessary powers to ensure the maintenance of the highest standards of meat hygiene. However, the decision could also have the effect of suspending or terminating business operations affecting individuals' livelihoods. While it was necessary in the public interest that such powers be available, the Committee considered that administrative justice also required that reasons for decisions should be supplied within a short time of the exercise of such significant administrative powers. The Minister for Primary Industry, Mr John Kerin, M.P., informed the Committee that departmental administrative practice required official notices to set out reasons for decisions. He agreed, however, that this administrative practice should be made a legal requirement by being formalised in an amendment to the Orders. The Committee commends this Minister for once again demonstrating his willingness to accommodate the Committee's concerns about standards of fairness in administrative decision-making. Notices of Motion Notices of Motion Notices of Motion PARLIAMENT OF AUSTRALIA THE SENATE STANDING COMMITTEE ON REGULATIONS AND ORDINANCES 24 February 1987 The Hon. John Kerin, M.P. Minister for Primary Industry Parliament House Canberra, A.C.T. 2600 Dear Minister, At its meeting on 19 February 1987 the Committee considered Fisheries Notice No. 174 which prohibits the use of rock lobster pots off the coast of Western Australia. The Committee seeks your advice on whether certain provisions of the Notice are made within the powers conferred by the Fisheries Act 1952. Firstly, paragraph 2 (b) of the Notice states that, pursuant to paragraph 8 (1) (c) of the Fisheries Act, the Minister prohibits the taking of western rock lobster with the use of a rock lobster pot, unless the pot complies with either Notice No. 233 gazetted on 26 September 1986 and made under the Western Australian Fisheries Act 1905, or any substitute notice that may be published under that Act. Paragraph 8 (1) (c) of the Federal Act provides that the Minister may by notice prohibit the taking of fish by a method or equipment ``specified'' in the Notice. It may be argued that the terms of this paragraph are wide enough to confer on the Minister a power to make a Notice which specifies equipment by reference to the terms of another Notice which is extant and which the Minister has considered. It may be arguable that this incorporation by reference device is valid notwithstanding that the incorporated Notice in question has been made in another jurisdiction by another Minister. However, the Committee has some concern that this argument may not extend to save the validity of the Federal Notice in so far as the incorporation by reference is made to apply to any notice that may be published under the Western Australian Act in substitution for the initial W.A. Notice. Clearly the Minister could not have contemplated each and every future State Notice and thus could not have considered the contents of each such State Notice for the purpose of exercising his or her independent discretion in the matter as required under the Federal Act. Thus, he or she might not lawfully have exercised the discretion to specify prohibited equipment. It may be that under paragraph 2 (b), the exercise of the discretion conferred by the Federal Act to prohibit certain specified fishing by Notice, is fettered and hence not lawfully exercised, where its exercise has the effect of sub-delegating to another authority the ultimate decision-making power. Under the Federal Notice it appears that the Western Australian Minister has been given the power to provide a ready-made decision or series of such decisions in the future to take effect as if they embodied an independent exercise of discretion by the Federal Minister. The Committee has some difficulty in reading paragraph 8 (1) (c) in such a way as to authorise such an outcome. The Committee would therefore, be very pleased to have your comments and advice on the issue. Secondly, paragraph 3 of the Fisheries Notice No. 174 provides that, pursuant to paragraph 8 (1) (f) of the Fisheries Act 1952, the Minister prohibits persons from having a quantity of rock lobster pots in excess of the less of 200 or the quantity of pots licenced to be used under the Western Australian Fisheries Act 1905. Points similar to those discussed above might also be made here and it is suggested that in paragraph 3 the Minister is purporting to exercise a discretion which does not take into account possible future amendments to the Western Australian Act. The Committee considers that in the light of the foregoing points it should ask you whether you are satisfied that Fisheries Notice No. 174 has in fact been made in accordance with your powers and intentions. Yours sincerely BARNEY COONEY Chairman MINISTER FOR PRIMARY INDUSTRY THE HON. JOHN KERIN, M.P. Parliament House, Canberra A.C.T. 2600 Telephone (062) 73 1711 Telex 62308 Facsimile (062) 73 2194 17 March 1987 Senator B. Cooney Chairman Senate Standing Committee on Regulations and Ordinances Parliament House Canberra, A.C.T. 2600 Dear Senator Cooney I refer to your letter of 24 February 1987, asking two questions about Fisheries Notice No. 174, on behalf of the Senate Standing Committee on Regulations and Ordinances. Your committee's particular concern is that the notice may not be valid insofar as it may depend by reference on some future notice under the Western Australian Fisheries Act 1905 published in substitution for Notice No. 233 under that Act. I agree that I could not, in making Fisheries Notice No. 174, have contemplated every possible future notice substituting W.A. Notice No. 233. However, the rock lobster fishery in Western Australia is one in which the Commonwealth and Western Australia have co-operated closely in managing for over 30 years and there is excellent liaison about proposals to vary management policies. In addition, the Commonwealth and Western Australian Governments have agreed that there should be an arrangement under Part IV A of the Fisheries Act 1952 for the fishery to be managed in accordance with the law of Western Australia. This will take effect in the near future, at which time all measures under the Commonwealth Fisheries Act 1952 in relation to the fishery, including Fisheries Notice No. 174, will cease to have effect. In these circumstances, I see no difficulty in making Fisheries Notice No. 174 in the form in which it exists. It gives effect to the intention I have of managing the fishery in co-operation with the Western Australian Minister during the period in which the fishery remains under the shared jurisdictions of the Commonwealth and the State. My comments above also apply to your second question in relation to the possibility of the Western Australian Minister substituting a different number of rock lobster pots in a notice under the State Act and of that different number then having immediate effect for the purposes of fisheries Notice No. 174. I hope that the foregoing comments will be of assistance to your committee. Yours fraternally JOHN KERIN PARLIAMENT OF AUSTRALIA THE SENATE STANDING COMMITTEE ON REGULATIONS AND ORDINANCES 24 February 1987 The Hon. John Kerin, M.P. Minister for Primary Industry Parliament House Canberra, A.C.T. 2600 Dear Minister, At its meeting on 19 February 1987 the Committee considered the Meat Inspection Orders No. 4 of 1986. There are two matters, one of form and one of substance, on which the Committee would welcome your advice. The Committee noted that on the copy of the instrument sent to it for scrutiny, you, as Minister, made a number of corrections to the text including renumbering the order from ``5'' to ``4'' and correcting some typographical errors. However, the notes inserted below the amended provisions have not been altered. Given the new method of amending Orders by reprinting pages, these notices are designed to facilitate understanding of the new pages by actually identifying the changed provisions. The errors in these notes could lead to confusion for legal advisers, or persons in the meat industry seeking to understand these new and complex Orders. The Committee would welcome your views on whether this problem can be quickly overcome. Secondly, the Committee noted that there is no requirement in Order 14 that an authorised officer give reasons for his or her decision under Orders 9 and 10. Similarly, it appears that the Secretary, on a reconsideration under Order 11, need not furnish reasons for his or her decision to confirm, vary or revoke an authorised officer's notice. The relevant decisions can have the effect of suspending or terminating business livelihood operations. The Committee acknowledges that very strict standards of hygiene must be maintained in this industry, that diligence and speed in dealing with breaches of the legislation are essential and that the implications of any failure to preserve standards are grave. However, the Committee would ask you to consider an amendment to the Orders to provide that reasons for decisions be supplied within a short time of the exercise of such significant administrative powers as suspension or termination of a source of livelihood. The Committee looks forward to receiving your views on the issues discussed above. Yours sincerely, BARNEY COONEY Chairman MINISTER FOR PRIMARY INDUSTRY THE HON. JOHN KERIN, M.P. Parliament House, Canberra A.C.T. 2600 Telephone (062) 73 1711 Telex 62308 Facsimile (062) 73 2194 20 March 1987 Senator Barney Cooney Chairman Senate Standing Committee on Regulations and Ordinances Parliament House Canberra, A.C.T. 2600 Dear Senator Cooney I refer to your letter dated 24 February 1987 seeking my comments on two matters arising in relation to Meat Inspection Orders No. 4 of 1986. The first point which the Committee raised concerns the reference to the amending orders in notes after amended provisions. I agree that it is most important that these notes be accurate. As the notes do not have legal effect I did not correct them on the original document. However, the notes were amended to refer to orders No. 4 of 1986 in the printed copies of the orders for sale to the public. The Committee has also expressed concern that a notice provided in accordance with order 9, 10 or 11 to a person affected by a decision made under that order need not contain reasons for the decision. I acknowledge that a decision made under any one of those orders could have a significant effect on a person's livelihood. Administratively, the notice provided in accordance with those orders sets out reasons for the decision and in order to formalise this arrangement I have instructed my Department to amend order 14 to require reasons for the decision to be provided with the notice. I thank the Committee for drawing these matters to my attention. Yours fraternally JOHN KERIN Senator COONEY(Victoria) —I give notice that, 11 sitting days after today, I shall move: That the amendments to Defence Determinations as contained in Determinations Nos 93 and 94 of 1986 and made under section 58B of the Defence Act 1903 be disallowed. I seek leave to make a short statement. Leave granted. Senator COONEY —These determinations provide for certain allowances for members of the Defence Force. They were made in November 1986 and they operate retrospectively to January 1984. The Committee looks carefully at any instrument of delegated legislation which is made to operate retrospectively beyond a few months. However, it takes a very serious view of retro- spectivity in the payment of money if it extends beyond two years. Such retrospectivity deprives the Parliament of the opportunity to consider and approve expenditure at the time and in the circumstances to which it applies. The Committee would require quite exceptional circum- stances to be established to justify such retrospectivity. This approach has been adhered to by the Committee since guidelines on retro- spectivity were included in its twenty-fifth report in 1968. Delegated legislation has seldom infringed these guidelines. The Committee is corresponding with the Minister for Defence to determine the nature of the exceptional circumstances which have given rise to the retrospectivity in the present cases. I give this protective notice to ensure that the Minister and the Committee have adequate time to examine the matter without prejudice to the Committee's scrutiny. Senator GARETH EVANS(Victoria-Manager of Government Business in the Senate) —Papers are tabled in accordance with the list circulated to honourable senators. With the concurrence of the Senate, I ask that the list be incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The list read as follows- 1. Human Rights Commission-Annual Report 1985-86-Pursuant to section 30 of the Human Rights Commission Act 1981. 2. Australian National Airlines Commission and Ansett Transport Industries Limited-Joint report on air fare consultations held during 1986-Pursuant to sub-clause 7 (11) of the Schedule to the Airlines Agreement Act 1981. 3. Financial statements covering the operation of passenger air services on trunk routes and the total operation of air services carried on by the Australian National Airlines Commission for 1985-86-together with the Auditor-General's Report-Pursuant to sub-clause 13 (1) of the Schedule to the Airlines Agreement Act 1981. 4. Financial statements covering the operation of passenger air services on trunk routes and the total operation of air services carried on by Ansett Transport Industries Limited for 1985-86-together with the Auditor's Report-Pursuant to sub-clause 13 (1) of the Schedule to the Airlines Agreement Act 1981. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Leader of the Government in the Senate) —by leave-I inform the Senate that Senator Gietzelt is absent from the chamber for Question Time today. Any questions in this chamber which would normally be directed to Senator Gietzelt in relation to his portfolio or those he represents should be directed to me. Senator CHANEY —My question is addressed to the Leader of the Government in the Senate in his own capacity and also as the Minister representing both the Prime Minister and the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Youth Affairs. Will the honourable gentleman confirm the fact that the teenage youth unemployment rate last month was 23.3 per cent? Is it a fact that when the Government's Priority One scheme was launched in August 1985 the rate was 21.7 per cent? Given the evident failure of the Government's alleged first priority other than as a public relations exercise, what does the Government propose to do to reduce worsening youth unemployment? Senator BUTTON —I am not aware of the details of those figures but they sound familiar and correct according to my recollection. These matters are constantly under attention by the Government. I have nothing to say at present as to the specific initiative in respect of that problem. Senator RICHARDSON —Will the Minister for Finance indicate when the Government will be responding to the report of the Senate Select Committee on Television Equalisation which was tabled on Monday, 23 March? Senator WALSH —The response of the Government has now been determined. Indeed, I table the response which has been provided by Mr Duffy. It remains the Government's view that the principal recommendations of the majority report-namely, that the equalisation Bills as agreed to by the House of Representatives in November last year be passed by the Senate and that the Government should seek to provide three commercial television services throughout regional Australia as soon as possible-should be carried out. Senator Harradine —Mr President, I rise on a point of order. Is it appropriate for a Minister to respond to the report of a select committee of the Parliament through the medium of an answer to a question without notice? Senator Chaney —Mr President, on the point of order: I was going to seek leave to move a motion to take note of the statement. This is a totally irregular procedure. It is certainly one which has never been seen in this chamber before. I believe that the Minister should be asked to make a statement in the normal way instead of abusing Question Time in this way. The PRESIDENT —I will rule on the point of order. Senator Richardson asked when the report was going to be tabled. There is nothing to stop the Minister tabling it. However, I do not think that this is the best time to begin discussing the detail of what has been tabled. I suggest that some other method could be used. Senator Gareth Evans —Are you allowing him to go on? The PRESIDENT —I am suggesting to Senator Walsh that he could seek another time to speak at length on the report. Senator WALSH —I did not intend to speak at length, Mr President. I thought honourable senators were anxious to know the Government's response to the report. The only thing I have to add is that the Minister for Communications will introduce appropriate legislation later in this session. As to the abuse of Question Time, it is consistently abused by the Opposition every day. Senator MESSNER —I address my question to the Minister for Finance. I refer the Minister to the statement of Commonwealth Government financial transactions for February 1987 released last Friday, too late to reach the newspapers for the weekend. Specifically, I refer him to the public debt interest component of actual outlays for the eight months to February 1987. Did that statement reveal that the cumulative outlay to February 1987 on public debt interest increased by a massive 15.8 per cent over the corresponding period last year compared with a Budget forecast of only 6.5 per cent? In view of the fact that this extraordinary increase in public debt is a direct consequence of the deliberate high interest rate policy followed by the Government which formed an integral part of its Budget strategy, can the Minister explain why a more accurate forecast or estimate of public debt interest growth was not calculated in the 1986-87 Budget? Senator WALSH —I do not have the Commonwealth financial transactions statement with me, but the figures that Senator Messner refers to sound to me to be credible, and I presume he has worked them out correctly. For at least the last two, and possibly the last four, monthly CFTs it has been stated that outlays on public debt interest are likely to be greater than those forecast in the Budget. I do not know why Senator Messner is bothering to ask a question about it now. I do not know whether, for the first time, he has actually got round to reading the CFTs and associated Press releases, or whether this is seen by the Opposition to be a slack day for questions and it therefore has decided to ask questions about matters it could have asked about several months ago had it been sufficiently diligent to read authorised releases or to show an interest in them. One of the major reasons for the PDI being higher than anticipated is that the interest being paid on government debt is somewhat higher than had been expected at the time, and of course interest rates are higher than any sensible person would like them to be. If anybody is really concerned about interest rates now, let me just say that they are inconsequential compared to the horrendous interest rates which would apply if the Opposition were to be elected to government and to implement its policies-as vetoed and modified by the National Party of Australia, of course-and come in with a $16 billion deficit, as the present Leader of the Opposition plans to do. Under those circumstances, interest rates could be expected to hit 30 or 40 per cent. Senator MESSNER —Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. The Minister did not attempt to address that part of the question in which I sought his explanation as to why there was no more accurate assessment of public debt interest at an earlier stage. I might interpolate that it was clear from Budget Papers that there was a very heavy roll-over period in the first part of the financial year, and for that reason the question was not raised until eight months had gone by. Senator WALSH —Senator Messner has asserted that I did not address that part of the question and asked for the reason why. That is not correct. I said that a major factor in that is that the interest rate is higher than had been anticipated at Budget time. If Senator Messner wants to get a more comprehensive explanation than that, I will look at it and see whether there is anything further that is worth reporting. Senator MAGUIRE —My question is directed to the Minister representing the Minister for Primary Industry. I ask: Has the Government made an estimate of the saving to the Budget, compared with current policies, of abolishing the consumption subsidy for fertilisers used in the rural sector, as apparently proposed by the Opposition? Is the fertiliser subsidy one of the major farm support elements in the Budget, if not the largest? Senator WALSH —The answer to the last part of the question is yes. The provision of fertiliser subsidies is a major part of the Budget outlays in the farm sector and indeed is estimated for this year to be $83m, which, it should be noted, falls into two qualitatively different components; that is, $55m for what, for want of a better name, I will call a consumption subsidy; and the balance of $28m for section 96 grants to offset the effect of anti-dumping duties. According to the Sydney Morning Herald recently, ending the farm fertiliser subsidy was one of the few propositions in the Opposition's leaked expenditure cut paper which have not been repudiated specifically. Further, it has also been reported that the National Farmers Federation-- Senator Chaney —Mr President, I raise a point of order. Last week two Ministers refused to answer any questions on the Government's expenditure cuts. We how have again the rather absurd spectacle of Ministers of this Government purporting to answer questions on Opposition policy on the basis of a document which has been clearly identified as being no more than a working document. I suggest that it would be consistent with previous rulings if the Minister, having answered that part of the question that lies clearly within his own responsibilities, on the second part was told to sit down and allow another question to be asked. The PRESIDENT —I realise that there have been a number of points of order on this matter. I have looked at some of the past rulings. Questions have been accepted where the question was directed in terms which request the Minister to state whether the Government intends to adopt some course of action suggested or embarked upon by a non-government party or a State government and to give the reasons for the Government's acceptance or rejection of the proposed course. This type of question is in order because the Minister is asked for information on the Government's intentions and the reasons for these intentions. Going with those previous rulings, I determined that Senator Maguire's question was in order. Of course, there is a problem when the Minister starts going outside answering the question and starts debating the matter. I ask Senator Walsh to bear that in mind. The question was in order. Senator Chaney —On a further point of order: I do not dispute your ruling, Mr President, in any sense, but my point of order did not relate to whether the question was in order. I did not take a point of order on that. I thought that the question was in order. The point is that I do not think the answer is in order when it starts to canvass documents in the way this Minister is canvassing documents-in a way which is purely hypothetical-and when the Minister is permitted by you and the Standing Orders and is prepared to refuse to answer any questions about the Government's intentions, including on matters such as fertiliser subsidies. The PRESIDENT —I took the opportunity to read out that ruling, as I said, because there have been a number of queries on it. I know that the honourable senator was not debating whether the question was in order. I have no power to direct a Minister on how to answer a question except when he starts debating the issue. I suggest to the Minister that he was beginning to get into that area. Senator WALSH —Thank you, Mr President. All I was about to say was that it has also been reported that the National Farmers Federation would agree to the abolition of the fertiliser subsidies if that were to be part of a $10 billion total expenditure cut. Since the hairy-chested Leader of the Opposition has been able to identify only $32.6m worth of expenditure cuts, I doubt whether the NFF and the Liberal Party would do a deal on that. Senator POWELL —My question is to the Minister for Education. I remind the Minister that the Tertiary Education Commission, in its September 1986 report by the Committee of Inquiry `Review of Efficiency and Effectiveness in Higher Education', said: For the future, changes in the social composition of higher education will require continuing steady growth in the provision of higher education places . . . and maintenance of adequate levels of student financial support. I ask the Minister: Since it is the Government's intention that its $250 tertiary fee will rise in line with the consumer price index-based education index can he say whether the Government will act to protect the living standards of students by ensuring that student allowances are also linked to the CPI? Senator RYAN —I am pleased that Senator Powell has noted that it is the Government's intention to index the $250 administration charge in line with the education index because a lot of commentators on this matter seem to think that it is a new announcement and has suddenly been thought up whereas this intention was clearly stated from the outset-the time when the charge was introduced-and was provided for in the legislation. That has certainly been our intention. With regard to student allowances, we have a phase-in arrangement whereby we are seeking to bring all student allowances into line with the equivalent unemployment benefit for young people in the same age group. We are doing that successively. Next year, for example, the Austudy payment for 16- and 17-year olds will be the equivalent of the junior unemployment benefit, and I think the last series of allowances will be brought into alignment in 1989. It is also the announced intention of the Government, once the allowances and the benefits are properly aligned, that they will be indexed. Senator COLEMAN —My question, which also is directed to the Minister for Education in her capacity of Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on the Status of Women, relates to the situation which occurred in the United States of America last week, where the Supreme Court ruled that employers may hire or promote women and/or minorities over better qualified men to balance their work forces. I ask: What is to prevent a similar situation occurring in Australia in relation to the affirmative action legislation? Senator RYAN —I did notice the Supreme Court ruling with regard to a woman who was appointed to a promotion position in the transport industry in the United States. I must say in passing that I agree with those who have hailed that decision as a welcome one in terms of the United States legislation. However, the United States legislation is different in essence in this respect from the Australian legislation. To that part of Senator Coleman's question when she asked what is to prevent a similar kind of ruling being made in Australia-that is, a ruling whereby a woman who is qualified for a job but who is not as qualified as a male is given preference-the answer is that all of our equal opportunity legislation, such as the affirmative action legislation and all other parts of that legislation package, clearly states that nothing in the legislation will prevent appointments being made on the basis of merit. Whereas the Americans have legislated to provide for quotas of appointments for severely disadvantaged groups-ethnic minorities and the like-we have not gone along that route in Australia. We considered the American legislation but decided that, whereas it might be appropriate in certain parts of the United States, it was not appropriate for the Australian experience. All of our equal opportunity legislation, as Senator Peter Baume well knows, is based on the principle that merit-that is, the capacity to do the job-will be the basis on which any appointment is made. Our affirmative action policies require the creation of a situation where a person can be judged on merit instead of on irrelevant criteria. So it is substantially different in that respect. While I was happy to see that the supporters of equal opportunity in the United States were pleased with the decision, I also must point out that it is not a decision which would be possible under the Australian legislation. Senator VANSTONE —I refer the Minister for Education to her assertion that, despite computer difficulties, some of the delay in the processing of Austudy applications is due to students inadequately or inaccurately filling in the Austudy application form. Accepting the Minister's assertion that she is not blaming the students, I ask: Who designed the form? Why is it not user friendly? Has the Minister sought advice as to the particular sections of the application form which are creating difficulty? Will the Minister use any such advice or report to ensure that the application form used next year will not be of such a poor design as to result in persons qualified for tertiary education being unable to fill it in properly? Senator RYAN —The Austudy form was designed within the Department of Education and it was, I think, a design which considerably improved the process from the year before. It is the case that the forms are not always accurately filled in and, as I said before, I do not particularly want to assign blame regarding that. The fact is that if Commonwealth education officers do not get adequate information they are not able to complete the assessment of a student's claim for Austudy. Certainly the questions of the suitability of the application form, the methods of assessment, the time taken for assessment and the range of information that must be checked by assessors within the Commonwealth Department are all being considered. I remind Senator Vanstone that it is clearly in the Government's interest, as well as in the interests of students, that Austudy payments are made as quickly as possible. It is certainly no joy to me to know that some students are experiencing difficulty while they are awaiting assessment of their form. We are certainly reviewing the whole procedure in the hope that we will find ways in which the procedure can be streamlined for next year. In any event, I believe that next year's processing will be much more efficient because there will be better knowledge of the new criteria and so forth. It is clearly in everybody's interest that the forms be processed as quickly as possible. As Senator Vanstone has raised the matter of delays, I remind her and all honourable senators that there is a system for speedy manual assessment for students who are experiencing extreme hardship. From time to time the media likes to interview students who are experiencing extreme hardship. Perhaps it would be more constructive of the media if it were to ask students whether they had told the Commonwealth officer who was handling their case that they were in extreme hardship and asked to have their case handled manually. There is such a procedure. I think the numbers of students who have had their forms accelerated in this way is now in the vicinity of 5,000 and Commonwealth education officers are very willing to do this in cases of extreme hardship. I would also like to say, because there have been some suggestions from time to time-not today in Senator Vanstone's question particularly-that Commonwealth education officers are not as sympathetic as they might be for students' circumstances. From my discussions and meetings with officers who really are at the coal face in this matter, I have found a great deal of sympathy and support for students. For example, I visited the Goulburn Street office on Thursday to thank the officers who had had to deal for many hours with an extremely difficult situation-the offices were occupied by hundreds of students. I was very impressed with the totally sympathetic attitude towards students which they had retained despite the enormous difficulties and stress they had been through. I assure Senator Vanstone that every effort is being made right now to process the applications as quickly as possible and every attempt will be made by officers in my Department and by me to ensure that any improvements we can make in the system, while protecting the public purse, will be made. Senator BOLKUS —I ask the Minister representing the Minister for Foreign Affairs whether it is a fact that Article 1 of the Antarctic Treaty provides: Antarctica shall be used for peaceful purposes only. There shall be prohibited, (inter alia) . . . the testing of any type of weapons. I also ask whether it is a fact that Article V of that Treaty provides: Any nuclear explosions in Antarctica and the disposal there of radioactive waste material shall be prohibited. Is it further a fact that the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources 1980, the signatories of which include South Africa, recognises that it is in the interests of all mankind to preserve the waters surrounding the Antarctic continent for peaceful purposes only? I refer the Minister to recent reports suggesting that South Africa has used Antarctica and surrounding waters for nuclear testing and that South Africa is planning to build an air strip on Marion Island enabling the island to be better used for nuclear testing. In view of these reports, will the Australian Government take measures to review South Africa's position as an Antarctic Treaty partner? Senator GARETH EVANS —As to the first part of Senator Bolkus's question I point out that it is the case that the texts of the Antarctic Treaty and the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources are in the terms that he indicated. On the question of reports about planned testing at Marion Island, the Government has no evidence that South Africa has used Antarctica for nuclear testing but the Government would certainly be happy to examine any information which Senator Bolkus may have on this subject. Marion Island is a South African possession which is outside the Antarctic Treaty area, that is to say, it lies north of latitude 60 degrees south but within the CCAMLR area. We have no evidence to support the claim that South Africa may be planning to test nuclear weapons there or that any South African plans to build an airstrip on Marion Island may form part of a nuclear weapons or missile testing program. South Africa has an established program of environmental and scientific research on the island. I am not quite sure what Senator Bolkus means by the suggestion that the Government take measures to review South Africa's position as an Antarctic Treaty partner. There is no provision to expel a country from the Antarctic Treaty. Moreover, if South Africa were no longer a party to the Antarctic Treaty, it would not be bound by its present obligations under the Treaty. Accordingly, we do not see that there is a case for the Government to take any action against South Africa within the Antarctic Treaty system because, among other things, we have no evidence that South Africa has violated or intends to violate its provisions. Senator MacGIBBON —My question is directed to the Minister representing the Minister for Foreign Affairs. What criteria does the Hawke Labor Government apply when it is inviting people such as Mr Oliver Tambo to visit Australia with all fares and expenses paid by the Australian taxpayer? Is there a threshold number of murders for a terrorist to have committed, and is membership of the Communist Party mandatory or merely desirable? Senator GARETH EVANS —A question like that is an abuse of Question Time and typical of the sort of thing we expect from the apologists for apartheid that exist over the other side of this chamber. Mr Tambo has been invited to this country under the special overseas visitors program and that part of it which I referred to in the chamber last week that is specifically designed to encourage information and understanding of the South African problem. Mr Tambo is acknowledged world-wide to be the legitimate leader of a movement within that country that has a long and honourable record of resisting oppression and, as such, deserves the support of civilised countries around the world and the support of people with some claim to morality and intelligence in this chamber. The fact that Senator MacGibbon satisfies neither of those descriptions is his problem, not ours. Senator MacGIBBON —Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. Am I to understand the Minister to have said that Mr Tambo had a long and honourable record? Senator GARETH EVANS —I have nothing to add to my reply. Senator Puplick —Mr President, I raise a point of order in relation to Senator Gareth Evans's answer to Senator MacGibbon. Senator Evans described senators on this side of the chamber as apologists for apartheid. Mr President, I take- Senator Elstob —He said `some'. Senator Puplick —He did not. He said `apologists for apartheid'. Mr President, I take exception to that. I regard it as personally insulting. I believe that I am entitled to an apology in that regard; or, if indeed Senator Evans did not have the guts or the courage to specify the people that he particularly had in mind, he should be called to order for at least being a moral coward if nothing else. The PRESIDENT —I am placed in a difficult position in that I did not hear exactly what Senator Evans said-- Senator Gareth Evans —I acknowledge that it was in the terms that Senator Puplick described. The PRESIDENT —And whether it was to all members or some-- Senator Gareth Evans —No, sorry. I said `some'. Others are merely fellow travellers. Senator MacGibbon —Mr President, I will take a point of order on this, because I have never ever supported apartheid. I am a well known opponent of it. I refuse to be lumped by an irresponsible Minister such as that as an apologist for apartheid, and I demand an apology from him. The PRESIDENT —Senator MacGibbon, as I said, it is a difficult point of order because you were not named. If the Minister said `some'-- Senator MacGibbon —He said `all'. The PRESIDENT —There is really no point of order on which I can make Senator Evans withdraw. However, I realise how sensitive a subject this is and I would ask him to be aware of that when he is answering questions similar to this in future. Senator Puplick —Mr President, on the point of order: Senator Evans has said that there are on this side some apologists for apartheid and that the others are fellow travellers. Since, as a result, he obviously includes me in one or other of those descriptions-either as an apologist or as a fellow traveller-I regard that as a grave reflection, and I require an apology. Senator GARETH EVANS —If it were not for the rude bit at the end of Senator Puplick's last contribution, I would have expressly excluded him. I do so now, and the same applies to anyone else who gets to his or her feet and expressly separates himself or herself from either of those two descriptions about the regime. Senator Chaney —I raise a point of order, Mr President. Again, this is a clear abuse of this place and, indeed, of the Opposition. There is no way that the Minister should be able to put the Opposition in a position in which we are expected to stand up one by one to exempt ourselves from his insults. Mr President, you might reflect on the capacity of a Minister to render this place unworkable if you permit him to get away with that last bit of stupidity. The PRESIDENT —I can remember a similar circumstance when, at the end of Question Time, just about every member of the then Opposition stood up and made personal explanations. In the circumstances, and because we want the place to work, I ask Senator Evans whether he would consider withdrawing the remarks. Senator GARETH EVANS —In light of that plea, Mr President, I withdraw. Senator CROWLEY —My question is directed to the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on the Status of Women. I refer the Minister to the Prime Minister's announcement of the National Agenda for Women in November 1985 and his reference in that announcement to the considerable contribution to the national well-being made by women in the home. Has the National Agenda consultation indicated continuing interest in and importance of, for and by women in the home? In light of recent comments by the Opposition regarding the proper place of women in our society, can the Minister say what steps the Government has taken to ensure that women's unpaid work in the home is not undervalued by the community? Senator RYAN —It certainly was the case that, in all of the consultations with women throughout Australia on the National Agenda which I attended or of which I had reports, the manner of the contribution to the nation's good by women by their work in the home was raised. I think it is also true to say that there is a widespread view amongst women that the work that they contribute in the home to the well-being not only of their own families but also of the community in general is not widely recognised or valued adequately. In response to this very widespread concern that was expressed to the Government, it has decided to measure the value of women's unpaid work. In the first instance, this measuring will take the form of a pilot survey which will collect information from women and men aged 15 years and over from 750 households in Sydney. The objectives of the survey, which is a first for Australia, are to identify the value of voluntary and domestic work, activity patterns of the unemployed, the reasons for unpaid work, the relationship between voluntary work and success in the job market, and the extent and value of work which would otherwise be funded by the Government. The outcome of the survey will be to determine the impact of voluntary and unpaid work on the gross domestic product, the indication of hidden unemployment, and data on the division of responsibilities within the home. This is a first step in the establishing of the feasibility of a national time use survey, so this is a pilot program. If it produces-- Opposition senators interjecting-- The PRESIDENT —Order! Senator RYAN —Mr President, it is very interesting that you have had to call for order at a time when I am answering a question in which many senators in this place would claim to be interested, but obviously they are not interested when the Government tries to take steps properly to measure the-- Senator Chaney —You are answering with rhetoric. Give us some facts. Senator RYAN —Senator Chaney says: `Give us some facts'. There are no facts. I am saying that the Government is taking the first step, by way of a feasibility pilot program, to establish those facts. The information will include demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of each member of the household and their daily activity patterns. It is a first step in establishing the feasibility of a national time use survey. As such, I have no doubt that the initiative will be welcomed widely by women throughout Australia who, while we do not know the precise facts about their circumstances, undoubtedly, in the view of our Government, make an enormous contribution to the community's well-being. Senator CHANEY —My question is also directed to the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on the Status of Women and follows the question asked of her by Senator Crowley. On behalf of the Opposition, I welcome the rather belated recognition from the Australian Labor Party of the value of the unpaid work done by many women in the home. I welcome the fact that it has acknowledged that it is not valued adequately by society. Is it a fact that the dependent spouse rebate, which is the only recognition given to the unpaid work of a dependent spouse, has not been adjusted by this Government and has, as a result, lost 30 per cent of its value since this Government came to office? In light of the Minister's pious embrace of the value of this work, will she guarantee that in neither the May mini-statement nor in the Budget will there be any diminution in the recognition of the unpaid work of the spouse who stays at home and that that allowance will be increased to take into account the loss of value under this anti-family government? Senator RYAN —I would have been more impressed with Senator Chaney's leaping quickly to identify himself with the cause of women who contribute in unpaid work if his own Government had done anything by way of measuring that or if his own Government had any policy, but for the seven years it was in government it did nothing to recognise and involve those women in development of policy. Whereas the present government, by establishing the National Consultative Committee of Women, by consulting women throughout Australia, by providing participation of women to make their voices heard, has made it possible for us to take initiatives such as this. As for Senator Chaney's specific questions about the May statement or the budgetary processes, he knows the answers to those questions. There is no way in which Ministers will comment on those matters at this stage. Senator CHANEY —I ask a supplementary question of the Minister. I note that she did not answer my question about the loss of value of the dependent spouse rebate. I ask her: In light of her comment that there was no attempt by the Fraser Government to measure the value of that work, does she agree that the dependent spouse rebate went from $400 when the Fraser Government came into office to a maximum of $1,030 by 1983 for those families where there is a dependent spouse with children? Is it a fact that the dependent spouse rebate has lost about 30 per cent of its value since Labor came to office, and what does the Government intend to do about it? Senator RYAN —I would not dispute some of the facts Senator Chaney has set out, namely that there were adjustments to the dependent spouse rebate by the Fraser Government. But I assure Senator Chaney that it is not the view of Australian women that those adjustments adequately satisfied their requirement to have the value of their work properly recognised. If those adjustments to the dependent spouse rebate had been an adequate response, we would not have heard from women all over Australia that they wanted more recognition-and I must say not necessarily financial recognition, but more recognition of the value of their work. So far as the known preference of Australian women by way of survey material is known on these matters, a survey conducted by the Australian Nationwide Opinion Polls Pty Ltd for the Office of the Status of Women a couple of years ago showed that Australian women had a much higher recognition of the family allowance payment, placed much more value on that payment, and that knowledge of the dependent spouse rebate and its value, if any, to a family was not widely spread among Australian women. Whatever adjustments the Government of which Senator Chaney was a member made to the dependent spouse rebate, it appears to be the case that those changes were not widely recognised or welcomed by Australian women and that they would prefer a much more practical and direct recognition of the contribution they make. Senator HARRADINE —My question is directed to Senator Ryan and follows the two questions that have been raised. Is it not a fact that the survey that she announced in response to Senator Crowley's question was announced by the Prime Minister almost two years ago, namely, that a survey would be done into the value of non-paid work in the home? Is it not a fact that almost two years ago the Prime Minister decided and announced that that survey would be done? Is it also not a fact that, despite the departmental work that has been done preparatory to that, the Government has starved the people responsible for developing that project of funds? Could the Minister advise the Chamber precisely what funds have been made available for that survey? Senator RYAN —I am very pleased that Senator Harradine pays such close attention to the Prime Minister's statements on matters concerning women. It certainly is the case that the Prime Minister mentioned such a survey as one of the steps he was interested in taking in relation to the National Agenda for Women. Now that such a step has received widespread endorsement during the agenda process, that step will be taken. I will seek information as to the specific funding available for the survey and inform Senator Harradine as soon as possible. Senator ARCHER —My question relates to the responsibilities of the Special Minister of State for the Coastal Protection Unit and the Australian Federal Police. In particular I refer to the awarding of the contract to supply aircraft for the surveillance of our northern coastline. Is the Minister aware that the successful tenderer will have to import the aircraft and conduct modifications, even though it is only six weeks before the first contract is due to be honoured? Is the Minister aware that the successful tenderer at present has no maintenance facilities and no skilled personnel to service the 14 aircraft? Is the Minister satisfied with these arrangements? Also are the AFP and the Coastal Protection Unit satisfied with these arrangements? Can he give an unequivocal assurance that the already paltry surveillance efforts will not be further affected by delays in the supply of the aircraft, inadequacies in their maintenance to lack of experience of the operators? Senator TATE —I am aware of the nature of the contract that has been let for the continuation of the coastal surveillance undertaken under the aegis of the Coastal Protection Unit which is under the control of the Australian Federal Police. In that respect, the AFP acts mainly as the agent for the Department of Primary Industry because the main interest of that surveillance is to do with quarantine, as much as with other law enforcement matters. I do not have at my fingertips the precise details of that new contractual arrangement. Very extensive answers have been given in this chamber by Senator Gietzelt in reply to Senator Durack which outline the fact, as I understand it, that the correct and normal tendering processes were undertaken by the Government in relation to this tender. The contract has been awarded, the successful tenderer having put in a bid which was several million dollars lower than that put in by the current operator, so there will be a considerable saving to the Government and therefore, the taxpayers, by the implementing of those contractual arrangements. As for the implementation of the arrangements I understand that whilst it is true that aircraft will have to be imported, there will be a staged process of taking over, base by base. Broome, Darwin and Cairns will not all be changed at the one time. The new operator will enter into such arrangements with those who are presently employed by the present operator and there will be a smooth transition, base by base, to ensure that this important surveillance of our coastline continues. To that extent I can give the sorts of assurances that Senator Archer wants. Senator ARCHER —I ask a supplementary question. I was not asking about the propriety of awarding the contract; I was trying to establish whether the Minister, the Federal Police and the Coastal Protection Unit were satisfied that there would be no impairment to security in relation not only to agriculture but also to quarantine, immigration, drugs and other matters. Senator TATE —In my answer I placed emphasis on the propriety on the tendering process because naturally part of the assessment of the successful tenderer involved examination of the capacity of that tenderer to perform according to the terms of the contract. That includes all those questions-maintenance, taking over in stages and giving the sort of coverage that is presently given. All these things must be part of the tenderer's capacity. As far as the actual submission to Cabinet was concerned, I took it there jointly, as I recall it, with the advice of the Coastal Protection Unit and the AFP. To that extent the AFP and particularly I, as a responsible Minister, are satisfied. Senator ROBERTSON —I direct my question to the Minister for Finance. It has been suggested by some that the Government could save a considerable amount of money by abolishing the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and ending all assistance to Aboriginal people. Has the Government made an estimate of these potential savings? Does the Government propose to adopt the suggestion made? Senator WALSH —There was a report about this matter in, I think, the Daily Telegraph yesterday. It said that $500m a year is being spent on programs for Aboriginal people. That is approximately correct. The article, however, did not state that within that global total $100m is identified for education, $58m is identified for housing and $71m is identified for unemployment. It is sometimes suggested that the Department of Aboriginal Affairs should be abolished. Any suggestions of savings that would flow from that are greatly exaggerated because those programs for housing, health, education and so on which are presently identified as Aboriginal programs would either continue in some other form or be rolled into general community expenditure or what is usually State government expenditure in those areas. So the expectations of savings are greatly exaggerated. It must be a great disappointment to Senator Chaney, who was widely, and I believe correctly, regarded as the best Aboriginal Affairs Minister that at least the Liberal Party ever had, to find one of his front bench colleagues-- Senator Ryan —Senator Peter Baume will not like that. Senator WALSH —Well, as good a Minister for Aboriginal Affairs as the Liberal Party ever had, anyway, and certainly better than some. It must be disappointing for him to find that one of his present front bench colleagues is advocating that the Commonwealth Government step right out of this area and abolish the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and any involvement in Aboriginal housing, health, education and so on. I can only assume that this signifies yet another cave-in by the present non-courageous-if I may use that euphemistic term-Liberal party leadership to the rednecks of the National Party. Senator CHANEY —My question, which is addressed to Senator Ryan, follows her recent answer to a question by Senator Harradine. How many surveys have been undertaken by the Office of the Status of Women and on what subjects? How many are relevant to the actions which might be taken in the May mini-Budget such as the slashing of the family allowance or the abolition of the dependent spouse rebate, which would, of course, increase taxes on families with a single income earner by $20 a week? Will the surveys be available to help the Australian people assess the impact of any anti-family measures in the May mini-Budget? Senator RYAN —I do not think Senator Chaney listened very closely to what I said, and that is not surprising because he was much more interested in his own interjections. The Office of the Status of Women itself does not undertake surveys. It is not set up to do that; it does not have that capacity. As I recall, the survey I referred to-that is, the survey of attitudes of women and knowledge about family allowances and the dependent spouse rebate-was actually carried out by Australian Nationwide Opinion Polls Pty Ltd. It was commissioned by the Office of the Status of Women. Similarly, the Office of the Status of Women has given a grant to the Country Women's Association of Australia to carry out a survey on the needs and views of rural women. We are awaiting the response to that survey with great interest. Of course, all such surveys funded through the Office of the Status of Women but not carried out by it are made in order to give the Government better information on which to base its policies for women. The survey regarding the knowledge and attitudes of Australian women to the dependent spouse rebate and family allowances has been of assistance to the Government. Undoubtedly, the survey of rural women being carried out by the Country Women's Association of Australia with a grant from the Office of the Status of Women, will be of great assistance to the Government in formulating its response to the national agenda and, indeed, in formulating its policies for the rural areas generally. Doubtless there are other surveys which have been funded through grants by the Office of the Status of Women. I will get a list of those for Senator Chaney and make sure that the results of them are made known. We do not have them done to waste time; we do them because we are genuinely trying to find out what the needs of Australian women in different circumstances are so that we can better tailor our policies to respond to those articulated needs. Senator SIDDONS —My question is directed to the Minister for Finance. The Government promised that financial deregulation would deliver low interest rates, but we are now labouring under the highest interest rates in our history. The Treasurer is now saying that reduced government debt will bring lower interest rates. However, Mr Kenneth Davidson's article in the Age this morning pointed out that Government debt, as a percentage of gross domestic product, is low by Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development standards and, interestingly, is low by historical standards. I ask the Minister: First, in view of the fact that for most of this century a regulated financial system was able to carry government debt at more than twice its present level without resorting to high interest rates, is the Government's move to lower its debt a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that has become patently obvious to most observers, namely, that deregulation is not working? Secondly, will the Government take action to control financial markets now, or must the Australian people wait for a disastrous crash before this becomes the only option available? Senator WALSH —At the beginning of his question Senator Siddons asserted that interest rates are now higher in Australia than they have ever been. That is not correct. For example, the 90-day bank bill rate in April 1982, when Mr Howard was Treasurer, was 22 per cent. I am not sure where it is now, but it is significantly below that. I know that among bourgeois left populists-a category which includes the Australian Democrats, past and present-it is popular to ascribe high interest rates to financial deregulation. That raises a number of questions: Firstly, it is a fact that Australia has had a significantly higher level of foreign debt as a proportion of GDP. In the 1930s it was very much higher. The world financial system was very different in the 1930s in that we lived in a regime of more or less fixed exchange rates perceived to be-although in most cases not in reality after about 1931-also tied to the gold standard. Leaving aside whether that was a good policy, that world no longer exists and has not existed since at least 1970, and it has changed progressively since 1970. The notion that one small country can in isolation pretend that the rest of the world is where it was in the 1960s, let alone the 1930s, is not one which is viable as a policy. Secondly, although it is true that it has been higher, Australia does have by post-war standards, currently a high level of accumulated foreign debt and a large current account deficit, caused by a number of factors but to a very substantial degree by the cost of servicing the debt which already exists and also, of course, because of the large gap in the current account which has been opened by the export price collapse of the last couple of years. If one were to annualise the terms of trade reported by the Statistician in the December quarter of 1986, where some $2.3 billion of national income has been lost since December 1984 by terms of trade changes, that comes out to something over $9 billion of national income lost because of the terms of trade movement on the collapse of export prices since December 1984. Senator Lewis —That is over the period of two years? It is not per annum? That is the total? Senator WALSH —Yes, it is the movement in the terms of trade between December 1984 and December 1986-over that two-year period. That information was published a couple of weeks ago by the Australian Statistician. Based on that terms of trade movement it was calculated that some $2.3 billion in the December quarter 1986 had been taken off national income by that shift. To annualise that is a bit of an oversimplification but it will give some idea of the magnitude of the effect of that export price collapse on Australia's national income, expressed through our current account deficit-and Australia habitually has run a current account deficit of some size. But there is a major contribution now from the cost of servicing existing foreign debt and another major change in the last two years from the export price collapse which leaves us in such a position that it now seems likely that this year's current account deficit will be less than that forecast in the Budget but, barring an export price recovery-and a major export price recovery does not seem a reasonable expectation in the short term-Australia will continue for another year or so anyway to have a current account deficit of the order of $10 billion. Any country which is in the position where it must shut off exports-that includes net exports of both goods and services-and which has a current account of that size must in the short term borrow abroad to close that deficit or run down its existing foreign reserves. At that rate, Australia would not take much over a year to exhaust its foreign reserves. We are in that position. The interest rate is determined by what we have to pay for money to bridge that current account deficit. It can be argued legitimately-argued, but not proven-that some things at the margin can be done about that. But that would not have a fundamental effect on the level of interest rates. Interest rates can be reduced only by its being demonstrated that Australia has made the adjustments that our changed circumstances require, thereby in the short term enhancing the perception around the world that the Australian Government has come to grips with the problem-and I believe that perception is growing-and thus strengthening international confidence in the dollar. When that is done, and I believe it is being done now, interest rates can come down but in the long term, unless we want to punt on the long shot of there being a passive export price boom, the only way the nation's problems can be addressed is through a restructuring of our domestic industry in a way that makes it more competitive internationally and eliminates the structural current account deficit which we now have. Senator SIDDONS —I ask a supplementary question. Senator Walsh implied that having a regulated financial market was a peculiarly left wing approach. How does he account for the fact that Japan, for instance, has had and does have a regulated financial system and interest rates are at four per cent? The Minister said in the latter part of his answer that the balance of payments is the problem. Then how does he explain the fact that Bangladesh has had and does have a regulated financial system? It is not a peculiarly left wing point of view. Senator WALSH —I was not suggesting that having foreign exchange controls is a particularly left wing policy. I think it was probably practised by the Marcos regime in the Philippines and, indeed, just about every banana republic in the world. Officially regulated foreign exchange controls are applied, and under that system those people who are in with whatever the ruling clique of the day happens to be buy cheap foreign exchange and everybody else buys very dear foreign exchange on the black market. That is about what would happen if the Bjelke-Petersen push to become Prime Minister of Australia were to succeed. In that case we would very quickly see the development of such a system here. My reference to bourgeois left wing populism was a reference not to regulated exchange markets per se but to the cop-out that is popular with many people who come within that description-copping out of the problem by neatly reversing the cause and effect of our current account deficit. They say that our current account deficit is caused by overseas borrowings whereas, of course, the current account deficit is the cause of the overseas borrowings. Japan is in a position where, overlooking its domestic political problems, it can virtually dictate whatever it wants to the rest of the world because it is in precisely the opposite position to that which we and the United States of America are in-that is, instead of having a very large current account deficit, Japan has a very large current account surplus which has pushed up the value of the yen massively compared with either the Australian or the United States dollar-by a factor of more than two in our case over about a three-year period and close to two in the case of the United States. That reflects that Japan has some sort of a problem arising from a current account surplus. But it is much easier to deal with a current account surplus-domestic political considerations aside-than with a current account deficit. Unfortunately, we are in that latter category. Senator BUTTON —On 26 March Senator Lewis asked me a question about the profitability of Australian companies. I will provide him with an answer now, but I will not go to the detail of his question. The answer is as follows: It is correct that company profits before tax declined by 13 per cent in the calendar year 1986 over the calendar year 1985. The honourable senator, however, has chosen his period of reference with care as it fails to show the dramatic improvement in company profits in the December and September quarters of 1986-the latest period for which statistics are available. Company profits increased by 47 per cent in the September quarter and 19 per cent in the December quarter, on a seasonally adjusted basis. It is not correct, as the honourable senator's question inferred, that manufacturing profit performance has been worse than that of the economy as a whole. The Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that both aggregate and manufacturing company profits in the December quarter have reached their highest level since the beginning of the period covered by the series. This upturn in profits is welcomed and tends, with respect, to make nonsense of the honourable senator's reference to the absence of any benefits from the depreciation of the Australian dollar. The latest quarterly national accounts figures show a marked improvement in Australia's trade performance. Exports increased by 13 per cent in the December quarter 1986 and contributed most of the strong growth in gross domestic product. Senator LEWIS(Victoria) —I seek leave to move a motion to take note of the report tabled by Senator Walsh during Question Time-namely, the Government's response to the report of the Senate Select Committee on Television Equalisation. Leave not granted. Senator GARETH EVANS(Victoria-Manager of Government Business in the Senate) —I seek leave to make an explanation as to why leave is refused. Leave granted. Senator GARETH EVANS —The circumstance is that the Government readily acknowledges that it is inappropriate in the course of Question Time to lay down a document which purports to be a formal and full response to a report of a Senate committee. It is appropriate to do that only by way of a ministerial statement or treating it as a ministerial paper in the ordinary way. In this instance it would have been a considerable luxury for the Opposition to have had a response so quickly because the report of the Senate Select Committee on Television Equalisation came down only last week. It is intended that the legislation be debated on Wednesday afternoon. What happened was that wires got a little crossed as they sometimes do in government. The Minister for Communications, Mr Duffy, wanted to make a public response and give a reaction to the report in order to signal-so that people could be prepared for the debate on Thursday-and make a Press release accordingly. There was some discussion with me as Manager of Government Business in the Senate as to what would be the best way of handling this matter. The indication I gave to Mr Duffy was that the best thing to do was to delay a formal response to the Senate Committee report until the time for debate on the legislation but to put out a Press release indicating a general reaction to the Senate Committee's report. If he wanted to mention that matter in Parliament I could see no difficulty, in terms of Question Time procedures, in doing so. The tabling of a formal response to the Senate Committee report was premature under those circumstances. The Minister for Finance, Senator Walsh, can speak for himself in this respect. This procedure having taken place obviously it cannot be undone except by leave and I am not sure whether the Opposition is willing to grant leave. If it is, so much the better. I urge that debate on this matter be postponed until such time as we debate the legislation when all the issues that are raised can be debated together. As everyone knows there is tremendous pressure on the timetable and if it means just another two or three hours debate-- Senator Lewis —We can't be responsible for your mucking up the business of the Senate. Senator GARETH EVANS —Leave has been denied and I simply state for the record that there will be ample opportunity to debate the substantive matters in issue at the time of the debate on the legislation when we hopefully reach it on Wednesday. Under those circumstances it would not seem appropriate to put down the report. The response to the Senate Committee report will be formally put down as a ministerial statement at an appropriate time. Senator CHANEY(Western Australia-Leader of the Opposition) —Rather than waste a lot of the Senate's time in what no doubt will be a lengthy debate, since I intend to move for the suspension of Standing Orders, I again, on behalf of my colleague Senator Lewis, seek leave to move that the Senate take note of this paper which has been tabled in the Senate today. Senator Gareth Evans —How long a debate are you proposing on the statement? Senator CHANEY —Leave is either granted or it is not. Leave granted. Senator LEWIS(Victoria) —I move: That the Senate take note of the Government response to the report of the Senate Select Committee on Television Equalisation. Notwithstanding the reasons expressed by Senator Gareth Evans about why he did not want this report debated at the present moment, it is quite clear that when one reads the Government's response one sees that what has happened is that the Government has totally rejected the recommendation of its members on the Senate Select Committee on Television Equalisation. This Committee comprised eight senators, four of whom were members of the Australian Labor Party. Because the Chairman, Senator Richardson, a member of the Australian Labor Party, was, by the rules of the Senate, given a casting vote, the Government senators were able to bring down a majority report. But the truth of the matter is that the Government has, in effect, rejected the majority report of its own senators. It has praised the so-called valuable work undertaken by the Committee and, in effect, thanked Government senators for endorsing a couple of its own recommendations-in particular that the Broadcasting Amendment Bill 1986 be passed and that the Government proposal to abolish the two-station rule be replaced with a 75 per cent rule. Government senators went along with that proposal and so the Government in its response has praised this recommendation by the majority of senators. But when it gets to the specific recommendations of the majority decision, which are contrary to those which the Government previously adopted, the Government remains where it put the original position and, in effect, it simply rejects the proposals of the majority decision. In particular, it rejects the recommendation that the one-in all-in rule be abandoned. It states: On balance, the government is not attracted to this recommendation. This will mean that the regional television stations appear to have some discretion which will enable them to go along the multi-channel service path. The truth of the matter is that the Government has put into the trigger solution of MCS an impossible situation whereby at least one regional television station in each of the proposed approved markets will require aggregation. So it appears as if there will be a market driven decision when the truth of the matter is that there will be no market driven decision. The truth is that in the approved markets the regional television stations will go ahead with aggregation as in effect required by the Government, but the Government does not have the courage to abandon the one in, all in rule which was recommended by the Government senators on the Committee. On the technical issues raised in the report, the truth of the matter is that the Government adopts Senator Sheil's and my minority dissenting report in which we pointed out that the way to deal with this problem was to have the Government and the Department of Communications negotiate with the industry, take up the Tom O'Donohue suggestion and do what they could to resolve the problem within the industry. Senator Sheil and I then recommended that, if the Government was unable to resolve the dispute within the industry by negotiating on the Tom O'Donohue proposals, perhaps it could call in an expert from overseas. The Government senators on the Committee did not adopt our proposal at all. They said that the Government should immediately bring in an expert from overseas. What has happened is that the Government has not adopted the majority recommendation of the Australian Labor Party senators but, in effect has adopted our recommendation. The Minister has said: The Government is sympathetic to the suggestion of engaging a consultant to assist in resolving this complex issue. A decision on this aspect will await the outcome of these further discussions now taking place between the industry and the Department of Communications. In other words, as I have been saying, what is happening in this matter is precisely what I suggested should happen. In regard to Mildura and Griffith, in respect of which the majority of the Committee made recommendations, it is quite fascinating to read that the Government is going to discuss with the industry in Mildura and Griffith the recommendations of its own colleagues. The response says: The specific recommendations of the majority report will be canvassed with the respective licensee companies. So the Government will talk to those licensee companies to see whether or not they think Senator Richardson's recommendation is worthy of implementation. The majority report made a specific recommendation in regard to Cairns, and the Government in effect simply rejects that majority recommendation. Again, the majority report made a recommendation on the television services to be provided in the Geelong area of Victoria. In that respect the Minister says that the Government will fully examine the recommendations. In other words, it will just allow that recommendation to pass by. Finally, after the Government had looked at the recommendation in regard to equalisation in Tasmania, it said simply that it was not attracted to this recommendation. So that is the end of the majority report. The Minister does manage to make some comments about the minority report. I find it quite distressing that the Government finally concedes that, in respect of cable television, it has decided that these services are not appropriate and feasible for Australia in the present circumstances and that there is to be a moratorium of four years on pay television in Australia and legislation is to be introduced to that effect, apparently shortly. I say in conclusion, as I said at the beginning, that the Government's response to the Senate Committee report in effect simply says: `The Government has noted what you have said. We are now going down the path we decided to take before we bothered to read the majority recommendations'. Senator PUPLICK(New South Wales)(3.19) —Government responses to complicated Senate committee reports are occasionally known to have taken quite some time. In relation to a very complicated, technical inquiry, such as that into the future of regional broadcasting in Australia, when a Senate committee has taken a considerable amount of time and effort to develop a response and make recommendations to a government, it is not unusual for a government to take three, six, nine, 12 months, or, in the case of reports on plant variety rights and such matters, two years, before its response is presented. Yet here we have a report which is tabled one week and answered by the Government, in terms of its formal response, the next. It is not, as Senator Gareth Evans would have us believe, a Press statement; it is a document entitled `Government Response to Senate Select Committee Report on Television Equalisation'. That has been presented within a week. The reason, of course, that the Government can do that is that prior to the commencement of the inquiry by the Senate Select Committee on Television Equalisation the majority report had already been written and prior to the publication of the majority report the Government response had already been drafted. Interestingly enough, the Government's legislation, the Government's submission to the inquiry, the briefing that the Chairman had, the briefing that Senator Robert Ray had, the speech that Senator Richardson made on the tabling of the report, the speech that Senator Robert Ray made on the tabling of the report, and the Government's response to the Committee report all bear indelibly the mark of the same hand. I do not believe that the Government was ever likely to be prepared to take the recommendations of the Senate Committee seriously to the extent that they ever departed from the grand strategy that the Government had laid down as a result, as we well know, of the discussions which had taken place to make sure that the mates of the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) and their interests were properly accommodated in terms of the Government's long term policy on the development of television services in Australia. The recommendation of the Government majority basically was this: `We agree with the Bill as it is proposed; we agree with the two station abolition rule; we agree with 75 per cent ownership; we agree with the rules on cross-media ownership; without being specific about them; we think there ought to be three commercial television services as soon as practicable'. The Government having got all the significant parts it wanted from the Senate Committee and having got them from the Senate Committee only on the basis of the casting vote of the Chairman being available to fulfil the correct recommendations from the brief that the Committee was originally given, in order to tart the whole thing up the Committee majority was minded to make a series of additional little recommendations-one about services in Tasmania, one about services in Geelong, one about the services in Cairns, and one about the abolition of the one-in all-in rule. All of those were taken by the Government and monumentally considered. These are all important recommendations-they are important for the people of Geelong, the people of Tasmania and the people of Cairns, and they are important as far as the path of aggregation is concerned-and it took the Government all of five or six days to consider all of the evidence, all of the material and all of the recommendations and to reject them out of hand. Of course, it is very easy for it to do that because they were always going to be rejected out of hand. They were never part of the Government's original package. The Government was never serious about allowing this matter to be investigated by a Senate committee. It was never serious that it would allow itself to be deviated in any respect from the plan which had been laid down by the Cabinet on the basis of all of the shabby deals that had been done with the proprietors and the mates around the place. The Government made sure that the Committee was well corralled. It had found its two most effective number crunchers, one to sit as Chairman of the Committee and the other, Senator Ray, to make sure that there was no repeat of the Australia Card fiasco when the Government learnt its lesson in regard to a committee which actually attempted to deal with a matter and on which one of the Labor members, having seen the light on the basis of the Committee's investigations, combined with members of the Liberal Party, the National Party of Australia and the Australian Democrats to recommend again the introduction of the Australia Card. The Government was not going to allow that to occur. It certainly was not going to allow the weight of evidence to persuade anybody on the Government side. So when it had waiverers on the Government side, it made sure that Senator Richardson and Senator Robert Ray were there to make certain that the line was held, and the line indeed was held. It would have been broken if we had had a little more time for the evidence to come forward and be properly analysed, but the Government did not intend to take the risk it took when it let poor old Senator Aulich chair the Joint Select Committee on the Australia Card. He did not manage to hold the Government's majority together. The Government was determined from the outset to get this legislation, come hell or high water. The Government managed to produce within the space of less than a week a government response and in order to try to pre-empt the debate on this-the Government wants this matter dealt with on Wednesday, because it wants both the Australia Card dealt with and the tele- vision legislation dealt with this week-the Government thought that it could sneak into the chamber and drop the Government response by way of a sort of throwaway line in answer to a dorothy dix question from the Chairman of the Committee, nonetheless. One thing one must say about Senator Richardson is that he carries a brief very well when it is given to him. When he is given a piece of paper by the Minister or whoever acts on behalf of the Minister, he knows precisely what he is to do with it. He is supposed to come in here at Question Time today and ask Senator Walsh-whose monumental disinterest in all matters of communication is well known-whether he can be told when the Government might respond. Lo and behold, there it is, Senator Walsh has an answer which says `Well, I have a piece of paper'-it is a bit like Senator Ryan-`Here it is. It is entitled ``Government response to Senate Committee Report on Television Equalisation'', and I will table it'. That was terrific. The Government might have thought it a wonderful way to avoid any debate on the Government's response. Then Senator Evans had to come in here and plead that it is a terrible mistake, it was supposed to be a Press release. The Government's response was not to come down until Wednesday, in order to give us the time to look at it and to debate it at the same time as we were to debate the legislation. In other words, we had to respond to both the Government's response and to the legislation itself, all in the one day, all in a matter of a few hours, presumably. It was to happen on a fairly short sitting day, on Wednesday, in order to get the Government's legislation dealt with, in the expectation that it would be able to force a situation in which perhaps the Bill would be defeated. Then the Government would be able to run around the country wringing its hands about what the Opposition had done to regional television, that it was a terrible plot, setting out what had to be done as a response, and how the cross-media ownership rule, the 75 per cent coverage, and the one-in-all-in rule could not be put into legislation which would be brought forward in order to look after the Government's mates in the media, to butter up all the necessary bosses and magnates prior to the calling of an early election. Suddenly, the Government found that the strategy went off the rails because, once again, Ministers were not smart enough to know that one does not just drop things at Question Time and hope that people will not notice them. Here as a result we have the opportunity to look at the Government's response to the Senate Select Committee report. On page 2 it states: The Government endorses the substantive recommendations on the majority report . . . Of course that comes as an enormous surprise to everybody. Here was a Government majority relying on the casting vote of a Government-appointed chairman, one of the most skilful, articulate and well known number crunchers in the Labor Party, who basically says `Of course, we should support the Government's recommendations'. We are then supposed to be vaguely surprised when the Government comes forward and says, `The Government believes that this is a wonderful massive endorsement of the plan we have put forward, and we are prepared to indicate that we endorse the substantive recommendations. We are prepared to abolish the two-station rule and replace it with a 75 per cent rule with concomitant cross-media ownership limitations'. We do not know what that means. We have no idea until such time as the Government comes clean with precisely what it is that it means about those cross-media ownership limitations. The definitions which were given in the Department of Communications submission to the Joint Select Committee were thoroughly inadequate. When we pressed the Department as to whether scenario A or scenario B was the correct interpretation, we got from Mr Westerway, in the most marvellous of the Sir Humphrey moulds: `I am sorry, senator, that is a matter of policy. You will have to ask the Minister'. When we made inquiries of the Minister for Communications (Mr Duffy) through Senator Richardson and asked what the Government meant in this respect, Senator Richardson was put in the position of saying: `Well I am sorry, but the Department is working on it'. We had this marvellous Yes Minister approach. Yet these rules are supposed to be ready to be brought forward in what the statement says is appropriate legislation in the current session of the Parliament. Presumably, this must be fairly close. We should have been told what these rules were. We were not told; we pressed, but we got no satisfactory answers from Mr Westerway. Then we turned to the question of the one-in all-in rule. Here we had an attempt by Senator Richardson to hurry things along a little. Here we saw once more some marvellous interplay of the internal politics of the Australian Labor Party. It will be well remembered-and it is documented in my dissenting report-that there were disagreements between Mr Duffy, on the one hand, and Mr Hawke, Mr Keating and their media friends on the other. Senator Richardson, in attempting to pull the last teeth out of the Duffy proposals for any degree of choice in the matter, decided to slip in a recommendation that had been missed when all this was at Cabinet level and move directly to aggregation by abolishing the `one in, all in' rule and speeding up the timetable for aggregation. In one last ditch stand, Mr Duffy, like General Custer, was at least going to try to save something of his honour out of the whole thing, so the Government has recommended that particular sleight of hand. In the statement it continues with the mythology that there is actually an option. It says that it rejects the majority recommendation because the effect of this would be: . . . to deny this option to licensees in approved markets. In effect, it is trying to tell us that there was a real option available-to proceed either by direct aggregation or by the multi-channel service route when we know in fact that the MCS route was already a poisoned chalice. It had been poisoned by the maintenance of the two-station rule on the one hand and by the 28-day `submit your plans for ministerial veto, rule on the other. Then we come to the question of the independent consultant on the VHF-FM frequencies for radio, the VHF-UHF problems which we have been discussing and the process for band 2 clearance. Here at least the Committee threw out a lifebelt to the Minister. Here is the poor Minister with the Department of Communications determined to have its band 2 clearance program, and the independent operators, particularly WIN4 in Wollongong and NBN3 in Newcastle clearly going to be disadvantaged by these proposals. The Opposition members on the Select Committee came up with the recommendations that we should look at the whole thing again and perhaps appoint an independent consultant. We know, of course, that the trick about independent consultants is that if one picks an independent consultant from Great Britain one will get one answer; if one picks an independent consultant from the United States, from the Federal Communications Commission, one will get an entirely different answer. At least the Government was given the option of picking the expert to give it the advice that it wanted to hear in the first place anyway. That would have remained an option and the Government is happy to pick that up although it says that it will be sympathetic to the suggestion of engaging a consultant `to assist in resolving this complex issue'. In the meantime there will be `further discussions'. At least in relation to Mildura and Griffith the Committee was able to come to some recommendation to do something about those poor stations which had been double-crossed by the Government. It is very interesting to see just how unwise it is to trust this Government because when the first aggregated market plans were published in the first draft indicative plan, both Mildura and Griffith were put in a position where they had the opportunity to make enormous windfall gains out of the aggregated market. So they rushed off to the media and said `This is terrific. The Government has put together the greatest draft indicative plan we can think of and we want to make a public and ringing endorsement of this marvellous government plan'. The Government touted it around the regional television industry and said: `Look, we have these wonderful letters of commendation, these wonderful statements from Mildura and Griffith saying how great the plan is'. Then the Government re-did all the plans and both Mildura and Griffith were absolutely steamrolled in the whole process. Instead of being in an aggregated market with a chance to make millions, they suddenly found that they had been dropped right out. The reward that they were given for actually endorsing the government strategy was to be left absolutely in the lurch. Those two stations then had to come along to the Committee and plead that they had been left in the lurch. The Committee tried to pick up their concerns and now the Government thinks, `Terrific! This is a way to get those regionals off our backs; we will at least try to pick up part of the Committee recommendations'. That was not the majority recommendation, but a unanimous recommendation, because the dissenting reports also go to the question of the Mildura and Griffith licenses. As my colleague, Senator Lewis said, Cairns gets no joy out of the whole thing the regional broadcasting in North Queensland will be substantially disadvantaged if the Government proceeds with these plans. The final points in this rather feeble statement include the endorsement of the situation that the Government had always proposed for Tasmania. We agonised over Tasmania and at the end of the day we had to come up with the all-in compromise. The one Tasmanian representative on the Committee was very concerned that people in Tasmania should be properly looked after, so with a great deal of reluctance, with his hand over his heart and a smile on his face-which is a fairly unusual thing for him-Senator Richardson settled upon the all-in compromise to look after Tasmania. But even that trick did not work. Even that sleight of hand did not work because the Tasmanian recommendation has in effect been rejected by the Government. As a result the ENT Ltd interests in Tasmania will be handed a windfall which will probably net them some $30m to $40m. There has been an attempt to say: `Well, they really will not be able to sell one of their licences to a friendly party because the proposed transfer would be subject to the approval of the Broadcasting Tribunal in the normal way pursuant to the provisions of the Broadcasting Act'. There is nothing at all in the Broadcasting Act which prevents the licence being sold to a person who fits the pure technical requirements of being technically competent, financially viable and a fit and proper person. It does not matter what sort of deal is entered into because there is plenty of scope for the Tasmanians to drive a horse and cart through the provisions of the Broadcasting Act. We come now to the recommendation on cable television, which will not be endorsed because it is too expensive, despite the fact that the Government's preferred option will end up costing hundreds of millions of dollars to the Australian economy and to individual licensees. The transponders, the translaters and all the new broadcasting equipment have to be bought in order to make the system work, yet at the same time we are given this feeble excuse that cable television cannot be proceeded with at this stage because it is probably too expensive and not feasible. In the meantime the best way to provide the highest number of new services to people-that is, by the introduction of pay television-will be subject to a four-year moratorium. Indeed, according to this statement legislation will be introduced in order to make sure that for the next four years that pay television, which the Government would be endorsing if it were actually serious about providing additional services in regional areas of Australia, will be put to one side. We at least get a throwaway line about Aussat's new satellites replacement program being under current consideration by the Government. Finally, we come to the statement: Accordingly, the Government remains determined to see the passage of the Broadcasting Amendment Bill 1986 and the Television Licence Fees Amendment Bill 1986 as soon as possible. It is a case of put up or shut up. The Government says: `We want this Bill by Wednesday: We do not care what the rest of the program is; we are determined to see the passage of this legislation'. That will be an interesting debate. It will go on for a considerable time, both in this chamber and outside. The idea that this provision will be steamrollered through this place on Wednesday in order to fit in with the Government's timetable and in order to keep its mates in the media happy as it twists and squirms on the question of an early election will provide some very considerable amusement within this chamber and within the television industry as a whole. The Government may remain determined to see the passage of this legislation as soon as possible, but I put it to you, Mr President, that it is going to find that that road is a great deal harder than it thought it would be. Perhaps it will also once again have learnt its lesson that one does not treat this chamber with contempt by trying to sneak in government responses to select committee reports in the course of Question Time and think that one can get away with it. Even Senator Gareth Evans, who has been driven out distraught by the whole thing, can see his legislative program for this week going down the drain pretty quickly. It is going down because, just as the Government has attempted to put together a shabby deal on regional television, it has attempted to put together a shabby deal in its treatment of a Senate committee by bringing down a response to its report in this fashion. Once again, the shabby trick has not worked. Senator POWELL(Victoria)(3.41) —I was a member of the Senate Select Committee on Television Equalisation which, along with Senator Puplick, I consider has been treated in a most cavalier way today by the Minister for Finance (Senator Walsh). I am somewhat reluctant to speak. The last time I saw an expression such as that which is now on Senator Chaney's face was when a cat swallowed a canary. The Manager of Government Business in the Senate (Senator Gareth Evans) has offered to us the excuse that there have been some ministerial crossed wires. It seems to me that there are at least a couple of Ministers in this Government who obviously do not have their electrical trades union ticket. As a member of the Senate Select Committee on Television Equalisation, I think this is par for the course. It was obvious from the beginning that the Government's response to the report of the Committee was somewhat inevitable. As a member of that Committee who was not bound by the inevitability of that response, I found the work undertaken by the Committee a most challenging experience. In fact, as a relatively new member to this place and this being my first Senate select committee, my view tended to be confirmed that somehow or other Lewis Carroll must have done considerable research in either this place or one very much like it when he was writing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, which have made such a contribution to English literature. It is very disturbing that legislation which a chamber of the significance of the Senate sees as important enough to send, at great expense and time, to a committee-a committee which has had to be established-is to be treated in this kind of cavalier way. I point out, however, that in the response which, I suggest, was quite improperly tabled during Question Time today, the Minister said that Committee members had to consider issues raised, particularly technical matters of considerable importance and complexity. This Committee certainly had before it very important matters of extreme complexity. I remind the Senate that the two relevant Bills-that is, the Broadcasting Amendment Bill 1986 and the Television Licence Fees Amendment Bill 1986-are designed, in the Government's view at least, to bring a broader range of television programming to country people. The Committee had to look at those specific Bills in an environment in which the Government had tabled its intention to change dramatically the rules pertaining to media ownership and control. Before the Committee even sat, there was an enormous amount of movement in the market. In fact, the whole area of ownership and control was moving towards extremely increased concentration. It was moving in the direction of many rather dubious situations pending up-coming Government legislation which, of course, is not the particular legislation that the Government says that it intends to bring back to us in terms of the two Bills I have mentioned. In that context, the Australian Democrats were particularly concerned about these issues, not just the technical matters which are stressed in the Government's response that was tabled today. The Australian Democrats attempted to extend both the terms of reference and the time of this Committee so that it could properly deliberate on those proposals for changes in ownership and control of Australia's media. In spite of Senator Puplick's protestations about the importance of this issue and some of the responses of the majority report, and despite his feelings about these matters, I remind the Senate that the Australian Democrats stood alone in wanting to extend those terms of reference and the time. Senator Puplick himself said the Committee needed more time, that its terms of reference were limited. It is not unimportant to say that it was quite obvious right from the beginning that the Committee was constrained by the fact that all of the evidence presented to it on behalf of the Government by the Department of Communications rested on the fact that the Government had decided that three commercial services would be provided. That was the magic number; there was no room at all for any other considerations. It was a matter of Government policy. So the Committee's hands were tied to that extent. As I said at the beginning, I rose with some reluctance to speak although I was prompted, of course properly, by my feeling that this Committee, and certainly the dissenting reports of the Committee, has been treated in a very cavalier way. I would also underline the point made earlier by Senator Puplick that, while the majority report is just that, it rests on the casting vote of the Chairman. I do not wish to take up too much time of the Senate. As I have said, one can see the glee of the Opposition as a result of sparks flying from the crossed wires of certain Government Ministers. That is the very thing which the Opposition is looking for this week. The Opposition is looking for a delay in the Senate's business because obviously there is some concern that the Opposition's ranks-whatever the ranks are at the moment-might not hold. I have not heard a newscast for the last hour or two about the future business of this chamber this week. Certainly the Minister has stated that the Government wishes to have the Bills which the Senate Select Committee was considering before the Senate this week. While that might be the Government's desire, I am equally certain that it is the Opposition's desire not to have the Australia Card legislation brought to a vote because the Opposition is not sure what its members will do. There is no problem at all with what the Australian Democrats will do. We will throw out the Australia Card legislation. I wish to say, however, in terms of the response which was tabled, inadvertently or whatever, at Question Time today, that I am not ecstatic that the majority recommendation concerning the appointment of an independent consultant actually to give independent advice on the very complex technical issues, which I think all members of the Committee agreed needed to be done, is simply noted by the Government. That is certainly one of the very few recommendations that were unanimous, yet it was only noted by the Government. We cannot advance on the technical matters when there is so much dispute between the Department and outside experts who came before the Committee and who were all in the employ of people in the industry with understandable interests. It is essential that the Government take up that recommendation which, as I said, was a recommendation of all of the Committee members. I would also like to refer to the Mildura and Griffith situations. Senator Puplick has already made some reference to them. I note that the Government's response says, in relation to Mildura and Griffith, that the specific recommendations of the majority report will be canvassed with respective licensee companies. Just this morning I spoke with a representative of the Mildura licensee company. There will be those senators who have not yet read the report in the short space of one week because of their busy lives and perhaps because they did not have an advance copy. But obviously, to get it through in one week, some Government members must have been very up to date. The majority report came down with the most outrageous decision in relation to Mildura, which, as Senator Puplick said, was quite left out and totally isolated by the proposals of the Government. I remind the Senate that Mildura is a major centre in the far north-west corner of Victoria-only just in Victoria-and is a very important primary industry production area with a relatively small television viewing population. But in the majority report, the Government members, in order to toss something in, said: `Let us suggest that at some time in the future it be linked to an approved market, probably in South Australia'. As a Victorian, I reminded the Committee that in fact there are even different time zones between those two States and that I felt that the people of Mildura would find that quite inappropriate. I can tell the Government that it might want to canvass the majority report not just with the licensees of those companies, but certainly from the point of view of the population in that area. It may be a small population, but it is clearly recognisable that that is a token gesture on behalf of the Government, and something better will definitely have to be done. As I said, I do not want to take too much of the time of the Senate. However, I also wish to refer to the comment made in the paper before us on the question of video and audio entertainment and information services and other services which are currently authorised under the Radiocommunications Act and/or the Telecommunications Act rather than the Broadcasting and Television Act. One of the recommendations in my dissenting report was that these sorts of services should all come under the Broadcasting Act. I am disappointed to see that the Government clearly has no intention of making that rational kind of change to what is really an important part of the upcoming aspects of technology. In this response the Government claims to have some understanding of what is before us. The Government in its response says: The Television industry is of vital importance to the nation and to individual Australians, an intrinsic part of their social and cultural environment. But the failure to address such issues demonstrates that what we in fact have is a government which is paying far more attention to what it believes to be in the best interests of the major owners, few in number, of the major portions of our communications media and which is totally ignoring the best interests of the Australian community as a whole, in particular the best interests of those people in the Australian community who live outside major urban centres. I am certainly encouraged in the knowledge that the legislation will not pass-that is, if once again the ranks of the Liberal-National coalition Opposition are able to hold together on this matter as on any other-because I believe that, if it were to proceed, because of the technical difficulties which bring into play considerable economic difficulties and because the magic number three equals the magic number of major network owners in Australia, the whole of regional television services would be in the hands of those people. As a Melburnian whose home town is currently suffering from the networking system out of Sydney, I have no desire to see the people of Horsham, Bendigo, Ballarat, Mildura, Shepparton or any other regional centre in my State or any other State delivered into the hands of any of the major capital cities. We are already seeing that it is not good enough to be Melbourne against the might of Sydney. I suggest that, if this procedure continues, it will not be good enough to be Sydney against the might of Los Angeles. I think there is a sense of inevitability about this. That has actually been confirmed by the arguments, for instance, of Senator Richardson when the Australian Democrats were arguing for extension of the terms of reference and the time of this Committee. He simply said: `There is just not time'. I apologise to Senator Richardson; it was actually Senator Chaney who, in leading the Opposition's opposition to our motion for the suspension of Standing Orders in order to proceed with the extension of the terms of reference, said: `It is too late. It has all happened'. Again, in the debate when the Senate Select Committee's report was brought down, Senator Giles unfortunately, in arguing her case for supporting a 75 per cent ownership rule, actually said that she believed that in fact it was too late to do anything anyhow. I believe that it is up to this Parliament to stand up. I certainly hope that this chamber will at least stand up when the new legislation which we are promised on ownership and control does come before us. I note with concern that, of the other members of the Committee, only Senator Puplick stands with me in opposing the 75 per cent ownership rule. He has proposed a 43 per cent rule. I believe that it should be, at the most, a 35 per cent rule. Whatever it is, I certainly hope that, between the time that we are having this debate and when the Government does come up with its media ownership and control legislation, Senator Puplick and his spokesperson colleague in the other House, Mr Macphee, are able to muster their forces, although at the moment they appear to be few in number and even less in strength. In the same way as the Australian Democrats and the Opposition will see to it that the aggregation proposals of the Government which would deliver country and regional television into the hands of the media moguls will fail in this House, I hope that when the ownership and control rules come up we will not allow all of Australia's media to fall into the hands of very few people and that we in fact get strict ownership and control rules. If the Government's proposals in the area of cross-media ownership, which is fairly well fudged at the moment, are not good enough, I hope that the Opposition can join with the Democrats to ensure that we really do have good and very strong cross-media controls. I turn from cross-media to crossed wires. It is unfortunate that we are taking the time of the Parliament, but I believe, as a member of the Senate Select Committee, that it was important that I put on the record the fact that I think there has been a cavalier attitude taken to the Committee, to its report and to the tabling of the Government's response in this manner. I again encourage the Opposition to listen carefully to many of the things which Senator Puplick and I have said in relation to all of these matters. Senator SHEIL(Queensland)(3.58) —I rise to take note of the Government's response to the report of the Senate Select Committee on Television Equalisation. Unfortunately I cannot do it with the same force and eloquence as Senator Puplick, but I do have a modest contribution to make. This is a most precipitate response to such a complicated report. The Government banged this legislation through the House of Representatives and brought it to the Senate. We had a debate on it and it was obvious that there was much more to the legislation than could be handled with an ordinary debate. So a select committee was formed, and I was a member of it. We considered a mountain of evidence, heard many witnesses, read lots of submissions, distilled it all and finally came up with a report which was split evenly between the members of the Committee. The majority report was brought in, of course, on the Chairman's casting vote. Now, within a matter of a few days, the Government has considered all of this evidence that was distilled and brought forward in the Committee's report, and has responded hastily. The way it was presented to the Senate was most inept. I have a suspicion that the Minister for Finance (Senator Walsh) tried to slip the Government's response in during Question Time so that there would not be any debate at all on it. Those opposite were hoping to get away with it but fortunately it has been picked up. So we are now debating the matter. Undoubtedly, the Government has a predetermined attitude as to what the legislation is intended to be. It has dreamt up this policy of having three commercial stations in an aggregated area. It will stick to that. It looks as though the whole Senate inquiry and the report have been a sham and the Government will go ahead willy-nilly, whether it wins or is defeated, to bring in this remarkable legislation. The Government's course of action is to aggregate television stations and equalise the number of viewing stations in an area. Whether this is good or bad, the Government intends to press on with it. Those opposite suggested that there would be other ways of getting to the Government's end. If the regional stations chose those ways there would be a couple of poison pills they would have to take to force them down the Government's track. One of the features of the whole history of this saga has been that even before the Select Committee got together to hear the evidence there were mass transfers of ownership amongst the various forms of media in anticipation of the legislation. One can only wonder just how big an effect these transfers have had on the Government's desire to get ahead and push through this legislation. I will speak more on this matter when the legislation is brought forward. I am particularly concerned about the situation not only for Tasmania, but also for Geelong, Mildura, Griffith and especially for Cairns in my State which has been left completely out in the cold. This is a situation we cannot possibly let rest. The Government's reaction is precipitate; the presentation of the report, to say the least, has been inept; and the Government is determined to press on with its course. The whole inquiry was merely a smokescreen and an exercise which I hope will not have been wasted because of the enormous amount of work that went into it and the enormous amount of good that can come out of it. It is obvious that this reorganisation of regional television throughout Australia will have spin off effects, not only for networks in the city but also for remote commercial services. It is not the sort of reorganisation that should be undertaken lightly under any circumstances. Senator VIGOR(South Australia)(4.03) —I believe that this response by the Government is a shallow and rather facile response in an area where quite a number of problems were brought out by the dissenting reports to the main report of the Senate Select Committee on Television Equalisation. One whole area the response fails to mention is the administrative problems which the Department of Communications has had with the previous proposals before us for supplementary licences and the failure to administer these effectively for the people of Australia. The principles of choice and diversity which were brought out so admirably in Senator Puplick's dissenting report and the issue of localism-that is, providing local programs with guaranteed local input-in the television process as far as I can see have been totally ignored in the Government's report, as has been the question of what people in regional areas want. There seems to be a determination just to satisfy the needs of the Government's mates in the large networks. There does not seem to have been very much consideration for what the ordinary Australian wants to see on his or her television screen. That important issue certainly has not been addressed effectively by the majority report either. The way this report was presented during Question Time is, as Senator Powell said, somewhat of an insult to the Committee. It has been put down in a very unusual way and shows the Government's very cavalier attitude towards the Senate's activities. It also illustrates the way this whole matter has been dealt with. Prior to the formation of the Committee, the Government and the Department of Communications had basically operated behind closed doors. The Forward Development Unit basically had consulted only the large media interests. Yet in this report the Government has the temerity to say that from the beginning of its consideration of the equalisation policy it has placed the debate in the public domain and invited all interested parties into the consultative process through public submissions and meetings. This is blatantly untrue. This has happened only since the Committee was formed. The Committee has reported along blatant political lines. It seems almost as if the report was prewritten because large sections of it correspond exactly to the Forward Development Unit's documents. There was a reply in the Senate from Senator Richardson who said that the dissenting report by Senator Sheil and Senator Lewis was not satisfactory. The Government report effectively does not even mention them. If we are to take note of committees and not waste the money of the people of Australia it is important that the Government take note of what committees do-minority reports as well as majority reports-because there was a lot that the Government could have learnt from reading Senator Puplick's and Senator Powell's excellent submissions. A year ago, 43 per cent of the nation as an audience was considered to be at the extreme limit of what was acceptable in terms of media ownership. The Government is now proposing 75 per cent. The Labor majority of the Committee at least has been honest in admitting that the Government's so-called one-in-all-in rule should be abandoned and everybody should be forced into the process, because the carrots-the financial inducements-were available only to those people who went into the aggregation process. Hence, the Committee is just recognising what the Government's proposal really meant. It just went a little too far. I do not believe that anything at all in the Government's response shows there were a variety of economic incentives which could have applied either to multi-channel services or aggregation. All the incentives the Government put forward pushed towards aggregation. I am only consoled currently by the fact that the Opposition has made a firm stand with the Australian Democrats on the legislation and that the Government's report obviously is not directly relevant. The thing that really needs to be brought out, however, is that the Department of Communications and the Minister, who are claiming in this response that they are considering the new technologies and advances in technologies in broadcasting, blatantly have failed to date to take those into account, including the area of the new video and audio entertainment and information services proposals, where the Department did not even manage to be organised sufficiently to be able to collect the proper levels of fees. This is all covered under the Radiocommunications Act, rather than under the Broadcasting Act. I commend to the Senate Senator Powell's recommendation that all of these broadcasting processes should be brought within the same Act. The Government has said in this document a number of times that the Department of Communications is involved in further discussions with a wide variety of people and groups. `Further discussions' is one term that is used many times in this response. From previous experience further discussions with the Department of Communications are a pretty open-ended thing which takes a large amount of time. I believe that most of the other processes in relation to which there have been recommendations by the Committee outside of the Government's original proposals in the Broadcasting Amendment Bill will take an enormous and inordinate amount of time to come forward. I make the point that for the past 3 1/2 years the Government has been fiddling about with this proposal. The Department was frantically searching for ways to stall bringing in pay television under the current legislation. It has not tackled the problem of high definition television, nor has it looked at the proper uses of new satellite technology. The whole object of this exercise is to produce a media ownership environment which is suitable to the Government's few mates. Senator Vanstone —To its big mates. Senator VIGOR —To its big mates. This is exactly what we deplore and what we will be fighting in relation to this legislation when it comes forward and in relation to future legislation for media ownership provisions. I finish by commending the Committee for identifying in the report a need for a local service in Geelong-it is long overdue-and the facilities that are needed in the Cairns region. I do not believe the Government's response answers any of those proposals satisfactorily. It should not be beyond this Government to come up with the areas in which a second independent service is or may well be viable. In other areas there could be the grant of an immediate supplementary licence, and that has been stated. That has not been considered at all in the Government's response, even though it has been proposed in two of the dissenting reports. In that way a second service could be provided everywhere within the next two years. The Government has admitted in its response that the regions are currently underserved. It does no good to express pious hopes, as the Labor Committee members have done, that a service covering all the regional areas of Queensland would provide adequate local programming. I believe that is a farce. The demise of some long running programs on HSV7 in recent weeks shows how localism will be sacrificed if we have huge empires developing and handling programming. I believe that the United States model, which has a 25 per cent audience reach limit and quite strict cross-media ownership provisions, even under the Reagan Administration, is much better than that proposed of 75 per cent ownership. I believe there has been a phoney compromise between the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) and the Minister for Communications (Mr Duffy) who, a year ago, were haggling over 35 or 43 per cent. Even 43 per cent, which has been taken up by Senator Puplick, is still too high, and I would commend that we make certain when the legislation comes up that we guarantee the interests of people in regional areas and that we make haste to provide them with proper services and extra services rather than continue with the pious talk of aggregation, which is dead because the Senate will throw out the legislation. Senator TEAGUE(South Australia)(4.15) —It is a very sad day for the Senate as the Government has tried to pull the wool over our eyes on an important issue, and that is the legislation relating to television broadcasting, the Broadcasting Amendment Bill. It is trying to pull the wool over the Senate's eyes in terms of the procedures. This legislation was referred to the Senate Select Committee on Television Equalisation, which diligently carried out its work and brought a report to the Senate, and only seven days later-on 30 March, after the Committee had reported on 23 March-the Government has responded in this inconsiderate and totally superficial way which is consistent with its approach before the matter was referred to the Committee. I was not directly involved with this Select Committee. I have been preceded in this debate by four who were-I refer to Senator Lewis, Senator Puplick, Senator Powell and Senator Sheil. There is unanimity in what they say, and that is that their views have not been properly considered by the Government. Here we have the Government pulling the wool over our eyes not only in terms of the rapidity of this predetermined response to an important report but also in terms of the way it was brought before us-as a tabled paper in Question Time. It was not mentioned on the Notice Paper and was not put down at the time which, by tradition and procedure, an important response such as this must be put down in the Senate proceedings. The Government has brought it down with an urgency that I believe places the procedures of the Senate in some contempt. The Government has not got away with this attempt to pull the wool over our eyes. Why the urgency? Why this speed? I believe the Government is focusing on only two Bills in the Senate this week. The first Bill is the Australia Card 1986 [No. 2]. It does not actually support that Bill. It has already said that there are technical reasons for that Bill being unworkable. It has already said that a number of improvements have been determined in the last six months which are essential to the operation of the Australia Card. The Government has determined that it needs this Australia Card Bill in exactly the same form as last-- Senator Tate —On a point of order: There is the question of relevance here. I think we are straying into a debate which would be more properly conducted when we come to debate the Australian Card Bill rather than in relation to the motion before the Chair. The PRESIDENT —I would ask Senator Teague to direct his remarks to the motion before the Chair. Senator TEAGUE —Mr President, I thank you for that ruling, and I will follow that very carefully because the point that I make concerns the urgency in the Government's mind of the two Bills that are on our agenda this week. One is the Australia Card Bill and the other is the Broadcasting Amendment Bill. The speed with which this response to the report has been brought to the Senate in this strange way of tabling it during Question Time is designed to ensure that the legislation comes on the agenda by Wednesday. That was the statement that the Manager of Government Business in the Senate, the Minister for Resources and Energy (Senator Gareth Evans), made. The sensitivity of the Special Minister of State (Senator Tate), who is now in the Senate, clouds the focus that I was wanting to put to the Senate in relation to the Government's secret agenda. The Government's secret agenda is to try to get that television legislation before the Senate by Wednesday. Senator Tate —Why? Senator TEAGUE —Because the Government knows that the Australia Card Bill will be defeated and it then will have before it the option to call for a double dissolution and announce an election on Wednesday evening of this week. It wants this legislation, the Broadcasting Amendment Bill, passed before the double dissolution occurs. The reasons for that have already been ably set out by my colleagues in the Senate. I put it to the Senate: Why is there this urgency to have only these two Bills considered and the consideration resolved this week in the Senate? Let me remind the Senate that many other pieces of legislation are listed, none of which is essential to the Government's purpose of having a double dissolution of this Parliament. Senator Robertson —Essential, but not to a dissolution. Senator TEAGUE —I hear from the Government Whip that none of the Bills listed is essential for a double dissolution. However, in the honourable senator's mind they are essential for the good government of the country. The Appropriation Bills that will be referred to Estimates committees on Tuesday and Thursday of this week will eventually have to be passed in May in order for the Government to function. However, it is not essential that they be passed prior to Wednesday night. The only legislation on which the Government is focusing as essential to be passed before a double dissolution is announced on Wednesday evening is this broadcasting measure. Why the speed, why the urgency? The Government has political reasons for signalling to its mates in the media, it has political reasons for gaining financial support from its mates in the media, that an election would then ensue. This transparent attempt by the Government to reassure its funding base for the coming election needs to be exposed to the public. Not only should we not be deterred from dealing with legislation on its merits but the Government's cynical urgency about this measure is because it is the single piece of legislation it wants the Senate to pass, if it possibly can, prior to the announcement in two days' time of an election. The matter at the centre of the report of the Senate Select Committee on Television Equalisation and the Government's response is the Broadcasting Amendment Bill and the Television Licence Fees Amendment Bill. The issue is a multi-billion dollar industry in this country and the question is whether established media interests can proceed in the coming months and years to networking in this country. The Prime Minister (Mr Hawke), the Minister for Communications (Mr Duffy) and the Treasurer (Mr Keating) have had careful discussions with entrenched media interests in this country and they have come to an arrangement whereby there will be an open door by this Labor Government, against the wishes of the Opposition and against the wishes of the majority of senators, to go ahead with media networking around Australia. This matter must be exposed to the public and it is made all the more clear by the urgency that has been given to this legislation. Immense profits are to be made from the huge investments in television broadcasting in Australia and there is immense influence-political and otherwise-in the media industry. In the weeks of watching the Murdoch takeover of the Herald and Weekly Times Ltd the public showed its enormous concern for public accountability in the media of this country. That is chickenfeed compared with the monopoly media opportunities that networking, as the present Government proposes, would have for media interests. Let the Government be fully warned that these immense issues cannot be introduced by way of a tabled government response in Question Time, against all the procedures and traditions of the Senate. They cannot be resolved by the Senate under some smokescreen of urgency in order to get just this one little Bill tidied up before the double dissolution is announced Wednesday night. Let me compare the procedure in this matter with that of another communications matter and that is the proposed amalgamation of the Special Broadcasting Service with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I will not spend time on this matter because I take your ruling, Mr President, to be most careful-- The PRESIDENT —Which I was just about to make again. Senator TEAGUE —With regard to the motion that is now before the Senate. I am a member of the Senate Select Committee on Education and the Arts and the examination by that Committee of this Government's proposal in this area of communications has also exposed that there is no substantial reason for the Government policy. In contradistinction, last Friday morning-after the Senate rose last Thursday-the Minister announced that he did not see the prospect of the SBS-ABC merger going ahead. During the weekend the Prime Minister made it known to ethnic community interests and, in particular, to the ethnic radio station in Melbourne that they should all be prepared for a complete change of mind on the Government's part because there will be an election next week. The Government wants to make sure that the votes that have already been lost will not all leak away. The PRESIDENT —Order! Senator Teague, you are beginning to stray from the subject before the Chair. Senator TEAGUE —Mr President, I want to focus upon the importance for the Senate to take seriously a government response to a Senate committee. I am indicating how the Minister involved in this matter, Mr Duffy, and the Prime Minister, in their response to a half completed similar inquiry on a communications matter, have already taken the burden of that Senate Committee's exposure of the lack of basis for policy in the Government. I must conclude my remarks. Other items are on the agenda of the Senate today. I gave an informal undertaking to speak for 10 minutes in the knowledge that it is clear to the Senate and the public that today the Government did not get away with its attempt to pull the wool over our eyes. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. The PRESIDENT —I inform the Senate that I have received the following letter, dated 30 March, from Senator Vanstone: Dear Mr President, Pursuant to Standing Order 64, I give notice that today I propose to move- `That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency: The Government's cynical abuse of the employment hopes of young Australians and the need for it to immediately address the abject failure of its education and training policies.' Yours sincerely, AMANDA VANSTONE Senator for the State of South Australia Is the proposal supported? More than the number of senators required by the Standing Orders having risen in their places- Senator VANSTONE(South Australia)(4.28) —I move: That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency: The Government's cynical abuse of the employment hopes of young Australians and the need for it to immediately address the abject failure of its education and training policies. Today the Opposition is seeking to highlight the depths of the problems being experienced by the Government with its Priority One: Young Australia scheme and, in particular, the Australian traineeship scheme which is meant to give hope to all young Australians for training and jobs. We want to highlight these problems not simply for the sake of highlighting them; we have been aware of them since the inception of this program and we have raised them in this chamber and in the other place. Senator Mason, who will speak in this debate, is aware of them. He has spoken on the problems of youth unemployment before, as have Senator Harradine and Senator Siddons who will join in this debate. Young people who are still on the dole queue are most certainly very well aware of the ineptitude of this Government to solve their problems. The media is aware of the unemployment problems of young people-it is so aware that it is not here today to listen to what we have to say because it probably already knows how bad the problems are. One cannot promise 75,000 trainees per annum in 1988-89 and in 1986-87 have only 2,300 without everyone realising that something is wrong. One cannot have 30,000 students still waiting for their Austudy payments because of an administrative bungle in Senator Ryan's office without somebody knowing something is wrong. One cannot have students wanting to get into courses at universities, technical and further education centres and other places of further education and finding that there are no places for them without people realising that something is desperately wrong. As I have already indicated, we do not seek to highlight the problems because people are unaware of them-quite the opposite, they are aware; they are fed up. The polls are telling this Government just how popular it is with young people. No doubt the Government has noticed the article in the Sydney Morning Herald of Monday, 23 March headed `Hawke and the ALP lose their charm for the young voters'. That article tells the Government that since November 1984 it has lost 11 per cent of its support amongst 18- to 24-year-olds. So the Government is starting to get the message, and we are hoping today to strengthen further that message that something has to be done. We highlight the problem in the hope that, instead of the Government meekly admitting that its targets for the Australian traineeships were `a bit high', it will take some action to remedy the defects in its plan. We are not seeking a confessional, but a commitment to remedy the errors. When asked by Senator Chaney about the Priority One program and its failure in Question Time today, the Leader of the Government in the Senate (Senator Button), as Minister representing the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke)-the prime mover of the Priority One program-basically said that Senator Chaney's allegations that the situation is now worse were correct and that he had nothing to add. It is shameful for this Government to have nothing to add to such a disgraceful situation. He certainly should have been briefed. If the youth of Australia really is the Government's number one priority and this is not just some media hype catchcry, then the Leader of the Government in the Senate should always be adequately briefed on the problems in Priority One and what the Government is going to do about it so that, through the Senate, he can tell all Australians and especially young Australians what the Government is going to do to remedy the problem. I do not think that is too much to ask-not from a government that came to office in 1983 and had a 1983 Budget, a 1984 Budget, a 1985 Budget and a 1986 Budget and is preparing for a 1987 mini-Budget. It has had plenty of time. It is meant to be running the country. It will be no good for Government senators to get up in this debate and wail on about perceived inadequacies in the Fraser years; they should not have taken on the job if they were not up to it. Four years and four Budgets later, looking into the fifth year-half a decade later-this Government is responsible for the fiasco. It is true that since this Government came to power, there has been a very minor reduction in the total numbers of youth unemployment. I would not seek to deny that. But that is more than accounted for by the increased numbers staying at school because of increased retention rates. In other words, the situation for jobs has in no positive way been affected by Priority One. In fact, quite the opposite, the situation has worsened. The current figure for unemployed 15- to 24-year-olds is 75,000. When the scheme started it was 64,200. The Government promised that in 1985-86 it would have 10,000 trainees, moving up to an annual turnover of 75,000 per annum. It is not too much, therefore, to expect in 1986-87 to have about 30,000 trainees, to have 50,000 trainees in 1987-88 and, hopefully, in 1988-89 to get up to 75,000 trainees. We had the campaign launch and we have had huge advertising-and I am still not sure whether it was for the Prime Minister or for Priority One. We have had Press advertisements, radio advertisements, film clips at the cinema, billboards across the country and television advertisements-all at vast expense. Senator Chaney —Anything to advertise the Labor Party. Senator VANSTONE —Anything to advertise the Labor Party, as Senator Chaney says. What do we now have as a result of all that effort and spending? We have 3,400 trainees in place, cumulative over two years. We got approximately 1,000 in the first year and approximately 2,300 this year. The cumulative total should be 40,000. That puts the Prime Minister's word still at about 10c in the dollar, which is not a very good rate. These are the promises that the Government offered to the young of Australia. It led them to believe that they would be fulfilled and in that way cynically abused the employment hopes of young Australians. Mr Hawke said, in one of the many glossy leaflets that go out with his very sincere photograph on them, that the target for the bicentennial year, 1988-that is, next year-is 75,000 young people in traineeships and that at least this level would then be maintained year by year. Well, I have news for the Prime Minister: He has only 2,300 this year and I cannot see a jump up to 75,000. He further said in 1985: . . . we really believe that come the beginning of the 1990s- not very far away; it is 1987- . . . we ought to have been able to eliminate unemployment as it's developed in the 16 and 17-year-old group . . . The Prime Minister was then interrupted by a young person in disbelief- and no wonder. Then, in September of 1985, the Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations (Mr Willis) in the lower House said: We will halve the unemployment rate for 16-and 17-year-olds. Mr Willis has made a promise that he has not been able to keep. He has let young people down. Many people here might say: `What's new?' Members of the Press gallery back in their offices might say: `What's new? We have heard all this before. We knew that at the time'. The Opposition said it at the time. We said that there was not enough consultation with business and with unions and that on that basis it just would not work; the Government had not got its act together. We repeated this in February 1986 and asked the Government to address the problems. It admitted that the targets were too high and then did absolutely nothing to change the situation. It would be no news to most unemployed Australians that Priority One is not working. Let me give some examples of the number of people who have got some benefit from it. In my State, two years down the track, 42 people have got traineeships; in Tasmania, the number is 28; in the Northern Territory, 26; in the Australian Capital Territory-a few more public servants here-237; and in New South Wales, which is especially favoured, 1,320. I could go on, but it is just a dismal picture. That is the problem-there has been no progress, no plan modification. Nothing has been done to alter the rate of progress. The simple fact is that young Australians in their thousands are continuing to be demoralised every day. They are losing hope every day, no longer believing that even the Prime Minister of this country will tell them something they can rely on. The scheme has been a failure in one very particular aspect; that is, the involvement of private enterprise. All the glossy leaflets tell us that small business will have at least 60 per cent of the traineeships. We can endorse that as a principle for traineeships, because we all know what a disastrous situation the Australian economy is in, and we cannot afford to keep spending to get out of our problems. We cannot afford to keep expanding the Public Service. The promise that 60 per cent of trainees would be in small business seems a good one. Of course, then there would be another percentage added on to that for big business, not leaving a very big percentage for government. That seemed a good idea, but the figures show that there are 3,070-this is the cumulative total, remember-in the Public Service and 319 in the private sector, just under 10 per cent. That is an absolute disgrace. I am referring to figures for trainees now in place. We have lots of promises from the Government of notionally created traineeships somewhere on a piece of paper, but no benefit is going to young people. Of the ones actually in place, less than 10 per cent are in the private sector. What that means is that 90 per cent are in the public sector, on the taxpayers' money, simply because the Government has to prop up a scheme in respect of which it did not have its act together in the first place and because it has not had the stomach to remedy the problems in the meantime. We did not need to get a letter from the Small Business Association of Australia saying: The Association has no confidence in any scheme the Federal Government put up for Youth Employment to date, but is most concerned with the amount of money wasted on promotion P. R. printing etc in setting up these schemes. If these funds had been used more wisely in promoting business climate for profit, how much better off would be our great country. I could not agree more with the Association. The Government admits that its targets have been a little too high, but it does not fully admit the problem. In September 1985, not long after the traineeships were announced, there was a public announcement that the first traineeships in the private sector had been secured and that Ansett was to have 300 trainees. In March 1987 twelve of those trainees started work as clerks. That is less than a 5 per cent delivery in 1987 on a 1985 promise. We cannot get much worse that that-twelve out of 300 between 1985 and 1987. The traineeships were to cover a wide variety of areas within the transport industry. Unfortunately, the Government ran into a snag with the Federated Storemen and Packers Union. It ran into that snag because it did not negotiate with the unions when it should have-that is, before it raised the hopes of young Australians. The unions stopped it. Unions in a wide variety of areas are holding up the private sector development of traineeships. I do not blame the unions for doing that. They are entitled to stick to their guns for what they want and have a brawl with the Government. My complaint is that the Government most certainly should have sorted all of that out before it announced the scheme. It is simply propping up the scheme with Public Service trainees. In June 1986 I asked Senator Button about the failure of the Government's scheme in the private sector. In October, many months later, I got a reply from Senator Walsh. It was an interesting reply. He told me: . . . nothing has gone wrong with the Government's plan for traineeships in the private sector. As at 26 September 1986, 4809 traineeships had been created of which 1415 are in the private sector. That is typical of what is wrong with this Government. It will not admit the situation. Senator Walsh replied to me about the number created, not the ones in place. The two are very different. The numbers created on paper by public servants are far larger than are the numbers of people getting a real benefit. The Minister does not admit the problem. He said: `Nothing has gone wrong'. Sixty per cent of the traineeships in the program were meant to be in the private sector, in small business, but less than 10 per cent are in that sector. Yet he says: `Nothing has gone wrong'. One cannot rely on a word that the Government says in that respect. What the Government must do is set to work with business and modify this plan-or develop another one, if it cannot modify this one-to attract the private sector because only in the private sector, and in private sector growth, can we look to create jobs for young Australians. I note that this matter was raised last week in the other place. There Government members consoled themselves with recent reports that, relatively speaking amongst Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, we had done a better job in regard to youth unemployment. I assure those honourable senators opposite who will speak that it is no help to say to young people in my State who cannot get a job-the one in five, getting towards one in four-that they are relatively better off. I will not visit a local Commonwealth Employment Service office and say: `Look, I know it's tough but, guess what, relatively speaking we are better off'. That is no answer to young people who are unemployed. The situation is the same all around Australia. It is no help to the 199,900 15- to 19-year-olds. It is no help to the 335,400 15- to 24-year-olds who are desperately looking for a job. Senator Siddons —Senator, from the figures I saw, I don't think it is true to say that the young people are relatively better off. Senator VANSTONE —That may be, Senator. I have not investigated that matter. But the point I am making is that, if one is relatively better off but does not have a job, it is no help. Not only is it no help; it is no answer to the charge that has been laid today, namely, that the aspirations and hopes of young Australians have been cruelly and cynically used; that the Government is staring at the failure of a scheme that it has promoted; and that it is refusing, or is incapable of, a remedy. The charge that is being laid today is that something is wrong and that the Government is not doing anything to fix it. I see from the papers that the Prime Minister has made some stirring speeches and, as I understand it, has claimed that he has access to a light on a hill and everybody should follow him. I suggest to him that he should turn his torch on to a darker part of the lives of young Australians-the young Australians who do not have jobs, who hoped for traineeships, who wanted to be among the 75,000 who would have them next year, and who do not have a chance in hell of being among them. While he is busy trying to get himself into the history books, thousands of young Australians are simply looking for work. I think it is appropriate at this point to remind the Senate of a cartoon published last year. It was a very good cartoon. It showed the Prime Minister sitting at a big desk. He had a punk hairdo. Do honourable senators know the sort? It was the sort in which the hair goes up in spikes. One imagined, although the cartoon was in black and white, that the spikes were rainbow coloured-anything to appeal. He was casually filing his nails with a big file-a rasp, a carpenter's file-and was oblivious to the rest of the world. The caption at the bottom of the cartoon read: `Youth of Australia Priority II, don't call us, we'll call you'. I remind the Government that there are 335,400 people waiting for a call-75,000 more than when this scheme started. That, in itself, is a matter of urgency. Senator COLSTON(Queensland)(4.45) —The Senate this afternoon is debating whether a certain matter is one of urgency. Senator Vanstone, a Liberal Party senator from South Australia, has moved that the following is a matter of urgency: The Government's cynical abuse of the employment hopes of young Australians and the need for it to immediately address the abject failure of its education and training policies. If there is any cynicism, it must lie with Senator Vanstone for putting forward a motion of this nature. I completely reject the proposition which she has put forward. In fact, this urgency motion contains three propositions, although one of them was perhaps overdone by Senator Vanstone. One is the abuse of the employment hopes of young Australians. I will refer to that in a moment. I reject the proposition. Another is the failure of the Government's education policies. I will have something to say about that. The urgency motion also says something about the failure of the Government's training policies. I will mention that matter. I reject all three propositions. The proposition about training policies featured for about 15 minutes of Senator Vanstone's argument. But the others are worth mentioning as well. I shall mention all three. The urgency motion refers, as I mentioned, to the Government's alleged cynical abuse of the employment hopes of young Australians. Any Opposition member who makes an allegation like that has a very short memory. Let me indicate what the previous Government achieved in this area. From March 1978 to March 1983 total teenage employment dropped by a massive 67,000. This was a decrease of about 10 per cent. That was the type of employment opportunity provided by the Fraser Government. It was hardly an achievement. Perhaps we should be talking about that record as being an abject failure. Again, in that time teenage employment dropped by 67,000. In contrast, teenage employment has increased under the Hawke Government. From April 1983 to January 1987 teenage employment increased by 74,700, or by about 12 per cent. This is an achievement of which the Government is justly proud. That is the comparison: An 11 per cent decrease under Fraser, and a 12 per cent increase under Hawke. I do not understand how anyone can talk about the abuse of employment hopes of young Australians when one looks at those figures, or how the Opposition can talk about it when it thinks of its own record. This Government, far from abusing the hopes of young Australians, has given new hope-hope that would not have existed under the tired and inappropriate policies of the Fraser Government. When the employment figures for February this year were released, Opposition members interpreted the increase of two percentage points in the youth unemployment rate as a marked deterioration in the youth labour market. No one on this side likes to see an increase in unemployment in any area. But monthly figures are noted for their fluctuation. Taken in isolation, they are not necessarily reliable. Previous increases in the monthly youth unemployment rates have been followed by subsequent falls in the following month. The Government's long term record is what should be examined, not the peaks and troughs which occur in monthly figures. The Government's record is a sound one. It is a record which should not attract this type of comment in an urgency motion. The Hawke Government is deeply concerned about teenage employment, but it should be mentioned-and I will mention it, as Senator Vanstone mentioned that it was referred to in the other place-that, in comparison with other major industrialised countries, Australia is by no means lagging. Figures produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1986 indicate that the youth unemployment rate in Australia is lower than that of Canada, the United Kingdom and the total OECD countries. Only the United States of America has a more favourable rate of youth employment than Australia. Youth as defined by the OECD is the age range 15 to 24 years. Youth unemployment is not a phenomenon unique to Australia. Other countries are similarly affected, but Australia is in the forefront of alleviating youth unemployment. We are not saying to young people that they are relatively well off. We are saying that in comparison with other countries we are in the forefront of doing something about the problem. I reiterate that the Government's record in youth employment is far superior to that of the previous Government. That is a statistical fact, but we are by no means complacent about what is a major problem. The steps the Hawke Government is taking in this area are not those of an uncaring government. They are those of a government which is resolute in its efforts to solve Australia's economic problems in contrast to the nation's Opposition, which is hopelessly divided. Let us examine some of the measures this Government has taken to improve the situation of young people in this nation, especially our training policies which the Opposition incorrectly terms a failure. The previous speaker, Senator Vanstone, could not find anything right with the Australian traineeship system. I will indicate in a moment that there are some aspects that I would like to see working better, but they are far better than no traineeship system. One did not exist prior to this Government introducing its scheme. This system is gradually being introduced as a major new vocational training system for young people in the non-trades area of the work force. The system, instituted in 1985-86 with the endorsement of employees, employers and unions, is directed primarily at 16- to 18-year-olds who leave secondary school before completing year 12. It offers 12 months off and on the job training for young people who would otherwise enter the labour market with few skills or qualifications. Although it is slower than was originally anticipated, development of a traineeship system is gaining momentum. As at the middle of this month some 85 training and industrial agreements have been concluded in a wide range of industries and occupations, in both the public and the private sectors. More than 5,700 young people including young people in Queensland, the State I represent, have already commenced a traineeship, with acceleration expected during the rest of this financial year. Around 1,300 employers in the private sector are now participating in the Australian traineeship system. The Opposition suggests that it has not gone far enough. Perhaps it has not gone as far as we would like it to have gone, but it is proceeding. It is providing employment opportunities so that those people, having finished their traineeship, will be able to go out into the work force and have better skills for the employers who hire them. How can this be regarded as a failure, as the Opposition suggests in its motion? This scheme is a further illustration of the Hawke's Government commitment to young Australians. Our ultimate objective is to create a major new avenue of entry into the work force for many thousands of young people. In this respect I mention apprenticeship opportunities, which have also increased dramatically during the term of this Government in the context of substantial government assistance. Intakes of apprentices have risen by almost 50 per cent during the term of this Government, from an abysmally low 34,800 in 1982-83 to over 51,000 in 1985-86. The Government will spend some $122m to assist about 94,000 young apprentices in the current financial year. The Government's increased expenditure commitment in this area will be crucial to maintaining a high level of trade training opportunities for young people. We should not in this great nation of ours rely on immigration for the skills we need. We should be providing these skills to our young people who will be here for the next generation and they should be able to develop the skills we need as a nation. The Government is doing this by providing assistance to apprenticeships so that we have the increase which I have just illustrated. In addition to these two specific areas, that of traineeships and apprenticeships, we have considerably strengthened other support services for young people. Community youth support scheme funding, totalling $35.3m for 1986-87, has virtually been doubled since 1982-83. Some 37 youth access centres were established within the Commonwealth Employment Service network during 1986 to provide comprehensive information, referral and counselling assistance to young people. The Government has now decided to expand the number of youth access centres to 100 by the end of the calendar year. The Hawke Government's community volunteer program announced on 2 March will provide unemployed people with a chance to participate in voluntary activities of benefit to themselves and to the community. It is expected that there will be 15,000-20,000 placements a year. The Federal Opposition has not yet announced its employment policy. However, there is little doubt that compulsory work for unemployment benefits will be a key plank of the policy. One black cloud on the horizon of youth employment is the figures for Queensland, the State I represent. It has the highest rate of unemployment and the highest rate of youth unemployment for any State in Australia. This throws doubt on the ability of the Queensland Premier to look forward to a job in the Federal Parliament. Perhaps the lesson in this story is that he should stay at home and do something about Queensland. I wish now to move to education. Senator Vanstone in her urgency motion refers to the alleged failure of the Government's education and training policies. The Federal Government has a direct financial responsibility for 19 universities and 46 colleges of advanced education throughout Australia. As a Queensland senator, I am particularly interested-as I am sure you are, Madam Acting Deputy President-in the institutions in that State, such as the three universities, namely, the University of Queensland, the James Cook University and the Griffith University. Queensland has a number of colleges of advanced education. I refer to the Brisbane College of Advanced Education; the Queensland Institute of Technology, a most remarkable institution in the capital city; the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education; the Capricornia Institute of Advanced Education; and the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. If anybody from an institution that I did not mention is listening, I hope he will forgive me. All those institutions are very sound and some follow particular areas of expertise and carry out some excellent work. Let us look at some of the facts that highlight the achievements of the Hawke Government in this area. Since the Hawke Government took office in 1983, education funding has increased by almost 8 per cent in real terms. This is a clear indication of the Government commitment to higher education and in itself demolishes the argument in the matter of urgency that this Government has failed in its education policies. A relevant question to pose is: How does this 8 per cent increase in real terms in higher education funding compare with what occurred prior to the election of the Hawke Government? In the last four years of the previous Government there was a decline in tertiary funding-not an increase-of 0.6 per cent. This is similar to the situation which I described earlier in relation to youth unemployment. The previous Government lost jobs for teenagers, but this Government has increased the numbers of jobs available. We are now berated for the fact that our education policies are wrong, but we have had an increase of 8 per cent in funding in real terms compared with the previous Government's decrease of 0.6 per cent. It must be admitted that Senator Vanstone, who has moved the alleged matter of urgency today, was not a member of the Federal Parliament when tertiary funding declined. But that is the yardstick that we must use in determining whether this Government has played its part in providing tertiary education opportunities, not only for young Australians as mentioned in the motion, but also for the many other Australians who desire to undertake tertiary studies. If Senator Vanstone had looked carefully at the higher education achievements of this Government compared with those of the previous Government, she could not really speak of the `abject failure' of this Government's approach in this area. By implication, her urgency motion pours scorn on her own Party's record. In addition to mentioning the increase which has occurred since the Hawke Government has been in office, it is pertinent to outline the level of resources made available in the current Federal Budget for higher education. In this Budget the funds for the current financial year were increased by $60.3m in real terms. This year the Hawke Labor Government will spend $2,383m on higher education. Put in another way, that is $2.3 billion. So far I have mentioned the funds allocated by this Government for the 65 higher education institutions throughout Australia. But what does this mean in terms of student places? A significant amount of the increase in funds has been directed towards expanding higher education provisions. For example, the Hawke Government has increased the number of higher education places by 36,500 since it assumed office in 1983. This is an increase of 14 per cent and a four-fold increase over the number of places provided in the last four years of the Fraser Government which could manage only 8,000 places in that time. Honourable senators should compare our 36,500 places with the 8,000 provided by the Fraser Government in the same period. Put another way, if the Hawke Government had proceeded in a similar way to that of its slothful predecessors, there would now be 28,500 fewer places in higher education than there are at present. Almost 30,000 Australians currently pursuing higher education studies would not be able to do so had this Government been content to follow the policies of its predecessors. We were not prepared to do that and for its efforts in this area the Hawke Government should be applauded. Severe budgetary constraints faced the Government last August, but even so the Budget brought down that month provided for 3,000 more places in the universities and colleges of advanced education throughout Australia. Our commitment to provide places for Australians, especially young Australians, who are appropriately qualified for tertiary studies has not waned. The Hawke Government is committed to returning youth participation rates to the previous high levels of the 1970s. Participation rates declined sharply under the former Liberal-National Party Government. It is one thing to have a commitment to increase participation; it is another to actually fulfil that objective. In this respect the Hawke Government has succeeded and the participation rate in higher education this year is expected to be the highest level ever recorded in Australia. I wish to say something about the places which we have available in universities and CAEs in Australia. It would be churlish to suggest there are sufficient places in tertiary institutions in this country at present. We are not suggesting that. However, we are increasing the number of those places. There are many qualified people in Australia who could take advantage of a place if one were available. We are increasing the numbers of places at a far greater rate than the previous Government, and we will continue to do so. I see that the 20 minutes allotted to me has almost expired. That is a pity because I was going to say something about the National Party's policies on education. Perhaps one of my fellow senators will be able to do so. In conclusion, I completely reject the three propositions that were in the urgency motion. I reject the claim that this was a matter of urgency. At that point I rest my case. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT(Senator Bjelke-Petersen) —Order! The honourable senator's time has expired. Senator MASON(New South Wales)(5.05) —One of the earliest Australian Democrat policies, which this party has maintained now for almost a decade, was that work should be available for all those in the community who want to work and that if unemployment became structural within our society the patterns of society should change. I agree with that view absolutely. It has a good deal of bearing on the urgency motion, which reads: That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency: The Government's cynical abuse of the employment hopes of young Australians and the need for it to immediately address the abject failure of its education and training policies. Those words `cynical abuse' seem to me a little immoderate-they have a kind of pre-election ring about them. Since this is an urgency motion and the Democrat vote will decide whether it passes, we must take those words seriously. Looking back over the years of the Government's record, it can justly be accused of cynicism in the way that it has brought up program after program of so-called training and assistance schemes for the unemployed-especially the youthful unemployed. These schemes have unduly raised hopes which have then been dashed as the programs have substantially failed in their objectives. The Government regularly talks about the thousands of new jobs it has created without bothering to note that the stubborn, significant and probably understated unemployment statistics have remained much the same over the years. We heard Senator Colston doing that not 10 minutes ago. But when one looks at that admirable little compendium The Round-up, the Treasury's quite impeccable review of what is going on in our society, one sees that table 15 headed `Unemployment and Vacancies' shows that the unemployment rate last month was 8.4 per cent, compared with 7.9 per cent in March last year. When one looks at the youth unemployment rate-and for the Government's purposes, the youthful unemployed are categorised as those aged 15 to 19-one sees a steadily deteriorating situation over the past two years. From March 1985 the figures run like this: Youth unemployment, 23.2 per cent, 21.8 per cent, 21.5 per cent, 21.8 per cent, 21.2 per cent, right through the 22s, back to 21 per cent, then last month it rose to 23.3 per cent. Thus, 23.3 per cent of all Australians between the ages of 15 and 19 are out of work. How the Government can call that progress defies the imagination. Indeed, I note that even Senator Colston was not able to get those words out with any deep sense of conviction. I believe that the Opposition has quite fairly identified education and training problems as a tragic and dangerous situation. Indeed it is. However, those two matters, education and training, are not the real underlying problem. Youth unemployment is both dangerous and tragic because of the serious effects on health and even life of long term unemployment. I point to the high suicide rate among the unemployed and the very well documented health problems, especially mental health problems, which they suffer. High unemployment rates, sustained chronically as they are, are dangerous too because they destabilise society seriously. The effects of unemployment are not simply economic. There is a striking correlation between unemployment and hard drug use and between hard drug use and crime, especially theft and house breaking by young unemployed people who are desperately trying to get money to support their drug habit. Thus, unemployment is a cancer in our society. It has not been seriously addressed because the basic and necessary restructuring of society has been evaded. The real point, of course, is that the Government is wrong if it believes unemployment will be corrected by any increase in business activity that is likely in the foreseeable future. Any gains in that direction-and naturally we all hope that there will be gains-will be offset by losses of jobs due to further automation. That conclusion is inescapable. If this happens, society will need to be restructured in significant directions. Education and training will, of course, be necessary to achieve this restructuring, as it has been in other countries more wise than we are. We need as soon as possible to change radically our concept of work. I listened yesterday morning to a young woman on a radio program who was discussing how boring and unsatisfying it was working modern computerised industrial machinery, which in the case of this young woman was making steel washers. She remarked that the job could be done just as well by a robot. Of course, it no doubt could be. For heaven's sake, let us accept that it should be done by a robot and that we ought to look now at the prospect of a world in which all heavy, dirty or boringly repetitive work need not be done by human beings. That would be a good world. However, it is necessary that those job losses due to automation be balanced and that other areas of work that are more rewarding and creative be provided to fill the gap. There would be no economic problems if we could get the community to accept that kind of restructuring happily. Automation can provide vast new areas or wealth simply because it gets things done more easily, more cheaply and more prolifically, and that sum total of productivity is what wealth is. There is no reason why the arts, drama, sport and music should not be regarded as work-as areas in which young people can be professionally trained and paid for their efforts. There is no reason in the world why every suburb should not have its own theatre company and symphony orchestra and craft, art and hobby centres that cover a huge range of activities, perhaps on a scale we cannot now even imagine. If such things could be based on the schools, those institutions would become very much different places from what they are now. They could change from being factories to make people fit to and to conform with society-too often unsuccessfully, for very good reasons-into places where any citizens of any age could learn whatever suited their own abilities and preferences. That would be to the great benefit of society. This may be seen as simply idealistic. However, I do not really think it is, because this is surely the only way the world can go if we are not to have a bitter division as we are getting in this country between the haves and have-nots and those with a terrifying, persisting neo-Luddite approach who will have every reason to fear and oppose changes which ought to be beneficial to society. When I say `neo-Luddite', I refer to those people in England during the Industrial Revolution last century who broke machinery because the machines seemed to take them away from a job. By using the term `neo-Luddite' I mean simply that the same attitudes exist in our society today. There is no doubt at all that those attitudes are here with us now. People have a great, unreasonable fear of losing their jobs with nothing else being provided for them. Until we cross that bridge we will have achieved absolutely nothing at all. Perhaps we have achieved even worse than nothing because, for the reasons I have stated, the longer we allow unemployment to drag on the worse it will be. So that alternative involves a bitter division of society as a result of allowing unemployment to drag on. Perhaps eventually this could lead to urban terrorism on our streets because that is what we are begging for by allowing young minds to do nothing after providing perhaps the best education that any generation has had for decades or centuries. If we want that to happen, if we regard that alternative as good enough, let people say that my alternative is idealistic. I believe that what we are doing is not good enough. It is because we feel that the Government has been too complacent, too smug and too smart together about this problem that the Democrats will vote with the Opposition on this motion. It can be seen that this is not a situation for the faint hearted, the indecisive or those who want a bob each way. We need the same determination from some Australian government as in Japan where the problem was perceived clearly and early and acted upon. Automation is proceeding apace in Japan, but on a basis-I was assured of this by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry when I was in that country some years ago-on which job losses do result. That outcome is not negotiable in Japan. However, many people do different things. There are people who beautifully landscape the grounds around Japanese factories. Others provide workers with travel advisory services and the like. People have been retrained to do those things. The point is that those things are useful. They add to the quality of life of everybody. This is far better than having people on the dole doing nothing or breaking into houses and stealing television sets. I repeat that unless members of the Australian work force are absolutely assured that they will not be thrown on the scrap-heap as a result of automation, they will reject such a proposition fiercely and perhaps mindlessly. They cannot be blamed for that. We can be blamed for it, however, because we are the Parliament and the Government sitting opposite me is supposed to be capable of solving that sort of problem. It has not done so, as the figures that I have read out clearly indicate. I am not altogether happy with the Opposition's view of this matter. This motion is very much a case of the pot calling the kettle black. There is no evidence at all that the Opposition really wants to address the basic problems of unemployment or that it is prepared to consider the quite radical social changes necessary to overcome it. In fact, I note that the Federal Council of the National Party of Australia has adopted a 25c in the dollar flat tax policy which would mean that there would be no money at all for such initiatives. I do not think the Liberals are much better. They vary in their attitudes according to their degree of dampness. I do not think they are really prepared to face up to the fact that restructuring is what is needed and that the sooner we get on to it the better. That is a pity because there needs to be a social and political consensus if any major change is to be made. Perhaps if we looked at unemployment as the national crisis it really is, something would be done. Instead, I think we are tending now to consider this problem from a cliche point of view, to look at it as just another social statistic like deaths from road accidents and the appalling and tragic illness and death rates from smoking cigarettes. Indeed, all three of these things indicate that the Government is prepared to tolerate even the most serious social evils provided it feels that it can keep control of the vote of the majority who are not disadvantaged. This can readily be done by appealing to the lowest common denominators which are invariably, as I said, selfishness and reluctance to change. This may well be a way of winning elections but it is not the way to run a country. Criticism can readily and fairly be extended to most of the trade union movement, which has shown a distinct preference for looking after its members who are working and who, presumably, can pay their full union dues rather than the unemployed. This has been evident from the union movement's substantial opposition to part time work with proper conditions and its opposition to a sensible system of industrial democracy, which is the only way in which meaningful extensions in productivity could be achieved in this country with at least some change of some growth in employment. One of the cynical aspects of the Government's attitude towards unemployment has been the use, as Senator Vanstone noted-I agree with her-of large amounts of public money to publicise schemes which are supposed to help the unemployed. This spending perhaps induces people in the community towards a vague feeling that the Government is doing something, especially if a very expensive, glossy and glib public relations approach is taken, as was taken with the Priority One scheme. Of course, the Priority One program, like its predecessors, has not been effective, as Senator Vanstone very clearly indicated-she gave the figures-simply because it was not designed to address the basic causes of unemployment which, I repeat, are structural. The Government has also knocked back over the years some very reasonable and progressive Democrats suggestions which would without doubt have helped get the unemployment figures down-perhaps not substantially, but to an extent. One such suggestion was to allow early retirement by perhaps two years whereby the person who retired would be replaced by a person who was at that time unemployed. Since the pension rates are the same, this would cost the community absolutely nothing. This sort of thing is done in a number of European countries. But the Government basically does nothing about things like that. It does not really want to know about anything that would help the situation. As the Opposition says, the Government cynically abuses the unemployment hopes of young Australians. Looking briefly at education, it is distressing to see from the Government's 1986-87 education budget that the Commonwealth's momentum to improve the country's schools has slowed down. There have been cuts to a number of important programs. For instance, the computer education program was scrapped after a life of only three years and there is a lack of growth in others. In the latter instance, the best example is the participation and equity program. This is the program that incorporated special programs of the Fraser Government, such as the school to work transition program, to deal with the problem of young unemployed. PEP has covered both senior secondary education and technical and further education areas. It has helped to build useful bridges between the two sectors, encouraging greater co-operation and development of programs between people in the two sectors for the benefit of those most prone to unemployment. That sort of rundown leads to the situation where in technical and further education colleges-a sector we tend to overlook-35,000 people in New South Wales alone had to be turned away from vocational courses at the start of 1986 because of a lack of places. I think that figure alone is eloquent enough that indeed we say that we want our young people to stay longer in school and we say that we want them to have a better education, but we deny them the opportunity. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT(Senator Bjelke-Petersen) —Order! The honourable senator's time has expired. Senator HILL(South Australia)(5.20) —The Senate is debating the following matter of urgency: The Government's cynical abuse of the employment hopes of young Australians and the need for it to immediately address the abject failure of its education and training policies. There is no more important subject that the Senate could be debating today, and we are indebted to my colleague Senator Vanstone for moving it here this afternoon. If we look at the teenage figures, we see that youth unemployment is running at 23.3 per cent. The latest figures I have, for February of this year, show a staggering 23.3 per cent. A year earlier the figure was 21.1 per cent, so almost one in four of Australia's young people are unemployed. If we compare that with the all-age figure of 8.4 per cent, we see how tremendously disadvantaged the young people are compared with the total community. I might say in passing that the figure for young women in fact slightly exceeds the figure for young men. This picture of one in four young Australians being unemployed is clearly a massive indictment of the Hawke Labor Government and its policies, or the lack of them. If that is not bad enough, the picture gets worse: Since the Government introduced its glossy cover story Priority One: Young Australia trainee scheme with, as honourable senators will remember, a $1.6m publicity campaign of billboards, television adverts, phone-ins, et cetera, youth unemployment has in fact risen 2 per cent. Honourable senators will no doubt remember that during the phone-in to the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) calls were intercepted and vetted by Commonwealth public servants to ensure that the callers were going to make the right comments and that they were going to be supportive of the Prime Minister. Senator Tate —Oh! Senator HILL —That is quite correct, I might say. If the Minister goes back and reads the reports of the Estimates committees of last year he will find out that that is exactly what happened. That phone-in cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. What a disgraceful waste of public money it turned out to be. Not only were the listeners of Australia unable to get a reasonable cross-section of the reactions of young Australians; they received a selection of calls, as I said, vetted by officers of a department. Listeners to this debate today will remember the boast of Priority One: We were to have 10,000 traineeships by mid-1986 and by next year, 1988, there were to be 75,000 new traineeships each year. Where are we up to with that? By the end of January this year there were only 3,600. So seven months past the date on which there were supposed to be 10,000 traineeships, the number has not reached even 4,000. Perhaps the most disappointing figure of all is that, of those 3,600, only 14 per cent were in the private sector. Therefore, there is no hope of this Government getting anywhere near its target. The failure is largely the result of the intransigence of unions and their refusal to negotiate traineeship clauses in awards and, of course, a government lacking in intestinal fortitude to press the matter lest in some way it upsets the special-otherwise known as cosy-relationship between it and the union movement. What do the young people of this country, the market which we are talking about and which was to be reached by this program, think of Priority One? We received a recent and most fascinating insight from the Government's own polling. We learnt that almost half of the young people interviewed cited unemployment as the major and most important issue affecting their lives. So certainly a very high percentage of young Australians recognise the importance of unemployment, and that is not surprising when looking at the figures. But what of Priority One? Forty per cent did not even know it existed. Only 20 per cent thought that it would be of any benefit to them. Only 6 per cent thought that it would do something worth while. Six out of 10 young people believe that their employment prospects are a low priority with the Hawke Government. And, of course, they are quite right. The highest priority of this Hawke Government is its re-election and not the interests of young people. The interests of young people are camouflaged by the glossy literature that was supposed to create an impression of help and assistance for young people, which has not turned out in reality. That disappointment of young people in this Government is now being reflected in recent Morgan gallup polls which show a growing disillusionment of the youth group towards this Labor Government. Support for the Prime Minister among young people has fallen by almost one-quarter in the last two years. As I indicated, I am not surprised, considering that 23.3 per cent of teenagers in this country are presently unemployed-a tragic figure. I am also not surprised that Priority One has been such an abject failure. I can remember a year ago making what I thought were some constructive comments on Priority One. I said that the limited resources available should be limited to disadvantaged youth. Rather than target the money in such an appropriate way, the Government wanted to get the widest possible electoral effect provided to the widest possible cross-section of young Australians. The effect has been that only the smartest, those with initiative and those with parents who have contacts have gained the benefit, at the cost of those who really need help from government. What is so frightening about all of this is that the Government is blind to its failure. If it had come in here today and acknowledged its errors and put into effect substantive changes, it would certainly receive recognition from this side of the House. Rather, we see and hear such comments as that from the Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations, Mr Willis, who on the introduction of the traineeship scheme claimed that the rate of youth joblessness could be halved. As I have said, it has increased by 2 per cent. By making such an extravagant claim he built up a false expectation. The position continues to worsen. Of the February figures, he said: Although youth unemployment increased by 2 percentage points in February, it would be rash to interpret this as a marked deterioration in the youth labour market. It is time that this Government stopped misleading young people and faced up to its failure. The people of Australia are sick and tired of being misled by this Government. In the 48 months that the Australian Labor Party has been in power unemployment has in fact averaged 8.5 per cent, which is 2 points greater than the average under the Fraser Government. Yet the perception is so different. For all but a few months the employment record of this Government has been worse than that of the previous Government. The average duration of unemployment has risen dramatically under Labor, from 29.6 weeks in December 1982 to 45.2 weeks, almost a year, in December 1986. Unemployment is now higher than it was for all but five of the 86 months of the Fraser Government. So the perception that unemployment has improved under Hawke is the product of the taxpayer-funded publicity campaigns to which I referred just a moment ago and is not the product of fact. Those young people between 15 and 24 years of age tragically make up nearly half of the unemployed in this country. That tragedy, of course, apart from the cost to individuals, is the enormous waste of talent to the nation. It is not only the traineeship scheme which has failed so dramatically. Those who aspire to tertiary education are being denied access by this Government. If ever there was a time that the higher education level of this country should be lifted to compete with an ever more sophisticated and technologically competitive world, it must be now. Yet last year, under this Government, 14,000 students who were qualified for courses of their choice at tertiary institutions were denied entry. This year, some 30,000 qualified students have been told that there are no places. As for students most suited to technical education, the position is even worse. Last year, a further 100,000 students were locked out of technical and further education colleges. This year, another six digit figure is anticipated. So Australia's young people cannot get into traineeships, en masse are not getting places in tertiary institutions and are being turned away in droves from TAFE colleges. Could there be a more serious indictment of a government than facts such as those? As I indicated, apart from the tragedy for the individuals concerned, as a nation we simply cannot afford this waste. The fact is, if we do some comparisons, that 19 per cent of the United States work force is qualified to first degree level. Australia does not even come out at half that figure-it is a mere 8 per cent. According to the Economic Planning Advisory Council, the proportion of 16 to 24-year-olds participating in education is half the comparable participation rate in the United States. But it is not only that we are failing vis-a-vis developed nations, we are being overtaken also by developing nations. One has only to spend a short time in such a place as Singapore, around the tertiary institutions, to see what is happening elsewhere. The failure to train young people now will limit their future potential in the work force. We will have to suffer for decades for the neglect of a mere four years of the Hawke Government. Education is an investment that few in the Government appreciate. Higher education is not humanities alone, nor sciences alone. It is the skilling of people to meet future challenges, to come to grips with problems and overcome them. Turning young people away from higher education or merely filling in time by tacking on more of their time at school is absurd. We need to be training our engineers, scientists and technicians to make us a force in manufacturing and in the provision of services. We need to have an economy based on the full range of technological demands from the lowest to the highest. We simply cannot sustain any technological base unless we skill up our people for it. This Govern- ment has failed to meet that responsibility. It is time training subsidies were redirected to disadvantaged youth. It is time that the private sector met its responsibility and it should not require inducements of $1,000 per student. The private sector has a public responsibility to provide training. I invite those on the other side who are interested to look at the West German example. The Government must help by ensuring that trainee wage levels are provided in all Federal awards with a lower commencing salary but with it an obligation to provide training. This is what we will introduce when we get into government. Furthermore, we will encourage the States to do likewise. The Government must address its employment practices. Not enough of Australia's young people are getting a fair go in the Commonwealth Public Service-a fact that has been brought home to us time and time again by Senator Harradine. Too much money goes in short term job creation and employer subsidies. About 70 per cent of the Government's budget in that area goes into short term job creation schemes. Many of the short term job programs offer no significant training. It is a method to provide money for other social and community objectives, but it provides little long term benefit to the young employed. In fact, it rather camouflages the problem. A redirection of significant portions of the budget to university colleges and TAFE colleges so that those young people qualified and wanting training can get it would be worth while. Young people should be given the best schooling available. We should provide them with the best possible post-school education and training. We should ensure an industrial structure that enables them to get a start. If we do that, we are half-way towards getting them a job. The other half which we have not time to deal with today are the macroeconomic circumstances to require employment, lower interest, lower taxes. If the Government concentrated in that area it could fulfil the demand of providing employment opportunities. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT(Senator Colston) —Order! The honourable senator's time has expired. Senator McKIERNAN(Western Australia)(5.35) —The Senate this afternoon is discussing a matter of urgency which was moved by Senator Vanstone. It states: . . . in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency: The Government's cynical abuse of the employment hopes of young Australians and the need for it to immediately address the abject failure of its education and training policies. We have heard contributions from two Opposition senators this afternoon. I agree with Senator Hill: This is a very important, perhaps the most important, matter confronting Australians; that is, employment, training and education of young people. Our Government accepts that it is a priority. That is why we have devoted so many resources to the trilogy that affects youth-employment, training and education. I propose in my contribution to this debate this afternoon to give some examples of what the Hawke Labor Government is doing; also to do some comparisons with the previous Liberal Government, led by the then Prime Minister, Mr Malcolm Fraser, with John Howard, the present Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia, as Treasurer; and also to look at the abysmal mess we inherited on attaining the government benches in March 1983. It is important to look at those things and remember that when this Government attained the treasury bench in 1983 this country was in decline. We had suffered negative growth in the previous year. We had double-digit inflation and double-digit unemployment. Things like that will not be changed overnight and will not be addressed by the piecemeal policies and the stop-start measures that we had when the Liberal Government was in power. It is the role of the Opposition to put forward motions such as this afternoon's. It is its role to nitpick, complain, carp, criticise and pressure government to implement policies that the Opposition thinks are worth while. There is also an even greater pressure on those opposite: They are supposed to put forward alternatives. Unfortunately, this is an area in which the present Opposition is lacking. We are not getting any real alternatives, although I will pay a tribute to the previous speaker, Senator Hill. His was a balanced contribution and I think many elements of it need to be looked at very carefully-they could even be taken up by this administration. But unfortunately Senator Hill's influence in the Liberal Party is not particularly great because of the influence of some other sections at the moment within the Opposition ranks. Of course, the Liberals have other matters on their minds at the moment-not only the leadership question, which is obviously occupying a great deal of time on the Opposition benches, but also what the Liberal's coalition partners, members of the National Party of Australia, are doing and what pressures they are exerting. The Liberals not only have the National Party but also, perhaps, the Joh Party to consider when putting forward constructive ideas to government. I have some sympathies with them in that regard because obviously they are not dealing with particularly rational people. We also find out more of the Opposition's thinking with the leaked strategy document that fell off the back of a truck just over a week ago. It seems that a great section of Liberal Party members are not necessarily engaged in the constructive preparation of policy in preparation for the unlikely event that they were to attain the treasury bench in the near future. They are more occupied with the continuation of the disruption and destruction that occurred on the industrial front while Mr Fraser was Prime Minister of this country. That is perhaps a reflection of another pressure group operating within the Opposition parties at the moment. I refer, of course, to the New Right in the Australian political scene. The New Right is about the destruction of the trade union movement; it is about the destruction of the arbitration system; it is about turning back any of the advances made on the industrial front in the life of this country. It is offering extremist policies, which are being accepted by a small section of the community but which would rival those of nazi Germany, some Eastern bloc countries or indeed some of the South American countries. Unfortunately, not only for the Opposition-the Liberal Party and the National Party-but also for the people of Australia, it is being listened to and is being given a voice. It is given a particularly big voice in one of our national daily newspapers, the Australian, which puts to the fore one of the leading spokespersons, Ms Katharine West, who not only wants to turn workers into serfs but also wants the unemployed youth to work for the dole. That has received some support around the place; but following the support that she received she went one step further in one of her articles, arguing that the unemployed should work for 1c a week. She did not specify 1c a week; but, seeing that we are in Australia, we calculate wages on a weekly basis. Not only does she want them to work for the dole but also she wants the dole money cut out and wants the unemployed working for 1c a week. When she was questioned on this she said: I stand by that, If you pay young people half a wage, that's condemning them to a low self-image. You present them with a challenge and I've found that works. If one loses self-esteem by being paid only half a wage, what does one lose if one is being paid only 1c? I said that it is unfortunate for not only the Opposition parties-the Liberal Party in particular-but the whole of Australia that some people are being influenced by extremists such as Ms West and her fellow travellers because these things can take off and get a momentum of their own, and we could end up in the bad old days of the 1970s and early 1980s when the nation as a whole was suffering because of the industrial disputation that we had. The New Right wants to go even further, and again it is not in a constructive fashion. It wants to extend the working hours of those who are already in employment; it wants to reduce annual leave and annual leave loadings; it wants to reduce penalty rates for those who are already in employment. There is nothing at all constructive; it is rather like what we hear from the Opposition through its publicity released policies and also through the leaked documents that keep falling from those divided and disunited parties sitting opposite us. Let me go to some of the achievements of the Hawke Labor Government in its period of office of 49 months, or almost 50 months-and it will be many, many more because it will get back as there is no alternative to it. The area in which I am particularly interested in terms of training, education and employment is that of apprenticeships. The Hawke Labor Government has a commendable record in this area. The Fraser Administration left office with only 35,000 new apprenticeship intakes in 1982-83. In 1985-86, the Hawke Labor Government had increased the intakes to 51,000-a record for this country and something on which we will build not only to give employment to the youth but also for the future of the nation. Ninety-four thousand young people, or some 9,000 more than in 1985-86, will be assisted in apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeship courses as a result of the expenditure of $122.6m in 1986-87. This represents a substantial increase of some 13.2 per cent over the 1985-86 expenditure in this area. That is just one area that is under debate here, and we have a number of them; so I will move quickly through them. It was argued by Senator Hill that some 23 per cent-plus of the youth of Australia are currently unemployed. Senator Vanstone —That is true. Senator McKIERNAN —We do not deny that 23 per cent of the youth of Australia are looking for full time occupations, but to say that 23 per cent of the young people of this country are unemployed is a misinterpretation of the figures. The people who use that figure forget that many young people in universities and in other places of training are not in the position of looking for jobs; therefore, they are not registered as young unemployed. I will put that in its proper perspective because I do not think I have done justice to it. An unemployed rate for teenagers looking for full time work of 23.3 per cent is often interpreted as meaning that over a fifth of all teenagers are unemployed. This, of course, is not the case. Senator Vanstone —Tell them about the 75,000 more who are looking for work. Senator McKIERNAN —In January 1987 when the unemployment rate was 21.3 per cent-I will repeat that for Senator Vanstone; in January this year when the rate was 21.3 per cent-the proportion of the total teenage population unemployed and looking for full time work was 8.8 per cent. It is not a figure of which we are particularly proud-we would like to see a zero in that column-but it is nowhere near what has been put forward by people on the Opposition benches, which is that 23 per cent or even closer to a quarter of the total number of young people are looking for work. The Opposition, in its leaked document, continues on its destructive path. One of the promises in that leaked document was that a Liberal administration or a coalition government, or whoever leads such a government at the time following the next election should the Opposition be elected, would scrap the community employment program-a program that has created some 20,000 worthwhile community projects across this nation, in all States and Territories, and has created 111,000 jobs. What constructive policies is the Opposition bringing forward, in the cynical exercise of this urgency motion this afternoon, to build on what we have already started? It is planning to scrap the CEP scheme and put an end to those valuable community projects which are of enormous benefit to the individual communities in which they are working. Following the years of maladministration under the Fraser Government, many of these young people had no hope at all of ever getting a job. We have turned things around. We have lived with the difficulties that we inherited, and we have embarked on a job creation program which to date has resulted in the creation of 730,000-odd full time jobs in this country. Senator Vanstone —Why are there 75,000 more people out of work? Senator McKIERNAN —Senator Vanstone must be a bit thick or something. I have explained that question concerning the percentage of teenage unemployment. It is not 23 per cent. Senator Giles will probably pick up that question and deal with it at a wee bit more length. Her accent might help her to get the message through to Senator Vanstone. Secondary education was another matter with which I had intended to deal at some greater length, but unfortunately my speaking time has almost expired. Under Fraser only 36 per cent of the students attending high schools were completing year 12. Already, in four short years, we have turned that situation around, and the figure is now close to 50 per cent. Our ultimate aim is to raise it much higher than that; but again there are some difficulties, not the least of which is the terms of trade which have gone badly against us. Unfortunately, time does not allow me to go into the rest of the material that I had intended to cover, but I am sure that my colleague from Western Australia, Senator Giles, will be able to enlarge on what we have already covered. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT(Senator Colston) —Order! The honourable senator's time has expired. Senator ALSTON(Victoria)(5.50) —The matter before the chamber at present relates to the Government's cynical abuse of the employment hopes of young Australians. To date the Senate has been subjected to a dazzling barrage of statistics and in many ways perhaps one could be forgiven for simply saying that it is difficult to find a common thread. The bottom line is that the Government has spent vast quantities of money. The real return from that investment is almost minimal and it highlights a fundamental defect in the Government's approach to the real and rising levels of unemployment, and that is that it prefers to take the soft option rather than to embark upon real job creation schemes. Of course the problem of unemployment is not an easy one; it is a function of macro- economic policy and bedevils many Western countries. But that is not to say that there are not things that can be done in this country and in many ways the Government has simply dropped the ball. For example, in November 1986, in seasonally adjusted terms, almost seven million people were in employment and close to 500,000 were unemployed, which was 8.3 per cent of the work force. Almost half of those seeking full time work were under the age of 25 years and of those aged 15 to 19, over 40 per cent had been out of work for more than six months. Almost 30 per cent of the unemployed live with dependent children. High youth unemployment remains a major problem and shows no signs of improvement. The November 1986 rate of 21.2 per cent was worse than that for the previous corresponding 12 months. That suggests that whilst there are very real problems confronting the work force it is apparent that despite the large investment of funds the unemployment benefit is about all that most of the young unemployed are able to rely upon. That is because there are not any genuine job creation schemes; no real opportunities are opening up and there are no real educational advantages available to many. That is a function of government policy. Time and again we have heard from the Minister for Education (Senator Ryan) a concession that there are many more qualified students than there are available places in the tertiary education system. Despite that fact the Government is prepared to offer places to overseas students who are prepared to pay virtually the full fee. One cannot have it both ways. One takes the view that either we should not have two classes of citizens-one for whom tertiary education is virtually free and another for whom $12,000 or more is the norm-or we should make education accessible to all those who are wanting it and are prepared to pay for it. But no, that one real option has, in many respects, been virtually closed to some thousands of young Australians. Another problem is that many young Australians live outside capital city areas where unemployment levels are generally much higher than they are in urban regions. At present of the 137,000, 15- to 19-year-olds recorded as unemployed in 1986, 45 per cent live outside State capital cities where unemployment is higher and employment opportunities are correspondingly scarce. One of the great tragedies in the present debate is that the Government does not seem to have learnt from overseas experience. Many countries are prepared to offer meaningful job opportunities and are prepared to expand educational facilities. For instance, in Sweden about 5 per cent of the work force is undergoing retraining at any one time. The level of penalty rates in this country is such that the unions and others joined to ensure that there is very little wage flexibility despite the recognition and acknowledgment by the Australian Council of Trade Unions that flexible wage rates are very desirable. Time and again we find that unions, for their own self-interested purposes, are not prepared to allow youth wage rates to fall; they are not prepared to open up job markets. As we will see shortly, that is one of the major reasons why the Priority One: Young Australia scheme has experienced such great problems. The latest palliative offered by the Government is the community volunteer program which supposedly is designed to place unemployed people in temporary part time community service work so that they can gain some skills and improve their hopes of getting full time jobs. Undoubtedly, it is a response to the Opposition's proposals for work for the dole. The terms of the debate have changed quite dramatically since that concept was first mooted last year. We now have a situation in which the Government is on the defensive and the ACTU is prepared to recognise circumstances in which the dole should not be paid to young people. In October of last year it endorsed a proposal that 15- to 19-year-olds should not receive unemployment benefits unless they are engaged in work training or education. We have come some distance and it is fatuous in the extreme for some people to suggest that this is a form of trade union bashing, that it is a punitive approach to the young of this country or that it is simply a product of New Right ideology. It is none of those things; it is a response to very tough economic times, a recognition of the fact that award rates were put into place at a time in the last century when there was a deal of exploitation of not just the work force but of young people in particular. Since that time very much has changed. Australia is now very much in the international economy; it is very much required to compete and the young of this country have no choice. They are not in a position in which they can choose to work weekends without asking for penalty rates or of not being prepared to work a 40-hour week without expecting to get adult rates or close to them because the trade union movement simply will not have a bar of it. That is a great tragedy; it is a refusal to recognise the fact that employers cannot be expected to take on young people without experience in the work force at high and uncompetitive rates of pay. It simply leads to labour displacement on a large scale. Some State governments, such as the New South Wales Government, are now offering payroll tax concessions or forms of subsidies to try to ameliorate the burden on employers by picking up the tab for workers' compensation and various other add-ons. These situations are all a product of the refusal to take the hard option and that is to allow youth wage rates to be freed up. If that were so we would not need all these various forms of enticements by government. We would simply have a response by those who would much prefer to be in the work force than to join the queues of the unemployed. It is a tragic indictment that the Government has only recently decided to conduct a long term investigation of some 104,000 people who have been in receipt of the unemployment benefit for over six years. Amongst those are very many young people who have been in a similar predicament. I do not suggest that these people are all simply refusing to work. In many instances it is very difficult for them to get work but the situation is in no way aided by a government that refuses to tackle some of the macroeconomic requirements and to free up the labour rates that should be available to encourage those young people to take up serious employment. Wage fixing needs to be more flexible to accommodate differences in experience and skills. We certainly need to eliminate excessive penalty rates for weekend work and in many ways to be prepared to give the young that real option which is currently denied them. The other savage indictment of make-work schemes, which are little more than band-aid, cosmetic proposals, is the Priority One scheme. I think it has already been touched on by several of my colleagues. I will go back to just some of the statistics which demonstrate how much the Government has spent in a futile attempt to camouflage the fact that unemployment is rising despite government outlays. It is now apparent that in 1986-87 only $402m will be spent on labour market programs, the lowest amount of the four Hawke Budgets and $143.4m less than in 1984-85. Whilst spending on traineeships is up, young people will be hard hit by the $103.6m cutback in the community employment program. That is a 35.6 per cent reduction in real terms. What all that demonstrates is that, despite a very significant outlay of Commonwealth funds, very little progress has been made. For instance, the community employment program has already cost in excess of $1 billion, and the Government is still proposing to spend something of the order of $300m on it in the current financial year. That money could be much better spent in all sorts of areas. It could certainly be spent on subsidising employers, if necessary. But to provide it for short term work that will simply result in people going back on to the dole queues at the end of their period of make-work is a very cruel hoax on those young people. The Priority One scheme which was launched in August 1985 with much fanfare has proved to be an abject failure. The traineeship program was supposed to provide financial incentives to employers to take on young workers. We heard a great deal about all that would flow from this. The Prime Minister (Mr Hawke), for instance, in announcing the program, promised 10,000 positions by the middle of 1986 and 75,000 positions by the start of the bicentennial year. As at December of last year only a little over 5,000 traineeship positions had been arranged with employers and unions, of which 3,417 positions had been actually filled. One of the critical factors is that, even of the arranged positions, nearly 70 per cent were in the public sector. It is therefore clear that this scheme has been a gigantic flop. It does not offer any real attractions to employers, it has been an expensive public relations exercise and it has really brought criticism from all sections of the work force. The trade union movement has been to the fore in its lack of support, but that has been, unfortunately, for less than heroic motives. For instance, the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association has been demanding that any trainees be employed full time and be paid full junior wages. The Government has finally talked in terms of 75 per cent, but that has not been sufficient to appease the Federated Clerks Union of Australia, the Australian Public Service Association, the New South Wales Labor Council, and indeed many other members of the ACTU Executive. That is a very sad state of affairs, because it means that they are prepared to sabotage a scheme which in many ways one could say was doomed from the outset, but they have not been prepared to provide any significant assistance. So the end result is that the Priority One scheme languishes along with most of the other make-work schemes. The spending on the program, including the phone-in, since the 1985-86 Budget has been of the order of $2.13m. The cost of the phone-in alone was over $1m-25,931 phone calls. One does not have to be terribly smart to realise the purpose of that little exercise. It was meant to generate a warm inner glow, but in fact I do not think it has fooled anyone. It has simply been a very costly and unproductive public relations exercise. It is another example of the Prime Minister and the Government being prepared to take the easy option and refusing to face up to some of the real requirements that are needed if we are to tackle the problem of unemployment in a significant manner. There are a number of disincentive factors around at present. We know that the private sector is reluctant to spend money on fixed private capital investment, which is very much needed. The reasons for that are clearly very much related to the high levels of interest rates, the high level of public sector expenditure which has that crowding out effect, the high levels of foreign debt, the current account deficit, and all of those other international and domestic factors which make it a very unpropitious climate for real investment. In the face of all that, the Government has effectively thrown in the towel and has been prepared to spend very large quantities of money on effectively Mickey Mouse schemes. I think it is unfortunate that the Prime Minister has not had the courage of his convictions. I think he, in his heart, understands the real requirements, but unfortunately he has not been prepared to tackle the unions on these questions and he has therefore been prepared simply to go along with very lukewarm palliatives. Retention rates in this country lag significantly behind many of those of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, so the end result is that the youth of this country have no significant real employment training opportunities. They are not encouraged by way of curricula, even with the amendments to the Austudy scheme, with significant economic incentives to remain at school, and therefore we have the worst of all worlds. We have an economy that is in decline, we have a work force that does not have incentives provided to it and we have youth who will become even more marginalised and despondent as a result of the abject failure of the Government to address this issue. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —Order! The honourable senator's time has expired. Senator GILES(Western Australia)(6.05) —This matter of urgency, which seeks to prove that the Hawke Government has been insensitive to and neglectful of its responsibilities to young people in relation to education, training and employment, has been put to us, quite forcefully and feelingly, in the first instance by Senator Vanstone. Unfortunately, much of what she said was predicated on a misunderstanding of commonly used statistics and some rather out-of-date information. I did not want to spend my precious time this afternoon giving her an update on how to read these fairly simple tables, but I suggest that the confusion in her mind arises from the fact that she fails to understand the significance of a participation rate. If Senator Vanstone were to look at this year's Department of Employment and Industrial Relations annual report, she would find on page 128 a very clear indication of what I mean. There we have the participation rates and unemployment rates for the last two years. It gives figures for all the age groups so one can obtain a really interesting view of what exactly is happening in the work force in relation to increasing participation rates and falling unemployment rates. If, as Senator Vanstone said, there are some thousands more unemployed young people in the 15- to 24-year-old age group than there were 12 or 18 months ago, the reason for that is a considerably increased number of young people within that cohort, or that particular age group, reflecting, I believe, a baby bulge in the mid and late 1960s. What is significant here is, as I said before, that the participation rate has been rising for all age groups and the unemployment rate has been falling. That is a result of our concern not just for young people but for every member of the Australian work force who wishes to be employed. Senator Vanstone —That is not right. The rate has not fallen since Priority One. Senator GILES —It certainly has. Total teenage employment, non-seasonally adjusted, rose by 25,700 over the year to January 1987. Part time employment rose by 34,900. We have been advised by various helpful people today to look at other countries and to model our education and training programs upon what we see there. Taking Japan as a model is not particularly useful. For a start, Japan has a very much higher retention rate in higher education than Australia has had or is likely to have for some time. Very many of the people in the Japanese work force are not counted as employed or unemployed, and that refers especially to women workers in Japan-outworkers, casual workers and unorganised workers. So I would be very careful before I started using Japanese unemployment figures or their methods of maintaining employment as a model for Australia. Sweden and West Germany are far more useful as models, but I remind the Senate that both those countries have had some years of democratic socialist government, as against the position in Australia where we have had a complete generation of conservative government, followed by a short period in which we did our best to raise retention rates, and then the seven years of effective stalling of those initiatives during the time of the Fraser Government. What we have been able to achieve in the four short years since we came into government has been in many cases quite miraculous. My colleagues have recounted those achievements on a number of occasions during this debate. What can we expect from a change of government? What are we being promised by these people who are so critical of our achievements? While I think of it, I point out to Senator Vanstone that the figures she was citing, as I said, were very much out of date. As at 25 March, almost 9,000 traineeships had been created. She made the very clear distinction, and so do I, that over 5,700 trainees have been recruited and that 30 per cent of that number are in the private sector. In 85 cases, industrial agreements have been concluded, and over 1,300 private sector employers have been involved. I was extremely grateful to Senator Alston for giving us the actual cost of promoting this scheme so far. He cited the figure of $2.13m. In view of the fact that we have created almost 9,000 traineeship positions, that works out at a cost of exactly $270 per position, which seems to me a very small amount for an extremely valuable program. We were told earlier that confessions were not wanted and that remorse, I suppose, was what was called for. I am not the slightest bit remorseful. It would have been good if at this stage there were twice the number of traineeships operating. But we are now putting in place a new vocational training system which developed as a result of our examination of extremely progressive schemes in Sweden and West Germany. There is bound to be some dysfunction, having regard to traditional systems. Of course, it will take a considerable amount of time to work out what will be needed in extra training facilities in the technical and further education system, another system which was appallingly neglected during the time of the Fraser Government. Senator Vanstone —Why did you make the big promises? Senator GILES —I am extremely sorry if the expectations of some people, including Senator Vanstone, were unreasonably aroused, but I point out that this new system has been working in tandem with an extremely improved record as far as apprenticeships are concerned. This was touched on previously and one must see it in context. At the same time there have been vastly increased numbers of young people completing five years of high school and going on to tertiary education. Senator Vanstone —That is right. That is why they are not on the unemployment list. Senator GILES —That is exactly the point that I think Senator Vanstone should understand. I am quite happy that she made that point because it reminds me of the other point that she seems to fail to understand. In January 1987, when the unemployment rate was 21.3 per cent, the proportion of the teenage population unemployed and looking for full time work was 8.8 per cent. In other words, 91.2 per cent of the population in that age group either was involved in full or part time education or was not looking for employment for some other reason. Possibly that accounts for the confusion in Senator Vanstone's mind. The figure for young unemployed people in that age group is not one in four or one in five; it is less than one in 10. It is far too many, as my colleague Senator McKiernan said earlier. It is a matter that has been of considerable importance to us. Let me go back to what we could expect if there was a change of government. The wonderful document that fell off a truck indicates that the Liberals are at least considering-I put it no stronger than that-the tightening of the unemployment benefit to the 15- to 18-year-old group. This is suggested by the party that is so sensitive to the needs of this age group. It will abolish bulk billing in our Medicare system. That will be a great deal of help to young people who are on the breadline! There is talk of compulsory work for the dole. This will cost $700m, which is twice the amount that would be saved in this wonderful plan by scrapping the community employment program. The community employment program has been one of the most successful schemes introduced by the Hawke Government. Jobstart also has a proud record. Twenty thousand projects and 110,000 jobs have been created. Out of those young people-and older ones, of course-who have been employed, 60 per cent go on to other work within six months of being involved in those projects. The mere thought of abolishing the community employment program and throwing out that large group of young people who have been able to get some encouragement to enter the work force is almost as unthinkable as abolishing the participation and equity program, which I believe is also scheduled for the chop under what Senator Vanstone's Party is planning to do to young people. The participation and equity program has been extremely valuable in encouraging young people to complete a longer period of education and to get the best possible education. There is now a 50 per cent retention rate of young people in secondary schools. Not so long ago, at the end of the period of the Fraser Government, this figure was about 36 per cent. Fifty-four thousand more young people are staying on to complete secondary schooling so that they have a real possibility of finding a vocation, not just a job, not just working at a checkout, pushing buttons on a machine, pushing a broom or digging holes. We have a goal and a vision of 65 per cent of young people staying on to complete their secondary education by 1990. Given half a chance, we will do it. We have nothing to apologise for in our schemes for young people. Senator Vanstone —Yes, you do. You callously raised hopes. Senator GILES —We certainly have not. The way in which figures have been misread, misinterpreted and misquoted this afternoon leads to an assumption of malice at the worst, hypocrisy at the best, by the Liberal Party in putting forward this matter of urgency. I must say that I am very disappointed that the Australian Democrats would choose to be misled in this way. I believe that amongst the Democrats there are people who can at least read statistics, who at least know a little about demography, and who at least realise that in the last four years there have been quite remarkable changes as a result of deliberate efforts by this Government to improve the situation. What about the Liberal Party's new-found concern for young people? I refer to the matters that were raised during Question Time today, and all the emphasis that would be given by the Liberal Party to equality for women. Of course, we have no reason to believe that this would be the case. The cuts that were being considered in the strange document that is floating around would certainly have ill effects on women and their employment. Of the 760,000 new jobs that have been created since the Hawke Government came to power in 1983, 60 per cent have been filled by women. That has not happened accidentally. It has happened as part of a very deliberate policy, and has not been easy. We have had to re-educate a whole generation of bureaucrats and a whole community. We have been extremely concerned, for example, about the education of Aboriginals, and there are important initiatives in that respect. The Liberal Party's document tell us that the Department of Aboriginal Affairs would be abolished. DAA and other departments have done good work in the last three or four years, including a valuable report called `Women's Business'. This investigated the problems of young Aboriginal women and advocated a number of measures that have already been put in place to assist them in their chances in life by helping them to stay on to secondary education level, progressing to tertiary education level, and helping them into the work force by one means or another. There is no doubt whatsoever that this Government has no reason to be ashamed of the measures and initiatives taken during the four years that we have been in government. There is no doubt in my mind or in the minds of fair-minded citizens that we have a great deal to be pleased about. There is still much more to be done, but I believe that we are on the right track. Our programs have been positive and constructive and they look to the future. That is something we have never been able to see in any of the policies put forward by the Opposition either in this House or in the House of Representatives. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —Order! The honourable senator's time has expired. Senator SIDDONS(Victoria)(6.20) —We are debating Senator Vanstone's matter of urgency relating to abuse of the employment hopes of young people, as indeed we should be debating that matter. Let us look at the facts. Some 8.4 per cent is the average unemployment rate in our society; 23.3 per cent is the unemployment rate for young people. So it is very clear that it is the young in our society who are carrying the can for the Government's mismanagement of the economy. Youth unemployment should not be allowed to continue for one day. If we look at the sad history, we see that youth unemployment has been at a very high rate for the last five years. The facts are that the Government could eliminate youth unemployment tomorrow if it wanted to do so, and if it really cared. How? In any caring society the first thing a government should address is sharing the available work. Very easily, the Government could offer at least one day's fulltime work for all unemployed young people in our society. How? Simply by directing or encouraging business and the Public Service to make one work station available to be used on a roster basis to employ five young people on one day a week, instead of one person for five days a week. It is as simple as that. Is this any great hardship on the Public Service or on industry? Not at all. All that is required is one caring supervisor, a supervisor with a social conscience, who is prepared to say: `I will do my normal job and, at the same time, I am prepared to train these five young people in a permanent work situation'. `Permanent' is the operative word. What is important about a permanent work situation if it is for only one day a week? The answer is that it gives young people work experience; it gives them the opportunity to find full time work. They can tell an employer that they have work experience and that they are employed. It gives them the discipline of being able to organise their time around the permanent position, which will not disappear in one, two or three months time. It also gives young people the very important opportunity to discover their ability. If they are employed one day a week on a permanent basis by a supervisor who supervises their work with compassion, that supervisor will put various jobs in the organisation in their way until the young people concerned find that it suits their capabilities. All this is very simple and straightforward. It involves operating a work station on a roster basis to employ five people instead of one. This is not new. It is used with the utmost ease and at virtually no expense in the company of which I am Chairman and in other companies I could name. All the Government has to do is to encourage industry to take such a step. There is no problem with the unions. One honourable senator who contributed to the debate said that the unions are to blame because they are more interested in employed people than in the unemployed. That is not so. In my company's case we discussed permanent part time work with the metal workers, a union that is not normally considered to be all that receptive to innovative ideas. That union had no complaint at all about making a work station available to be worked on a roster basis in lieu of making it available to a permanent full time position. There is an outline of a Bill before the Senate that lays down exactly how permanent part time work could be arranged. What is at stake is offering work to all the unemployed young people in our society. We should do it now. We should not sit back and say, as Senator Giles did, that the economy is picking up and that things will be right in the future. Young people need permanent work right now. I was amazed that when I advertised for a research officer a little while ago I had 200 applicants. Most had very good university degrees and many had been unemployed for six months or more. What attitude will those young people have to society? They go through the training, succeed in getting good degrees, but cannot find work. It is an attitude that will have a disastrous effect and the Government should address this issue in a practical way, if it has the will and the energy to do so. I would like to speak at greater length on this matter, but I see that my time for debate is limited. I close with a plea to every unemployed young person. Let them write to the Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations, Mr Willis, demanding that they be given at least one day's work a week. It is within the Government's capability to apply it now, immediately, without any delay. If the unemployed in the community take it into their own hands to put pressure on the Government, I am sure that the Government will act once it realises that it has to act or it will lose office. Question resolved in the affirmative. Sitting suspended from 6.26 to 8 p.m. Senator SHORT(Victoria)(8.00) —I move: That the Senate take note of the paper. This report is now somewhat dated. It was signed on 15 October 1986-almost half a year ago. Since then the Human Rights Commission has been greatly revamped, its roles have been expanded and its name has been changed to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. I should point out that the present Commission is living on borrowed time as the Liberal and National parties have already announced that when they become the new government after winning the next election-whenever that may be held-we will abolish the Commission. Nevertheless, a few comments should be made about the Human Rights Commission's 1985-86 report. In the parliamentary debates last year on the Hawke Government's iniquitous, highly dangerous proposal for an Australian Bill of Rights, many Opposition speakers, including me, drew attention to the bias contained in the material in `Teaching for human rights: activities for schools' which was prepared for the Commission by Dr Ralph Pitman and which was made available to schools in 1984 on the basis of paying the teachers involved what virtually amounted to a bribe to use the material-$500 for one term's use and $1,000 for two terms. There were two main criticisms made of the material in that kit. The first was of the description of capitalism as being: . . . predicated upon dishonesty and greed . . . has slaughtered uncounted millions the world over through the exploitation and misdevelopment of global resources. The US and other erstwhile `free market' democracies have much to answer for in this regard. That is what Dr Pitman said in that teaching kit. I am pleased to note from the Commission's annual report that this scurrilous, Marxist communist propaganda has now been deleted from the revision of the text following the strongest possible objection from Opposition members. However, the revision does not answer the initial point of our criticism and that is: How on earth did the material come to be included in the first place? The second part of the `Teaching for human rights' material to which many of us objected was a description under a section entitled `The Family' as having: . . . a highly stratified class structure and a value system that is secular, racist, sexist and materialistic. The material asserts that the Australian family reflects and promotes this fact. I and many other senators believe that this is a biased and totally distorted view of the Australian family and our family values. I regret that it appears from the Commission's report that this passage has not been deleted from the revised material although the actual situation is not entirely definite. If this offensive passage has not been deleted I trust that the new Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission will take immediate steps to rectify it. I wish to comment very briefly on the Commission's community education grants program. In 1985-86, 25 grants were made under this program. Although most of these were relatively small-the largest being $5,000-there is a very important point of principle here. The grants were for a wide range of projects, from theatre productions to workshops to so-called education kits to services directories. I do not believe that the Human Rights Commission or its successor should be in a position to undertake such grant programs. These programs would be much better placed under the control and administration of specific government departments and Ministers so that hopefully more assessment could be made of their worth. Finally, I welcome the announcement by the President of the new Commission, Mr Justice Marcus Einfeld, that the great Russian human rights crusader Andrei Sakharov and his wife Yelena Bonner have accepted the Commission's invitation to visit Australia later this year. It is to be hoped that the Soviet authorities will allow the Sakharovs to travel. However, I regret that the Press report that announced the matter in Australia also quoted Justice Einfeld as discussing human rights deficiencies in Australia. It would be as regrettable as it is absurd if there were any suggestion that Australia's human rights record-one of the best in the world-was in any way to be considered in the same light as the appalling record of the Soviets. Senator COONEY(Victoria)(8.05) —The comments made by Senator Short perhaps indicate the effectiveness of the Human Rights Commission over the years. It was set up by the Fraser coalition Government in 1981 and it existed until December 1986 when legislation was brought in to end it. It has now been replaced by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. The significant point about Senator Short's remark was that over that period he was able to detect only two or three points of criticism. It stands in the Commission's stead that so little criticism can be made of it over that five-year period. Senator Michael Baume —I have some more to come. Senator COONEY —Senator Michael Baume has a lot more criticisms to come. It is easy enough to criticise the mistakes of any institution. It has even been suggested in these hallowed halls that parliamentarians can make mistakes, that judges can make mistakes or that teachers can make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. Therefore, it is easy to criticise a particular body by picking out some negative aspects of its behaviour and suggesting that these represent the lot. If one looks at the highlights of 1985-86 in this report one can see what the Commission has done. It says that it has had an increasing number of complaints under the Sex Discrimination Act, two-thirds of which related to employment. What is wrong with a body which purports to and in fact does eliminate discrimination in employment? If people are discriminated against on the basis of colour, education or sex and if there is a body to address that, what is wrong with that? Surely in a society which purports to give everybody equal opportunities and which allows people to make the best possible use of their talents, is it not proper that they be given every opportunity to develop those talents as best they can? There is evidence of prejudice in society. I have here some anecdotal, but significant evidence taken by Annette Rubinstein of the Western Regional Health Centre in June 1983 about the results of workers' compensation claims made. She found that 6.8 per cent of the claims made by Australian and United Kingdom born men were rejected. This compared with a rejection rate of 17.6 per cent for claims made by Australian and United Kingdom born women. The rejection rate for the women was more than double, in fact it was almost treble that of the men. The claims of migrant men showed a 19.7 per cent rejection rate, compared with 35.4 per cent for those of migrant women. Those figures were not taken over a wide base, but nevertheless they were the results obtained in this survey and this evidence raises a question about the way in which women-and migrant women particularly-are treated. If we, as a society, stand around and say that nothing should be done about such things, that any attempt to rectify this should be rejected, we should consider just exactly what we are doing to our society. I invite Senator Michael Baume and whoever speaks on the other side on this matter to suggest what they would do to stop that sort of thing happening, what they will do to bring some sort of equality so that people of equal merit will be treated equally in society. If that cannot be done, I suggest that it ill becomes people to criticise an organisation and a body which attempts to do what nobody else attempts to do. I gather from what Senator Short says he will do that the Opposition will absolutely reject any attempt to bring fairness and equity into the work place and into this society. Senator VIGOR(South Australia)(8.10) —Both the Human Rights Commission and its successor, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission which took its place on 10 December last year, have dealt with complaints made to them under the Racial Discrimination Act and the Sex Discrimination Act. Both have had the power to examine whether the Acts or practices of the Commonwealth and its statutory authorities are in keeping with international covenants or declarations. These particular declarations include the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Some major human rights problems have been brought to the Human Rights Commission and its successor. In fact, the report indicates that to December 1985 there had been 9,882 complaints from aggrieved people. The Human Rights Commission and its successor have had a conciliation and educational role. Sometimes it has been difficult to mediate and sometimes, as was shown in the recent Queensland sexual harassment case, the adjudication of the Human Rights Commission has not been accepted. The annual report before us says that there have been 27 complaints about the rights of children who were born in Australia and, hence, were previously Australian citizens, but whose parents were prohibited non-citizens liable to deportation. The Human Rights Commission pointed out that 10 families in this category have been deported or have left Australia under threat of deportation despite the Commission's intervention. The Commission refers to its report to the Attorney-General (Mr Lionel Bowen) on the complaints of the Yilmaz family which fell into this category. It says that the insistence upon parents leaving Australia meant that in practice the children had to go and their human rights were being denied. I believe that this is an extremely important matter. If the Australian Democrats have anything to say about it, we will not support Senator Short and his coterie in destroying this particular bastion against human rights abuse and so they will be answerable to the Senate. The Commission says in its report that it would be preferable to change the rule that birth in Australia constitutes citizenship under which situation those children could have appealed. I commend the Government because it in fact did this last June. I believe that it is very important for governments to uphold human rights obligations which they have entered into. Whenever we fail to respect a human rights obligation, we lose the moral force that is needed when we call for the observation of human rights elsewhere in the world. One blatant example of this that has been drawn to the attention of the Human Rights Commission is the Government's failure to give the people of the Australian Capital Territory some say in the decisions which affect their daily lives. The Government still has not brought on its Australian Capital Territory self-government legislation for debate in the Senate. Last week Mr Scholes announced that the sham appointed advisory council proposal was being dropped. This leaves the Department of Territories and the National Capital Development Commission with supervision only at the level of Federal government. I remind the Senate that the Human Rights Commission did not have the time nor the resources to conduct a full scale inquiry into the absence of representative decision making in the Australian Capital Territory. However, Dame Roma Mitchell wrote to the Minister for Territories and said: It seems appropriate that in the Australian Capital Territory-for which the Federal Government is directly responsible-everything should be done to avoid the suggestion that, by abolishing the single existing form of representative government below the national level, Australia is acting inconsistently with its human rights objectives. I believe that the Government should take note of its own organisations. These words still remain unheeded by the Government, which refuses to bring on self-government legislation for debate in this place. I believe there is a duty to allow the merit of the NCDC planning changes to be tested in the public interest, especially as the people of Canberra are being denied a local voice and a way of electing people who can speak for them and represent them individually rather than having to rely on honourable senators and Federal members who are very busy. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —Order! the honourable senator's time has expired. Senator MICHAEL BAUME(New South Wales)(8.15) —Much as I have a high regard for Senator Barney Cooney, may I say that good intentions are not in themselves sufficient justification for inanity. Here we have the most inane governmental body that could possibly exist doing the most ludicrous things with our money-with taxpayers' money. I refer in particular to the disgusting tokenism involving the grants listed in appendix XI of the 1985-86 annual report of the Human Rights Commission. Those grants total $50,000 out of a budget of $5m. Although this sum is totally inconsequential, the Human Rights Commission regards it as significantly important to make much of in its annual report. None of these grants are effectively necessary, at least as far as this Commission is concerned. However, many of the grants could well have been made by other bodies had those bodies chosen to make them. I do not know whether human rights in Australia would be destroyed forever if in fact the `completion of a co-operatively designed and executed community mural on a large wall in Redfern', costing $3,000, had not in fact been financed by the Human Rights Commission for a group called the Public Art Squad of New South Wales. I do not know why it was absolutely necessary that `a program to prevent child assault by training children to recognise and deal with potentially dangerous situations; also to prepare teachers and parents to detect and care for children who are victims of sexual assault'-a very important issue; a major issue-was properly entrusted to the Geelong Rape Crisis Centre. The Human Rights Commission gave this body $3,000 to carry out this task. Why on earth should that body give any evidence whatsoever of the incredibly delicate skills required to teach children these matters when obviously the area of expertise of the Geelong Rape Crisis Centre is unlikely to extend to educating young children? One can look through other grants. Why on earth should money be given to the Unemployed People's Embassy through this organisation for the publication of a newsletter of interest to unemployed persons? If in fact unemployed persons need a newsletter of interest to them, do they need the Human Rights Commission to finance it? Surely there are other bodies among the enormous number of governmental bodies handing out taxpayers' money that could do this even more effectively and, unfortunately, in larger amounts than the Human Rights Commission. Another grant involves the publication of a newspaper of interest to Aboriginal persons. I refer to a grant of $2,000 to the Koorie Information Centre in Victoria. I thought there was a Department of Aboriginal Affairs which was concerned with this very issue. I thought it was the expert in this area. Instead of that, we have the Human Rights Commission buying into that area. So the list goes on and on. We have the most incredible situation where the Human Rights Commission, since replaced by a body with which the Government has attempted to expand its activities, has imposed the most incredible bureaucratic nonsense on the most everyday of activities. At page 60 of its annual report, the Commission states: In the case of the Sex Discrimination Act, an interested party may seek from the Commission a temporary exemption from the provisions of the Act. During 1985-86 the following five exemptions were granted: In other words, one can discriminate sexually if one has approval. The report gives the following very important exemption: to permit separate events to be held for boys and girls at the swimming carnival/exchange in Adelaide on 28 April-May 1986 arranged by the Australian Sports Council and the Australian Primary Schools Sports Association on behalf of the South Australian Primary Schools Amateur Sports Association. We have to get bureaucratic approval for this kind of nonsensical situation-to have segregated boys and girls events at a school swimming carnival. This is the nonsense that is costing Australian taxpayers $5m per year. This is the nonsense that this Government wants to expand, to increase. It wants to give more powers to interfere in the lives of ordinary Australians to interfere, in the rights of kids at swimming pools with segregated events. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —Order! The honourable senator's time has expired. Senator WALTERS(Tasmania)(8.20) —Senator Michael Baume has just spoken about one of the areas that I was going to speak about. The last time I spoke on that, Senator Evans said that he would inquire and let us know what amendments the Government would make to overcome the problems that we had expressed. He has not come up with any and he is shaking his head now. He obviously has no intention of doing that, and I think this is an incredible situation. The Government still intends to force these young under-12-year-old girls to compete against boys and indeed to discriminate very clearly against the girls in this regard. The Human Rights Commission, in its annual report which we have before us this evening, has taken up an area that we were very concerned about; that is, education in the human rights area. I have spoken on this before and at that time I indicated that there was in the Parliament concern that young children should be discriminated against when they first went to school in that teachers are told that they must get rid of the children's stereotypes of their parents' teaching. I quote the following passage from the teachings of the Human Rights Commission when it gives advice to teachers on the setting up of the classroom: In the first few weeks of the school year the teacher can challenge some of the learned behaviours that do not seem to encourage children's rights and by careful selection expose children to a wide and varied range of positive thinking about themselves and others. That all sounds good, and it goes on: Children come to school with some fairly set ideas. A lot of these are sex role stereotypes. A lot of work has been done and has got to be done with non-sexist education with the class to begin the human rights integrated approach. This should be done in the first four weeks of the school year. The particular grade in mind for the unit of work in this approach is first grade but mood of the ideas should be used with kindergarten. So the Human Rights Commission supports the getting rid, in the first four weeks of the school year, of the stereotype roles that those tiny children bring to school from home. It goes on: The teacher can make rules, for example, no one plays with the cars unless there are equal boys and girls playing with the cars in the kindergarten corner or the paper dolls don't go out unless one boy at least is in the group. The girls cannot play with the paper dolls unless one boy in the group is prepared to play with them with the little girls. I have spoken about this previously and, because we have shown that concern, the Human Rights Commission in this report tends to take us to task. It says that concern was shown in the Parliament in some of these areas; that Mr Ralph Petman had won acclaim overseas; that the United Nations had asked him to go ahead and write a report; and that this was the first time any country had been asked to do such a report. I believe this is wrong. I do not care what the Human Rights Commission thinks of the rights or wrongs of brainwashing little children in their first four weeks of school into believing everything that they were taught at home, everything that their parents taught them, is wrong. I am not particularly concerned with what the Human Rights Commission believes on that. It says that, because Mr Ralph Petman was invited by the United Nations to promote human rights teaching in this way, everything in the garden must be rosy. Everything is far from rosy. The parents of Australia do not concur with the Human Rights Commission and it is time that it decided to find out what the people of Australia want it to do rather than follow its own high-blown ideas about it. Senator PETER BAUME(New South Wales)(8.25) —The Human Rights Commission has ceased to exist and in its place there is now a Human Rights and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Part of its function is to give the administrative background to enforcing the provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act and the Racial Discrimination Act. Some honourable senators may have heard His Honour Marcus Einfeld speaking on radio the other night when he made the observation that he wished to convince Mr John Howard, my Leader, that the Human Rights and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission should not be disbanded and that it should continue. He went further and said that if he could not convince him that it should continue he reckoned he would not be worthy of his job. Mr Marcus Einfeld, as honourable senators know, is not of my political persuasion but he is an eminent lawyer and a member of a family famous in Sydney for its contribution to public life, and I would hope that my Leader will take up his offer, will meet with Mr Einfeld and will let him put forward the reasons why he thinks the Commission should continue. There is always a temptation, if one criticises a body and if one has valid grounds for criticism, as some of my colleagues have had, to move from there to decide that therefore there is some reason why the body should not exist. I would like to make it quite clear that I also have had some problems with some of the processes which were followed by the Human Rights Commission while it was in existence. I had complaints from some of my constituents; for instance, one constituent in the Illawarra thinks that she was not given a fair go. I have had complaints myself, when concerns which I expressed about the situation facing a white minority living in Eveleigh Street, Redfern, were not addressed properly by the old Commission. Certainly I have had complaints. Certainly there were complaints about some of the educational material, and certainly they should be addressed. But the approach proposed by some people-that because of these failings of detail or process the whole function should be junked-is foolish and dangerous and is simply wrong in logic. There is no logically sound reason why the functions which this Commission is there to serve should be put aside. It is not in the interests of the Australian community that it should happen. Should the matter come up I would want to argue in my Party room-with my new-found freedom-that this should be the case. It is not enough to suggest that the Commission should be junked or discarded. I ask honourable senators: If that were done, how would we enforce the provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act, the aims of which I would hope all Australians would support? How would we enforce the provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act? Those of my colleagues who may wish to say `get rid of the Commission' had better tell us how they want to provide for the needs of people who have complaints to be met under each of those Acts. I have never believed or argued that the previous Commission was perfect. I had very grave reservations about some of its processes and some of the things that it did. I had reservations about the competence or the performance of some of those who served in it. My first approach would be to sack them and to replace them with people who do the job better. I am never against judging people on their performance, but there is absolutely no logic in arguing that our experience either with the Human Rights Commission or with the Human Rights and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission gives us any grounds for recommending that they be junked and that the function be put aside. It simply is not logical and it will not do for this country. Debate interrupted. Senator SHEIL(Queensland) —I move: That the Senate take note of the paper. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. Senator SHEIL(Queensland) —I move: That the Senate take note of the paper. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. Senator SHEIL(Queensland) —I move: That the Senate take note of the paper. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT(Senator Bjelke-Petersen) —Order! The time allowed for the consideration of papers has now expired. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT(Senator Bjelke-Petersen) —On behalf of the President I present the fifth report of the Standing Orders Committee for the sixty-second session. Ordered that the report be printed. Senator HAMER(Victoria) —by leave-I table the report of the delegation to the European parliamentary institutions and to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1986 and seek leave to make a brief statement in relation to the report. Leave granted. Senator HAMER —In September 1986, a delegation of both Houses of the Australian Parliament visited Strasbourg to attend the autumn sittings of the European Parliament and the Parliament Assembly of the Council of Europe. The delegation also made an official visit to the Federal Republic of Germany and visited Brussels to confer with officials of the European Commission and the Council of Ministers of the European Community. Whilst in Brussels the delegation also visited the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The report tabled today records the official activities of the delegation and makes recommendations and suggestions which should be useful for future delegations. The delegation's visit to the Federal Republic of Germany was the first made by an Australian parliamentary delegation for many years. An excellent program was arranged for the visit by our hosts in liaison with the Australian Embassy in Bonn. In the ten days of the visit the delegation travelled widely and saw a great deal of the Federal Republic of Germany, from Keil and Bremen in the north, to Stuttgart and Baden Baden in the south. The delegation's itinerary included meetings with Federal parliamentarians in Bonn and visits to four of the Republic's State parliaments. The delegation also visited the HDW shipyards in Keil. It is one of the contenders for the Australian submarines contract. An official visit was also made to Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm in Bavaria, a company involved in the manufacture of high technology products. The delegation valued the opportunity to meet with many leading Federal and State parliamentarians from a sister democracy. Special mention should be made of the delegation's meetings with Dr Philipp Jenninger, the President of the Bundestag, and with the deputy presiding officers of four State parliaments. The delegation's report includes details of the many discussions held with European and West German politicians and officials. Agricultural issues inevitably dominated many of the discussions held with our European counterparts and with officials of the institutions of the Community. Nevertheless, other important topical issues were also discussed. These included nuclear power, terrorism, the South African situation, the world economy and youth unemployment. Details of these discussions may be found in the report. An issue which assumed major importance during the 1985 delegation's visit to Strasbourg was the culling of kangaroos. This issue was not emphasised and as far as I can remember it was not mentioned during the 1986 visit. The delegation's discussions on agricultural trade and the European common agricultural policy indicated that European politicians and officials are aware of the adverse consequences of the CAP. The great majority consider that there is a need for reform. There were, however, no grounds for optimism that reform would be achieved quickly. On the many other issues discussed with our European counterparts, there was a considerable amount of agreement. There was, for example, some indication of prospects for increased trade and closer economic relations between Europe and Australia. The delegation wishes to thank our hosts in the Federal Republic of Germany. Particular thanks are due to Dr Jenninger, President of the Bundestag, and the protocol staff of the Bundestag, in particular Mr Walter Von Den Driesch who accompanied us throughout our visit to Germany, joined in all our activities, and towards the end of the trip was developing a slight but pleasing Australian accent. The delegation also thanks the staff of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, which so ably assisted the delegation during its visit to Strasbourg and Brussels. The delegation also wishes to thank representatives of the Australian Government in Brussels and Bonn for their organisation and briefings. On behalf of the delegation I also express our appreciation to the parliamentary relations office for its efficient organisation, and to officers of the Parliamentary Library for their comprehensive briefing papers. I should also like to thank the Secretary to the delegation, Mr Terry Brown, for all his unobtrusive hard work. Finally, I express my personal thanks to the leader of the delegation, Mr Ross Free, who handled the visit with experience, patience and fairness, and to all the other members: Mr Alan Griffiths, Mr Bob Halverson, Mrs Ros Kelly, Mr Roger Shipton, and Mr Peter Staples. Despite the fact that we were of varied political persuasions, we were able to present a united Australian position on every question as it arose. Restoration to Notice Paper Motion (by Senator Gareth Evans) agreed to: That the Order of the Day for the second reading of the Broadcasting Amendment Bill 1986 and the Television Licence Fees Amendment Bill 1986 be restored to the Notice Paper and that it be made an Order of the Day for the next day of sitting. 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 Gareth Evans) read a first time. Senator GARETH EVANS(Victoria-Minister for Resources and Energy)(8.38) —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- The purpose of this Bill is to promote equal employment opportunity in those areas of Australian Government employment that are not already covered by the affirmative action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act 1986 or by section 22b of the Public Service Act 1922. The Bill will apply to a wide range of Commonwealth statutory authorities, including major government business enterprises such as Telecom Australia, Australia Post and the Commonwealth Banking Corporation. Primary industry statutory marketing authorities which are not covered by the Bill will have their establishing legislation amended in the near future to provide for the development of equal employment opportunity programs. The passage of this legislation will ensure that the overwhelming majority of Australian Government employing authorities are required to develop equal employment opportunity or affirmative action programs. The object of equal employment opportunity programs is to eliminate discrimination against women, migrants whose first language is not English and their children, Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, and disabled persons. Equal employment opportunity assumes that freedom of choice of occupation is a basic social right which should not be constrained by criteria unrelated to ability to perform the job. It promotes efficiency by avoiding waste of talent and under-utilisation and under development of human resources which result from discrimination. Equal employment opportunity programs are designed to ensure that all employees are treated fairly and equitably. Such programs operate to the advantage of the individuals directly concerned, the employing authorities, and the community as a whole. This Bill is the third piece of legislation to give effect to the Government's commitment to equal employment opportunity. In 1984 the Government amended the Public Service Act 1922 to require Commonwealth Government departments and prescribed authorities to develop equal employment opportunity programs. Departments and authorities submitted their first programs to the Public Service Board during 1985-86. It is too soon to provide an overall assessment of the impact of these programs. It is apparent, however, that the development of equal employment opportunity plans has significantly strengthened the application of the merit principle in staffing and justice in personnel practices. The Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act 1986 was proclaimed on 1 October 1986. The Act requires all higher education institutions and companies employing 100 or more staff to develop affirmative action programs and report on their progress to government. That legislation was developed as a result of the year long affirmative action pilot program which involved consultation between 28 of Australia's largest companies, employer organisations, trade unions, women's groups, higher education bodies and the Federal Opposition. The Act requires companies and higher education institutions to progress with programs of affirmative action for women which through the review of employment practices including personnel policies and procedures will promote equal employment opportunity for all Australians. It also allows for the level of flexibility in implementation that private industry suggested was essential for affirmative action to be successful. As a result affirmative action programs are to be integrated into the management of organisations and will become part of the mainstream planning activities of business. The Act established the Affirmative Action Agency to assist employers develop their programs and to monitor their progress. The Agency is continuing the consultation process of the pilot program. The Agency is also preparing guidelines and developing education and training strategies to meet the needs of employers on affirmative Action. Higher education institutions commenced their affirmative action programs on 1 October 1986 and will report to government on 1 October 1987. Private sector organisations will commence their programs over a three year period. Companies with more than 1,000 employees commenced their programs on 1 February of this year. Their first reports will be due on 1 February 1988. I am pleased to be able to say that business has responded positively to the legislation. Indeed major employers have welcomed the initiative as making good business sense. The Equal Employment Opportunity (Commonwealth Authorities) Bill 1987 builds on these two initiatives of the Hawke Labor Government. I will now outline the major features of the Bill. The Bill covers Commonwealth statutory authorities employing 40 or more employees which are not already covered by section 22b of the Public Service Act 1922 or section 3 of the Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act 1986. The Bill does not cover the Australian Dairy Corporation, the Australian Meat and Livestock Corporation, the Australian Wheat Board, and the Australian Wool Corporation. These authorities will have their establishing legislation amended in the near future to provide for the development of equal employment opportunity programs. Designated authorities will be required to commence the development of equal employment opportunity programs on 1 July 1987 unless some other date is prescribed. Statutory authorities which subsequently come within the operation of the Bill will be required to develop equal employment opportunity programs from the date this occurs. The Bill sets out minimum requirements for equal employment opportunity programs to be developed and implemented by the authorities concerned. Programs will be developed in consultation with employees, particularly women and members of designated groups and with relevant trade unions. A fundamental feature of the equal employment opportunity program is a review of policies and practices to identify any which discriminate against women and members of designated groups. The review will be wide ranging and cover recruitment and selection procedures, promotion and transfer of employees, training and staff development and conditions of service. Authorities will be required to set program objectives and quantitative indicators of effectiveness and to monitor and evaluate the success of their programs against these objectives and indicators. I wish to emphasise the programs are not intended to, and will not lead, to positive discrimination. The Bill expressly confirms that employment matters are to be dealt with on the basis of merit, and the whole thrust of the legislation will strengthen the merit principle, by ensuring the review of any existing discriminatory personnel or employment procedures. Authorities will be required to make annual reports on the development and implementation of their programs. These reports may be lodged either with their portfolio Minister or the Public Service Board. The portfolio Minister or the Public Service Board, as the case may be, may also require the authority to make special reports. Annual reports and special reports lodged by authorities with the portfolio Minister will be tabled in both Houses of Parliament. The Public Service Board will exercise powers under this legislation which are comparable with its powers in regard to equal employment opportunity programs for Commonwealth departments and prescribed authorities under section 22b of the Public Service Act. It may issue guidelines on the development, implementation and review of programs to authorities that have elected to lodge reports with it. The Board will also report to the Prime Minister on the operations of the Bill in the Public Service Board annual report. The portfolio Minister or the Public Service Board may make recommendations to the authority after considering its annual report, on action to improve the effectiveness of the program. If the authority does not concur with the recommendations it will be required to advise the Minister or the Public Service Board of its reasons for not concurring. Financial impact There will be a minimal financial impact on statutory authorities as a result of the allocation of some staff resources to equal employment opportunity programs. I commend the Bill to the Senate. Debate (on motion by Senator Sheil) adjourned. Assent reported. Senator HAMER(Victoria)(8.39) —I move: That Marine Orders, Part 11 (Substandard Ships), as contained in Navigation (Orders) Regulations Order No. 16 of 1986 and made under the Navigation Act 1912, be disallowed. I am moving this disallowance motion because I think the regulation is an improper use of Commonwealth power, and because it opens up the way for malicious disruption of foreign owned ships, to the great disadvantage of the Australian community as a whole. Honourable senators will remember-or perhaps some of them will remember-that last year we amended the Navigation Act to give the Government power to prescribe health conditions which could be imposed on foreign registered ships visiting Australian ports. This is in accordance with Article 4 of International Labour Organisation Convention No. 147, which says, in effect, that the Australian Government may take measures necessary to rectify any conditions on board a foreign registered ship which are clearly hazardous to safety or health. The Navigation Act, before we amended it, gave the power to the Commonwealth only to deal with issues of safety with regard to foreign registered ships, and I accepted-as did the Opposition-that the Navigation Act should be amended to give the Australian Government the power to deal with the health issues as well. But the fundamental question is: What safety and health issues? I think the intention of the ILO Convention was to give the member countries which were visited by foreign registered ships the right to stop such ships from imposing burdens on their rescue organisations, or health risks on their general community or on their waterfront workers or other people who had to be on board the foreign registered ships. It is clearly reasonable that the country should have power to enforce suitable standards on foreign registered ships in these circumstances. This is how I believe we should approach the ILO Convention, but I am reluctantly prepared to accept that the wording of the Convention permits an interfering government to become the enforcer of ILO standards on foreign registered ships. I do not think this is an appropriate or sen- sible role for a government, except to the extent that its interests and its own people are concerned, because many of the standards prescribed in ILO Convention No. 92, which is embraced by ILO Convention No. 147, could not remotely be described as clearly hazardous to health. For instance, one of the provisions is that mess rooms shall be equipped with tables and approved seats sufficient for the number of persons likely to use them at any one time and that sleeping rooms shall be fitted with a mirror, small cabinets for toilet requisites, a book rack and a sufficient number of coat hooks. These may be very desirable from the point of view of comfort, but it stretches the meaning of language to say their absence is clearly hazardous to health. Nevertheless I am prepared to accept that the wording of ILO Convention No. 147 probably does give the Australian Government the right to impose the provisions of the Convention on foreign registered ships. But if we are to act as the enforcer of an ILO Convention, we must be very sure that we do not attempt to enforce more than the requirements of the ILO Convention on foreign ships, for the dangers of these regulations being used as a means of disadvantaging foreign registered ships, and forcing them to accept all the many rorts which have critically damaged Australian shipping, need no emphasis. It is notorious that the previous arrangement with regard to the safety of foreign ships has been used, grossly improperly and with no genuine regard to safety, to force foreign ships to have very expensive modifications done in Australian shipyards-the maritime workers acting as standover agents for the ship repair unions. I seek leave to incorporate in Hansard a brief newspaper article describing some of these campaigns. Leave granted. The article read as follows- DOCKERS' SHIP DEMANDS HOLD UP PACIFIC SUPPLIES By David Leser Industrial action by the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union has delayed more than 20 ships in Australian ports since January, causing losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars to industry and threatening food supplies to Pacific Islands. In the past week, members of the union have boarded ships in Sydney demanding that union members carry out repairs before they are allowed to leave. Mr Gary Young, president of the painters and dockers, confirmed yesterday that ``some work had been carried out'' on some ships but when questioned on the union's demands replied: ``I don't know nothing about anything''. According to the agent for one ship, some islands in the Pacific will not get food deliveries for a week because of the dispute. The General Valdez, a Filipino ship berthed at No. 10 Pyrmont Wharf, Sydney was boarded on Wednesday by five unionists who issued a number of demands, including fixing wash basins, repairing urinals, putting curtains up in the mess hall, installing televisions for the crew and the removal of all asbestos in the ships galley and bridge. One of the more extreme demands was that the crew replace benches in the mess hall with chairs. According to Mr Dick Bovill, a representative of Aboitz, the Filipino owners of the ship, the painters and dockers regarded the benches as ``undignified'' even though the mostly Catholic crew explained the mess hall was often converted into a church. Mr Bovill said the repairs would cost about $250,000 and should they not be carried out, the vessel, already seriously delayed in its shipment of containers and refrigerated goods to the Micronesian islands, would not be allowed to leave Sydney. Mr Gary Weaven, an industrial officer for the ACTU and a member of the council's ship building and repairs committee which is orchestrating the industrial action, was unavailable for comment. Another ship, the Japanese-owned Logistic Ace, was boarded on Wednesday by members of the union who, though not authorised, demanded to inspect the carrier. A spokesman for the ship's agents, K Asia Pacific, said the unionists had demanded information on the crew's wages and had called for a general upgrading of the ship's accommodation before it would be allowed to leave port. He said the ship was likely to be held up for a week, which would mean that a number of islands would not get food deliveries. One of the islands, Tarawa, in the Gilbert group depends entirely on food supplied by the Logistic Ace. The executive director of the Australian Chamber of Shipping, Mr Llew Bowen, described the union's actions as ``industrial extortion and blackmail'' that had cost Australian industry hundreds of thousands of dollars since January. ``Australia's reputation, already in tatters, is getting worse and worse.'' Mr Bowen said the chamber had approached the ACTU and written to the federal Minister for Industrial Relations, Mr Ralph Willis, but had received ``not a word of reply''. A spokesman for Mr Willis said the department was looking at the matter. Senator HAMER —Clause 4 of the Navigation Amendment Act states: (1) A ship is, for the purposes of the Act, substandard if the ship is seaworthy, but conditions on board the ship are clearly hazardous to safety or health. (2) In determining whether a ship is substandard, regard shall be had to such matters as are prescribed. This regulation is the result. As will have been apparent, I do not think we should be the enforcer of ILO standards but, if we are, it should be the ILO standards we enforce, not the additional rorts which have been so destructive of our own shipping. I seek leave to incorporate in Hansard a list of the items in this regulation under discussion which go beyond anything covered by the ILO conventions. Leave granted. The list read as follows- Prescribed Items included in Marine Orders, Part 11 (Substandard Ships) as contained in Navigation (Orders) Regulations No. 16 of 1986 not included in ILO Convention No. 147 or related Conventions Overloaded power points; Defective electrical insulation; General unsafe appearance of electrical wiring. Garbage cans not available in galley, etc; Garbage cans in unsatisfactory condition; Garbage drums not located in an accessible position; Garbage drums without properly fitting lids. Galley exhaust fan not in working order; Galley exhaust not grease free. Fly screens missing for portholes, ventilators and doors to the open deck; Fly screens exist but apertures cannot be properly protected by close fitting screens; Fly screens exist but have gauze broken and/or missing. (Fly screens are only required under ILO Convention No. 92 for ships regularly trading to mosquito-infested ports) Light fittings inoperable; Light fittings not fitted with globes or tubes of the full rating of the fitting. Paint locker with inadequate natural ventilation; Paint locker in an unsatisfactory condition (which is not further defined); Spillage of flammable liquid found in paint locker. Excessive noise, if the reduction of the noise level is practicable, possible and reasonable, but no action is taken. Work spaces, including engine room, not clean; Prevalence of oily rags or other fire hazard in work spaces, including engine room. Pillow and pillowcase, two clean sheets not fitted to each berth; Blanket not available for each berth; Insufficient linen to provide weekly change during longest leg of the voyage between ports with laundry facilities-only one change needed if suitable laundry exits aboard. Refrigeration machinery not operating efficiently; Refrigeration and cold room door seals defective; Internal alarms in cold room and refrigerated stores not fitted or not operating; Securing devices not capable of being operated from inside the cold room or refrigerated store; Refrigerators not kept clean and defrosted; Food improperly stored; Gratings to cold rooms or refrigerated stores unclean or defective; Lining to cold rooms or refrigerated stores defective. (Store rooms and refrigerated chambers are referred to in general terms in Convention No. 68, but without this specific detail). Senator HAMER —It is a very long list and I do not contend that any of the items in it are overwhelmingly important; but none of them could even remotely be described as `clearly hazardous to health'-the wording of ILO Convention No. 147. Nevertheless they are all irritants to foreign shipping and perhaps more importantly provide means by which foreign ships can be held up and forced to make unnecessary modifications. What has happened is that the Government has now become the collaborator of the maritime unions which are seeking to harass and injure foreign shipping, which is a very dangerous thing to do in a country such as ours in an economic crisis and heavily dependent on efficient and economic sea transport. I will give but two examples from the list I have just incorporated of items which have been added by this Government to the ILO list. The first is that flyscreens should be fitted to all portholes. This might be appropriate in malarial ports, but no Australian ports are malarial. I was at sea for nearly 30 years and I never had a flyscreen fitted to a porthole. If this regulation is not disallowed we could hold up a foreign ship if it does not have them in our Australian ports. These flyscreens are not required by the ILO Convention, but we would require them and it is an abuse of language to suggest their absence could be regarded as being `clearly hazardous to health' in an Australian port. The second example-and it is the sort of level of importance they are-is that a ship could be held up because the light fittings were not fitted with globes or tubes of the full rating of the fitting. One can make an argument that these things should be done, but I do not think it is the job of the Australian Government to impose such conditions on foreign ships when they are not required by the ILO Convention. By what moral right do we seek to impose such extra provisions? Worse still, this could be the thin end of the wedge, to coin a phrase, or perhaps, if I wanted to coin another phrase, the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps next, under health grounds we will be told that foreign ships should give their crews six months leave a year, like Australian crews, or that all foreign crews must have single cabins with en suite bathrooms, or that their seamen must always travel first class in domestic or international aircraft, as our seamen do-all in the name of health. Once we start going beyond the ILO Convention we have got ourselves, in my view, into an absurd position, a legally and morally indefensible one and, worse still, one that can be used by militant unions to harass and disrupt foreign owned ships, to the great loss of the Australian community. I repeat: By what moral or legal right do we seek to impose these extra conditions on foreign ships? For that reason I have moved for the disallowance of Marine Orders, Part II (Substandard Ships), as contained in Navigation (Orders) Regulations No. 16 of 1986, which goes beyond the relevant ILO Convention, beyond the undertakings given by the Minister for Veterans' Affairs (Senator Gietzelt) in this chamber when the Navigation Amendment Bill was introduced, and beyond what common sense dictates as reasonable for us to impose on a foreign registered ship. Senator SANDERS(Tasmania)(8.49) —The Australian Democrats do not support this disallowance motion. We have looked at the issue. I have had some experience with the sea-not as much as the previous speaker, Senator Hamer, but I am not totally unfamiliar with it. Certainly in the past there was gross mistreatment of crew on ships, and I am sure Senator Hamer will agree with this. In the past we had the traditional crew person living in a leaky fo'c'sle with very little bedding and very few animal comforts-a fo'c'sle which was lit by one swinging kerosene lamp. He was fed on salt beef and weevilly biscuits. Anyone who has read Two Years Before the Mast or any other classic works of the sea is certainly aware of these matters. Over the years various organisations, various governments and various unions have gradually increased the well-being of the people who work on ships. But it took a great deal of effort not only to increase their animal comforts but also to keep them from drowning. It took a great deal of effort merely to put loading marks on ships so that they could not be overloaded. I do not think anybody could disagree that all of these advancements were met by great resistance in the shipping industry and by politicians who supported it. Senator Hamer said that he moved this motion because he feels that `regulations open up the way for malicious disruption of foreign-owned ships to the great disadvantage of the Australian community as a whole'. Furthermore he stated: I think the intention of the ILO Convention was to give the member countries, which were visited by foreign registered ships, the right to stop such a ship from imposing burdens on their rescue organisations, or health risks on their general community or on their waterfront workers or other people who had to be on board the foreign registered ship. It is clearly reasonable that the country should have power to enforce suitable standards on foreign registered ships . . . So Senator Hamer agrees with the general thrust of the Government's regulations. However, he picked out some rather absurd examples-such as fitting flywire to portholes-and I admit that they sound absurd. Senator Hamer —I object to all the ones that go beyond the ILO Convention. Senator SANDERS —The honourable senator says that he objects to all those regulations that go beyond the International Labour Organisation Convention. However, he has brought up some rather absurd items. He also included a clipping out of the Australian of 13 April 1985. If this is the most recent example of the things he says are going on-the delay to ships and the cost to owners-perhaps the situation has already solved itself. The Australian article points out that the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union has delayed more than 20 ships in Australian ports since January causing losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars to industry and threatening food supplies to Pacific Islands. I am certainly not here to defend the painters and dockers union but I point out that two wrongs do not make a right. While the painters and dockers may be wrong in this instance-maybe they are unnecessarily holding up ships-there are still plenty of shipowners on this earth who are trying to squeeze the last buck out of their ships. They are still squeezing crews. Many of the foreign ships that come into our ports have conditions which would not be tolerated in a civilised world. This is one of the reasons why ships sail under flags of convenience. No civilised country would allow them to treat their crews the way in which they are treated. Any mechanism that will increase the well being of crews should be welcomed and this is one mechanism. The Australian Democrats feel that they cannot support Senator Hamer's motion. We would like to see any unfair practices stopped by any unions or anybody else who would exploit the ILO regulations for their own self aggrandisement. We would like to see the ILO regulations used in the spirit in which they were framed which is to protect the well being of the seamen who sail the oceans. Senator LEWIS(Victoria)(8.54) —I support Senator Hamer's disallowance motion. The motion is to disallow Commonwealth of Australia Navigation (Orders) Regulations Order No. 16 of 1986, Marine Orders Part II which deals with substandard ships. I am absolutely staggered at the words used by Senator Sanders, who clearly does not understand at all what the disallowance motion is all about. The Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce, Senator Button, has come into the Senate and is chatting up Senator Sanders because, no doubt, the Australian Democrats have agreed to support the Government on this matter. I hope that Senator Button applies his mind to the effect that this regulation will have on the export trade of this nation. One would believe that this regulation was specifically designed to do what it possibly can to hinder the export activities of Australian manufacturers. I cannot believe that Senator Button has applied his mind to this regulation. I certainly cannot believe that the Minister for Finance, Senator Walsh, has even seen it because I would have thought he would have gone right off his mind considering that the trade unions of this nation should be placed in the position that this regulation puts them in. Let me explain to the Senate what I mean. This regulation prescribes that an interested person, who believes that a ship in an Australian port is substandard, may make a complaint. Who is an interested person? Under the regulation it is a member of the crew of that ship-one can understand that-and any person with an interest in the safety of the ship, including an interest in safety or health hazards to its crew. I do not know who that is. Perhaps everyone in Australia has an interest in the safety of the ship. So on one definition I suppose anyone could make a complaint. Let me refer to the particular sub-section which I deliberately missed because I wanted to come to it last. An interested person means an official of a professional body, association or trade union. So any member of a trade union is an interested person and an interested person may make a complaint. What happens if a complaint is made? The prescribed authority shall, not may, conduct a survey-that is what the regulation states. Where a prescribed authority receives a complaint, the prescribed authority shall as soon as practicable arrange for the ship to be inspected by a surveyor. Glory be, let us look at what the surveyor has to look at. He has to go through the entire ship examining such things as, as Senator Hamer has mentioned, whether there are clean sheets on the berths and whether there are flywire screens over the portholes. He has to check up whether the garbage cans are available in galley, pantry or mess rooms and whether the garbage cans are in a satisfactory condition. He has to check whether the electric fans fitted in sleeping rooms and mess rooms are in satisfactory working order and condition. He has to make sure that the floors are easily cleanable and that the floors are made of durable material which is impervious to damp. He has to go into the galley, storerooms and handling rooms and make sure that they are in a clean condition. He has to make sure that the galley exhaust is grease free. I have never seen a galley exhaust anywhere which is grease free but in a ship it has to be grease free if a complaint is made. The surveyor has to make sure that the food is suitable for the intended voyage; he has to check on the lighting; he has to make sure that the crew spaces are adequately lit, that the light fittings are operable and that the light fittings are fitted with globes or tubes of the full rating of the fitting. One can not have less than the full rating of the fitting on board a ship. These are just some examples of what this regulation requires the surveyor to do. He has to go into the clothes drying area and make sure that clothes drying facilities are provided in a compartment separate from the sleeping rooms and mess rooms. He has to make sure that the drying room facility is ventilated or heated and that it is provided with racks or lines. He has to see that the sleeping rooms are not used as mess rooms. I suppose that means that if he goes into one of the sleeping rooms and finds some food in there he will say that that is an improper use of the ship. The following is a fascinating one. He has to make sure that the mess room is located as close as practicable to the galley. If this is not the case he may declare that the ship is a health hazard. This goes on for pages and pages. There are pages of all the sorts of things that have to be surveyed if a person makes a complaint. These things shall be done-not may be done by the port authority who looks out, sees a ship and says: `That ship looks a bit of an old bucket; perhaps we ought to have a look at that'. No, any interested person-and I have already described how wide the range is-may make a complaint and, if the complaint is made, the prescribed authority shall conduct a survey. Could anything be more clearly designed to hold up or delay the exporting arrangements of this nation than to give some trade union person-it does not even say he has to be a trade union official; it could be any member of a trade union or any interested person who wants to complain-the right to make a complaint, upon which this entire survey has to be carried out at the cost, of course, of the Australian taxpayers? There is no provision in the regulation to say that the complainant ought to pay the costs of the survey if, for some reason or other, the complaint is found to be unwarranted. One can clearly see that the trade union movement, where it wants to hold up a ship for some other reason, will clearly make a complaint under this regulation. For Senator Sanders to say that anyone who has read the book Two Years Before the Mast-although he did not admit to having read it himself-would be supportive of this regulation is an absolute nonsense. Of course, the ILO convention is already in force in Australia. We are not talking about the ILO convention; we are talking about the sorts of facilities which are already imposed on Australian ship owners. This regulation was introduced by the Government. I cannot understand how Senator Button and Senator Walsh, or any Minister in this Government who has any thought at all for the Australian industry, did not see immediately what this regulation is designed for. This regulation has nothing to do with health and safety standards. This regulation is designed as a means whereby the union movement will be able to hold up any ship in an Australian port for months and months. Already ship owners are fearful of allowing their ships to come into this country because of what might happen while they are here; yet this Government is actually giving the union movement another weapon to create havoc with regard to Australian export trade. As my colleague Senator Hamer has asked, when will the trade union movement require that foreign ships provide their workers with six months leave of absence, which is what is required now on Australian owned ship lines? When will they require them to have first class travel arrangements and separate accommodation? Certainly, this regulation, introduced by this Government-not introduced by the trade union movement-- Senator Hamer —It's the same thing. Senator LEWIS —My colleague Senator Hamer says it is the same thing, and one wonders when one reads this sort of regulation whether it is not the same thing. Senator Button is making some notes to respond to me. I hope he gets up to tell me what this matter is all about. Senator Button —Somebody has to. Senator LEWIS —I will be interested to hear what Senator Button has to say to see whether there is any sort of response about this matter. Let me give Senator Button another example. If the surveyor finds that the paint locker is in an unsatisfactory condition he can condemn the ship. So the surveyor will go along and have a look in the paint locker. Anyone who has had a look at a paint locker anywhere would know what paint lockers are like. If one looked at my paint locker one would reckon it was in an unsatisfactory condition. If the surveyor finds that the paint locker in the ship is in an unsatisfactory condition he can condemn the ship and hold it in the port for whatever period is necessary to get it cleaned up. The surveyor has to check on the paintwork and make sure that the painted surfaces have not deteriorated such that they cannot be washed clean. Surveyors have to go wandering around the ship having a look at all the painted surfaces to see whether or not they are able to be washed clean. The surveyor has to look at the work spaces to see whether they are in a clean condition and to ensure that there is not a prevalence of oily rags. Glory be, have honourable senators ever had a look at the inside of a ship's engine room? If the surveyor wanders around and sees any oily rags around about he will conduct this survey at the expense of the Australian taxpayer because some unionists-not even a senior union official nor the port authority-has made a complaint. What the purposes of that complaint would be we do not know, but one can imagine what it might very well be. The surveyor has to check on the berths and make sure that two clean sheets are fitted to each berth. I hope there has not been an accident the night before he goes in to have a look at the berth to make sure that the sheets are clean. He has to make sure that a blanket is available to each berth and that sufficient linen is available-he also has to go to the linen closet on the ship-to provide a weekly change during the longest leg of the voyage between ports with laundry facilities. This is absolute nonsense yet it has all been introduced by this Government and the Minister for Transport (Mr Peter Morris)-and why? This has nothing to do with the health and safety of people in Australia. It has nothing to do with the health and safety of the ship. Senator Sanders raved on about reading a book called Two Years Before the Mast and standing up for seamen in the past who used to be fed weevilly biscuits and all that sort of nonsense. As a result of that he says the Australian Democrats will support the Government on this matter. One has never heard such rubbish in all one's life. Clearly the Democrats have not read the regulation; yet they will vote with the Government. But we have come to expect that. Since former Senator Chipp left the Democrats have done nothing but support the Government on every issue that they possibly can. I just cannot understand how senior Ministers in this Government have allowed this regulation to go through-unless, as I suspect, it has gone through without their being aware of it. Senator Button has been in this chamber. He has heard what I have had to say, so he is now fully aware of the matter and I will be very interested to hear what his response is. Senator VALLENTINE(Western Australia)(9.08) —I think there are many important aspects of this issue which have not yet been raised. The former speaker did touch on one of them, which was the aspect of the health and safety of the people of Australia. The International Labour Organisation Convention 147, which we are talking about, relates to shipping conditions which are `hazardous to health'. Senator Hamer is concerned that the regulations are irritating to foreign shipping, and some of these regulations do seem rather absurd. But the far more important question which should be addressed by the ILO Convention is the hazard to health posed by nuclear armed and nuclear powered warships coming into Australian ports, or any ports. They constitute a potential hazard to the health of all persons in the ports visited, because those ships can possibly leak radioactive contamination from either the reactors or from nuclear weapons on board should they catch fire or be pierced in a severe collision. So the Government's marine orders relating to ILO Convention 147 entirely and intentionally miss the gravest of health hazards to the Australian community, a hazard which the Australian Government regularly allows into our ports. Both the Government and the Opposition must be taken to task for allowing Australians to be put at risk by nuclear generators and nuclear weapons coming into our ports. I wish that both the major parties would concentrate shipping regulations on the important health hazards and lift their sights above grease-free exhaust fans. What we need is a total and immediate ban on the visits of potentially hazardous nuclear warships to our ports. Senator MICHAEL BAUME(New South Wales)(9.10) —I think that all senators share the proper concerns about safety and health hazards on ships, but that does not mean that they share the Government's enthusiasm for these extraordinary Navigation (Orders) Regulations, which go far beyond any suggestion of making certain that the safety and health standards on ships are at least up to international standards. It is natural, of course, if conditions on a ship constitute some danger to the Australian public, that they should be dealt with. If a ship is unseaworthy it should be detained and repaired sufficiently to make it seaworthy, or fines should be imposed under the Navigation Act, and so on. There is common ground on that point. That is not the issue, despite the fact that Senator Sanders appeared incapable of emerging from his bound volumes of ancient sea tales-I think he has developed since the time of Joseph Conrad-to see what we are concerned about. We are not objecting to the International Labour Organisation Convention, although there could even be reservations about that. That is not our objection. Our objection is the extent to which what the Government is doing goes far beyond the ILO Convention under which the commerce of the world proceeds, and which will disadvantage Australia and Australian exporters if this extension of the ILO Convention is applied specifically and in a discriminatory way to Australian exports. Of course, this is the vital issue. The Government is adding to the cost burden of Australian exporters by adding requirements which are not imposed on exporters in similar countries in the rest of the world. We have a clear and strong view, on which we support the Government, that if a ship constitutes a clear hazard to the Australian public, something should be done about it. But we then say that, if there is no clear hazard to the Australian public, why is it our business to be concerned with conditions on board if they do not match Australian conditions-unless, of course, there is a hidden agenda in the regulations? Of course, the reality is that there is a hidden agenda. Not only is there the blackmailing that has been going on to force enormous amounts of repair work into Australian yards, at incredible prices compared to those available overseas, to the benefit of sister unions that are involved, but also there is, of course, a continual attempt to try to diminish the cost disadvantage that Australian shipping companies face, and therefore their ability to employ Australian crews when dealing with competition from overseas, because of the ludicrous conditions of work that exist in the Australian shipping industry. The people who suffer in this instance by the Government giving way to this kind of union pressure are Australian exporters, who are desperately trying at the moment to do something far more important than satisfy the petty nonsense of these particularly absurd regulations. They are trying to rescue Australia from a balance of payments crisis. To that extent they are, of course, being penalised by this Government, which is going straight down the track of kowtowing to nonsensical union demands to expand the ILO requirements into what Senator Hamer and Senator Lewis clearly demonstrated to be totally ludicrous arrangements. What are the various criteria warranting detention of a ship as substandard? Of course, the undertaking given by Senator Grimes when he introduced the Navigation Act is that this would be finalised by tripartite consultations with industry and so on, based on the safety and health standards established by the International Labour Organisation and included in Convention No. 147. When that was introduced many senators on this side were concerned about whether these substandard criteria would be established by people who were professionally concerned with safety or health, rather than by people with a vested interest in having foreign ships detained and forced into expensive Australian ship repair yards. That is exactly what has happened. People with a vested interest have established what the criteria should be. At the time the Opposition was concerned-Senator Hamer was particularly concerned, as I recall-whether the substandard criteria imposed on foreign ships would be no more onerous than those provided by the ILO Convention. Of course, we have found that they are far more onerous. It is interesting to see who drew up this list of criteria that is now to be met under this regulation. There were people from three Federal departments-Industrial Relations, Industry, Technology and Commerce, and Transport. Of course, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the ship repair unions and the maritime unions had their say as well. Senator Hamer —What about the Health Department? Senator MICHAEL BAUME —Indeed, as Senator Hamer says, what about the Health Department, seeing that the regulation is supposed to relate to health and safety? Naturally, this was totally inconsequential as far as the Government was concerned; there was no point in having the Health Department involved in a matter such as this. This was a political issue, not a health issue. As a result, the Health Department was not involved in drawing up the criteria. It became involved only after the list was completed. It was consulted and the list was referred to it after the event. As I understand it, the Health Department provided no comment whatsoever. It was excluded from drawing up the list, because it is a phoney list. It is a list that bears no relationship to the real requirements of health and safety in Australia. It is a rubbish list. What intrigues me is that the decent members of the Australian Democrats have allowed Senator Sanders's absolute nonsense, his incredible and hysterical response when he talked about weevilly biscuits, to influence them to allow this incredible, oppressive, and nonsensical set of regulations to proceed. I think it is astounding that senators with the capacity of some of the Australian Democrats senators should be hoodwinked into accepting this disgraceful regulation. The extraordinary list has been incorporated in Hansard by Senator Hamer and has been referred to in the debate to some extent. Senator Lewis mentioned parts of it. He mentioned, of course, the need for flyscreens on portholes, ventilators and doors leading to the open deck. Well, how absolutely essential a flyscreen must be to keep out mosquitoes, because that is what the ILO recommendation is. Flyscreens are required, according to the ILO, only for ships regularly trading to mosquito infested ports. That is what the ILO recommendation is. Yet a ship visiting Tasmania, that well known tropical island south of mainland Australia, must be equipped with these kinds of screens because this Government is prepared to do whatever the maritime unions insist, even though the requirements bear absolutely no relationship to the realities of health and safety. What absolute bunkum! As Senator Lewis said, another requirement is that a blanket be available for every berth. Blankets are absolutely essential when one is in the tropics, sailing to Asian ports! Heaven knows, a person would not get a good sweat up unless he put his blanket on at night. What on earth is going on when this Government, with no concern in reality for the health and safety of the sailors on these foreign ships but a deep concern for placating the Australian maritime unions, to the disadvantage of Australia's export effort and to the added cost of Australia's export effort at this time of crisis, is prepared to go down this track? The reality is-unfortunately we have seen this in recent times, not just back in 1985 which was the only point Senator Sanders raised-we have seen subsequently the standover tactics and blackmail involved in getting work done in Australia, much of it totally unnecessary and certainly much of it that did not have to be done in Australia where the cost was far greater and where the burden of that cost would be carried by Australian exporters struggling in this competitive world at the moment. The clear indication, as Senator Lewis said, is that this regulation paves the way for costly, lengthy detention of foreign ships in Australian ship repair yards. We have seen example after example of it. There was a Caltex chartered vessel Penelope of York which only last year was raided by unknown persons who allegedly discovered that plumbing repairs were required. The faults were insignificant and would normally have been undertaken at the ship's next general overhaul, but the ship was delayed by union bans for at least a week. Another Caltex ship, the Arthur Phillip, was held up for 30 days because unions had refused to allow the vessel to sail to Singapore to be refitted, claiming that the work should have been done in an Australian dockyard, which would cost the company an extra $2m. Very recently, a month or so ago, the Western Australian Australian Labor Party Minister for Transport, Mr Troy, had to appeal for the release of a Western Australian cargo ship embroiled in a dock dispute over repairs at Newcastle. The Pilbara was detained in Newcastle for repairs, but a strike over the threatened closure of the dockyard left the ship stranded for more than two weeks and it was only released through the efforts of the Western Australian Minister for Transport. Clearly many of us are concerned, as Senator Hamer said, that this regulation is simply the trigger for a whole series of rorts by Australia maritime unions, not on foreign shipowners but on Australian exporters. If the Hawke Labor Government cannot establish that link between shipping and export costs, it is being even more obtuse than it has shown so far. The reality is that it is simply doing this for the sake of the maritime unions and, as Senator Hamer said by way of interjection, effectively the union movement is running this country, particularly in this area. Various shipping people have complained bitterly about the role of the Australian Council of Trade Unions ship repair committee which was involved in those Caltex nonsenses to which I have just referred. This has a specific relevance to this issue because last year the ACTU ship repair committee made what was described by a Caltex spokesman, Mr Barry Perton, as unauthorised boarding of the Penelope of York and insisted on minor repairs being commissioned, which included replacement of light bulbs, repairs to toilet seats and so on. The company that had to do the work was nominated by the ACTU ship repair committee. It is incredible that this Government is allowing this kind of blackmail-not only allowing it but encouraging it by this kind of regulation. I do not know what the payoffs are to the Government. I am not quite certain. I do not know whether the ACTU ship repair committee and the maritime unions contribute enormous amounts to the Labor Party's funds. But if they do I can assure the Senate that they have been well rewarded for those contributions. Senator Robertson —Watch it. Senator MICHAEL BAUME —Every day in this Senate we hear Senator Walsh making the most extraordinary imputations about this side of the House, but the honourable senator opposite cannot take it. We have here clear evidence of people being bought off, of blackmail, and the Government imposing some ludicrous regulations which have no substance in them, in fact which were not part of a Health Department recommendation. The Health Department did not even participate in the creation of these regulations, but only looked at them after the event. What are the motives, I ask the Senate, behind the Government playing into the hands of the maritime unions in this way, providing them with the opportunity for blackmail, giving them the chance even to nominate the companies and instructing the shippers involved to get their work done at specific company works? Here we have what I believe is a scandalous situation, which is being supported by the Australian Democrats. I do not apply the same motives to the Australian Democrats that I would apply to some members of the Government in this matter. I think that it is arrant stupidity which has encouraged the Australian Democrats to support the Government on these regulations. There is not one sound and coherent proposition that has yet been put here tonight-it will be interesting to hear Senator Button endeavour to do so-to justify the extension of the criteria in these regulations beyond the ILO's list. If Senator Button can do that effectively, it will be interesting to hear it. But as things stand at the moment the Government's preparedness to assist some of the maritime unions in their blackmailing of the shipping industry simply involves added burdens on those people struggling to get Australia out of its present mess, and that is the exporters of Australia. Senator MASON(New South Wales)(9.27) —I feel impelled to enter this debate following Senator Michael Baume's comments. He seems to think that the Australian Democrats have decided not to support this disallowance motion relating to Marine Orders, Part II (Substandard Ships) for reasons he does not approve of. I assure him that we have thought about the matter very carefully and I have listened to this debate with some care. I have not been at all convinced by what I have heard said. I would have thought that a most distinguished ex-naval officer like Senator Hamer might find it strange that his colleague Senator Lewis got up to say that it was dreadful that the paint lockers on ships should be investigated when loose solvents floating around paint lockers could be the most easy and convenient source of fire. If that fire happens when that ship is alongside an Australian port, that concerns us. I would have thought that a similar argument might be made for a lot of oily rags lying around in engine rooms. If that is the sort of argument that is being put, I am afraid that it does not attract me very much. We are discussing a difficult area. Again, as Senator Hamer will know from his long experience at sea, during the 1920s and 1930s ships were fitted out shamefully during the Great Depression, and ships sank or were destroyed regularly at sea because they were not properly fitted out by their owners. At that time one will recall, if one goes through the history of that time, that there were screams all over the place, just like Senator Michael Baume's, that it would be bad for trade if the ships were to be safe and to be properly manned. That is the background to the situation. As always when there has been a bad situation, there is something of a reaction beyond that. I think it was Senator Michael Baume who mentioned that it is very bad to insist on the screening of portholes and ventilators in ships. He pointed out that these ships go to Tasmania. Well, no foreign registered ships that come here go to Tasmania. If they are foreign ships, they will probably approach Australia in the normal way through our northern approaches where one has mosquito-borne diseases. Is Senator Baume suggesting that ships should be fitted out with screens for that purpose and that one should take them off on the rare occasion when they go to Tasmania? This is not good enough. Again, Senator Michael Baume mentioned that some ship work was required to restore light bulbs which had gone out. In a decently run ship they should have been replaced when they required replacement. Getting along passageways in a ship at night in bad light is one of the main causes of accident. These arguments are just not good enough. I have an idea that Senator Michael Baume is prompted more by an anti-union feeling, and in this whole debate he seems to have been attempting to throw out the baby with the bath water. If there are a few things in these prescribed matters that he objects to, he might have been better advised to negotiate with the Government over those matters he feels could be justified, but I have not heard many of them yet. Senator Vigor has been good enough to give me the list of prescribed arguments. I had not seen it before but it confirms what I thought. The actual item is `spillage of flammable liquid' found in paint lockers. If Senator Lewis is silly enough to think that it is perfectly okay to have ships sailing around with flammable solvents let loose in a place where there could be spontaneous combustion he is sillier than I thought. Other matters include overloaded power points, defective electrical installations and generally unsafe appearance of electrical wiring. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that those things should be properly checked up on and fixed. Another matter referred to is the galley exhaust fan not being in working order and the galley exhaust not being grease free. Obviously those are essential matters. Also the paintwork in the galley needs to be in a good and clean condition. There is nothing untoward in that. I am sure that Senator Lewis would like to think that the place in which his food was cooked had reasonable paintwork which was not in a dirty condition. I think that the Opposition is making an excessive noise. Another item is about the work space not being clean. These things were not mentioned by the Opposition when it raised this matter. The last item is quite small-it refers to a pillow not having a pillow case, two clean sheets not being fitted on each berth and a blanket not being supplied for each berth. I would suggest that Opposition senators would probably complain bitterly if they went into a hotel or motel and found that there were no sheets on the bed and that no blanket had been provided, whether or not they wanted to use it. I am sure they would complain if they found any of those items were dirty. If they went to stay at some place in which they were compelled for a long time-as a crewman must do on a ship-and they found that there was insufficient linen to provide weekly changes during the longest leg of the voyage, I am sure that they would complain. Certainly, Senator Michael Baume, who is a nice, fastidious senator, would be the first person to complain if such things were inflicted on him. The Opposition's case is not difficult to demolish. It seems to me that Opposition senators are indulging in a kind of nitpicking which is quite regrettable. It wastes an awful lot of the Senate's time. Opposition senators knew as soon as they listened to Senator Sanders that we had thought carefully about this and had come to a decision. It was obvious that we did not intend to support the disallowance, so I wonder why Opposition senators are taking up this time. I urge them to go back to the beginning and if there is anything at all that they wish to do something about in this area, they should make out a reasonable case and take it up as a matter of ordinary negotiation with the Government, rather than going through this rather ponderous mechanism of disallowance. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce)(9.35) —There has been a lot of- Senator Lewis —I thought you were going to say that the Government accepts the Opposition objection to this regulation and that you will allow it to be disallowed. Is that what you are going to say? Senator BUTTON —No, that is not what I am about to say. I was going to say that the windy rhetoric that we have heard from Opposition speakers tonight would blow a tall ship from Europe to Australia and back again. Nothing much has been said about the facts of the matter, however. I was interested in what Senator Hamer had to say but, really, these bleats from Senator Lewis and Senator Michael Baume about their concern about exports were pretty feeble efforts. Let me begin by talking about the International Labour Organisation Convention. Those countries which implement the ILO Convention are Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. Senator Lewis —And Australia, I would hope. Senator BUTTON —Yes. In addition there is another arrangement among European countries which embraces several countries other than those referred to on the list which I have just read. It is very easy to come in here tonight and make a lot of fuss about flyscreens. I do not want to enter into the flyscreen debate, it does not seem to me to be particularly important; in fact it seems to be a piece of mindless trivia, both in the regulations and in this debate in the Senate. It does not seem to me to be very important to be able to swat a flyscreen, but that is what Senator Lewis spent most of his speech doing. It does not seem to me to be very important to make the trivial points that have been made about paint lockers. The substance of Senator Hamer's objection to all this is that somehow in Australia the ILO Convention has been adopted and it has been adopted by a number of other countries which are far more prominent shipping countries than we are and that in addition there are other matters in the list appended to Senator Hamer's document which he says are objectionable Senator Hamer —We can impose them on our own, if we choose, but these are being imposed on foreign ships. Senator BUTTON —I understand that, but I understand that the point is that they always have been under maritime orders. These matters, which were just picked up, were there throughout the period of the Fraser Government, the Gorton Government, the McMahon Government and so on. They have been there for many years and they have been picked up as things which existed in relation to ships in Australian ports. They may have existed in some form or another in other countries, but I am unable to inform the Senate on that matter. Senator Michael Baume —With the force of regulation. Senator BUTTON —Yes. Senator Lewis —Don't you go misleading us. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT(Senator Colston) —Order! Senator BUTTON —I can stand it, Mr Acting Deputy President. If it upsets you, please intervene. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT —I like to be able to hear the speaker. Senator BUTTON —Thank you. A number of points were made by Senator Michael Baume who claimed that this was a conspiracy by this Government. Senator Hamer suggested that it was a government-union conspiracy and all that sort of stuff. Let us be accurate about this. Senator Hamer illustrates his point about trouble with the unions on this issue by a Press cutting dated April 1985. That is an important date because these sorts of standover tactics by unions-the Federal Ship Painters and Dockers Union in particular-were rife at the time. Senator Michael Baume —The one I referred to was dated July 1986. Senator BUTTON —Well, you are probably 10 years younger than Senator Hamer, but less than one year more astute, I would say. Senator Michael Baume —But there was evidence in mid-1986, Senator. Senator BUTTON —Senator Baume is the quintessence of modernity, if I may say so. The point is that the Government had to respond to a situation which was complained about by all shippers and which was a serious industrial relations problem. We do not shrink from that at all. We tried to get rid of the rackets which were going on-Senator Baume seems to think that they still exist-by getting the inspection issue out of the hands of the trade unions and into the hands of Department of Transport surveyors. Admittedly a union official can still complain but whether the ship is detained or not is now determined by a Transport Department surveyor. Senator Baume made a lot of points about health. Arrangements have been made between the Federal and State governments and the shippers to ensure that health matters are dealt with by the appropriate authorities in each State. Senator Lewis talked about garbage all night-in fact, he talked garbage all night. The point is that any garbage issue is dealt with by the State health department and those arrangements have been made. I do not regard the scheme as entirely satisfactory. Senator Lewis should not go away deluded about that. The aim of the scheme is to reduce the industrial relations problem, get rid of the criminal problem which existed at the time of Senator Hamer's Press cutting and ensure that the inspections are properly conducted by officers of the Department of Transport. Senator Lewis —Why did you have such a wide definition of `interested person'? You had better look at this because it could be any union official, it does not even have to be a member of a maritime union. In fact, it does not even have to be a union official, it can be any unionist. Senator BUTTON —I think you will find that it is a union official. I do not want to argue about it: Senator Lewis can look that up while I am talking. I do not want to totally interrupt what I am saying. I have news for Senator Lewis: Throughout this country under numerous State Acts passed by Liberal governments, supported by employers and employees alike, supported by all the national employer organisations, there are provisions in awards and legislation relating to safety and health matters which are to be policed by union officials in conjunction with management. Senator Cook —Quite right. Senator BUTTON —That is correct. That is true, and it is true throughout the Western world. What is the answer, Senator Lewis? Senator Lewis —It is an official of a trade union. Senator BUTTON —Yes, a union official. The honourable senator just said to me: `Don't you mislead the Parliament'. He spent 10 minutes talking about any unionist being able to complain. It is a union official who can complain. So let us work out who is misleading whom before we have too much noise about this matter. I was making the point that the aim of this package of proposals is to try to get rid of a very difficult industrial relations situation, which we cannot do, although Senator Lewis would like to think we could, by sending a gun boat or sending in the troops. This will not get rid of a difficult industrial relations situation. It has to be done by a process of attitudinal change if it is going to be at all permanent. Senator Michael Baume —Adopt the ILO Convention. Senator BUTTON —That is the view of this Government. It is the view which has been very successful in bringing about change in industrial relations patterns and results in Australia. That is the way we will proceed. That is the way which has brought results. I say to Senator Michael Baume that it is not just a question of adopting the ILO Convention. If the honourable senator wants to make the point that some of these things that have been in the maritime regulations for ages seem silly to him, I am not going to have a debate with him about that. I do not think that is terribly important. The important issue is that health and safety issues in relation to ships are being dealt with now by officials of the Department of Transport; that the industrial relations issue has been settled down; that there are appropriate arrangements for State government involvement in respect of particular health issues, sanitary issues and so on; and that we now have a system which I think is not entirely satisfactory but which is considerably better than what existed before. I believe progress has been made and will continue to be made in respect of this matter. This progress is essential for the purpose of improving the general services offered by ships trading out of Australia and, consequently, the facilitation of exports about which the two honourable senators from the other side who spoke naturally and properly seemed so concerned. In the last month or so two ships have been held up in this country by, as I understand it, transport inspectors because of serious breaches of safety and health provisions. These ships have been described as floating hulks. It is not in the interests of any civilised community to have those sorts of ships trading into and out of Australia. I think it is probably appropriate that they were held up because there are always dangers associated with the crews of such ships which can impact on the Australian community in terms of costs and in other ways. I think it is probably appropriate that this sort of thing does happen. Senator Michael Baume —But that is under the ILO Convention. We are not objecting to that. Senator BUTTON —It was very unclear what the honourable senator was objecting to. Senator Michael Baume —I made no objection to the ILO Convention. I said it was going beyond that. 1502 SENATE 30 March 1987 ...Australia Card Bill Through to p. 1505 Senator BUTTON —The honourable senator seems to be objecting to everything tonight. At one stage I thought he was even objecting to me. That is something that I cannot understand. There are two bodies of law. One is the ILO Convention and the other is the maritime regulations which are mentioned in the motion before the Senate. I appreciate the difficulty in understanding some of the matters in the second list. The other point I want to make is that the proposal that was implemented late last year also includes provision for a review of how this arrangement is working, because it did not work for a long time. A few very grave difficulties were occasioned for Australia, and particularly for some of our trading partners in respect of this matter. This process which has been put in place in the last six months or so has the agreement of the shippers and, of course, of the Australian Council of Trade Unions. This is a point which I do not need to make; it was made fulsomely by Senator Lewis and others in the course of the debate. The arrangement has the agreement of those parties and it will be reviewed periodically to see whether the appropriate improvements are being made. It is for those reasons-although I do not allege that it is a perfect arrangement-that the Government says that the regulations should not be disallowed, and I accordingly oppose the motion moved by Senator Hamer. Senator HAMER(Victoria)(9.45) —in reply-I close the debate by commenting on the remarks and assertions made by honourable senators who took part in this debate. I regret to say that I found Senator Sanders's remarks incomprehensible. He was talking, I thought, about Two Years Before the Mast but I doubt whether he had ever actually read it. He was talking about flags of convenience ships coming here as rust buckets. That issue is not in dispute. The Opposition accepts that we are entitled to impose the International Labour Organisation Convention on foreign ships. Two Years Before the Mast, weevilly biscuits and so on are 100 years out of date, as is Senator Sanders's spiritual home. Like King Charles's head, nuclear power and nuclear weapons seem constantly to be uppermost in Senator Vallentine's mind. There is no question of this regulation having anything to do with warships, whether nuclear powered or non-nuclear powered, whether nuclear armed or non-nuclear armed. Her intervention was totally irrelevant. Senator Mason appeared to argue that we should accept ILO Convention 147, but he said absolutely nothing about why we should accept the extra requirements. That is the whole point of this debate. We accept that the Government is entitled to impose the requirements of the ILO Convention. We are asking why extra requirements not required by the ILO Convention are imposed on foreign ships coming to this country. I have had no argument from anyone as to why we should impose these extra requirements except, I gather from Senator Button, that the trade union movement would rather like to have some more ammunition. Senator Button, the Leader of the Government in the Senate, said that this in some way was not a new regulation. It is a new regulation and it does not replace any existing regulation or marine order. It is a totally new regulation; it is not replacing anything. Secondly, I should make clear that the Minister responsible for the handling of this Bill when the Navigation Amendment Bill came before the Senate undertook that the requirements it produced by regulation would implement the provisions of the ILO Convention. If the Government had done that, this motion would not have been moved. Although we think the Government is unwise in going beyond what we think is sensible administration, we accept that the Government is entitled to implement the ILO Convention. What we are worried about are the peculiarly Australian requirements-I have a two page list of those requirements-imposed on foreign ships which go beyond the ILO Convention. Why are we doing that? Once one starts on that slippery path where does one stop? It seems to me that we will finish up by imposing all the requirements that have made our shipping the scandalously inefficient and expensive method of transport that it is. Where does one stop on this? I will indicate to honourable senators the extra requirements that Australian ships must meet beyond those required by ILO Convention 147. There must be 2.25 crews per year per ship. This is to enable crew members to have six months leave a bit of sick time and other things. This means that there are more crews per ship on Australian ships than on comparable overseas ships. The ratio generally is about 26 to 18. This is coupled with the fact that one has to have 2 1/2 people to provide each of the 26 people in that crew. No maintenance is done by the crew during the voyage. The crew cannot chip rust. The wonderful story about ships with rust going into dockyards for maintenance is true. The crews on Australian ships do not do the maintenance. Australian crews move from one ship to another either locally inside Australia or internationally. They have first-class air fares on international flights and first-class air fares on internal flights. They must have bed-making services. They cannot make their own bunks! They must have steward-style catering. They cannot get their own food! They have stewards serving it to them. They must have separate smoke rooms for officers and ratings. Senator Button —Senator, you will agree, will you not, that all these things were agreed between employers and unions a number of years ago? I agree with you about what you are saying about them. The art form is to get rid of them, isn't it? Senator HAMER —Yes, but I think we have two problems. The first is to get rid of these extra requirements on Australian ships, and the second is not to impose them on foreign ships. And the Government is starting to impose them on foreign ships. Senator Button —No, those things are not imposed on foreign ships by this convention. Senator HAMER —I am giving all of them. Earlier in my speech I gave a list of the extra requirements not required by the ILO Convention, Australian standards, imposed on foreign ships. I am now giving the full list of extra Australian requirements, which is the inevitable end of the process which the Government has started. I continue: There must be separate smoke rooms for officers and ratings; separate TV rooms for officers and ratings; separate mess rooms for masters, officers and apprentices, and for ratings; and on some ships, for deck ratings and engine room ratings. I interpose here that in foreign ships they are getting everyone together-men of one company, as Drake said-not having separate apartments at great expense for all these different branches of the ship. The number of persons to be accommodated along one side of a mess table shall not exceed three. There must be single chairs fitted with arm rests in each mess room for each person. There must be a bookcase for all members of the crew. In ships over 8,000 tonnes facilities for all crew must include a film or television room, a room for hobbies or games and a swimming pool. In ships over 15,000 tonnes there must be a separate bathroom en suite for each officer. There must be an electric light fitted at the head of each berth capable of being switched on and off from the berth, and the direction of the beam capable of being adjusted. There must be separate sleeping rooms for each officer and each petty officer. There must be separate sleeping rooms in new ships for each rating if not under 18. Those under 18 are to sleep no more than two to a room in new ships. Officers' sleeping rooms are to be provided with an elaborate range of services. Ratings' sleeping rooms are also to be provided with a very elaborate range of services. Most European and Japanese ships are moving towards integrated mess and recreation facilities. These requirements are the exact opposite. Everyone recognises that our facilities are more lavish. The estimate of the capital cost of these facilities in each ship is more than $1m per ship for the extra requirements we have peculiar to Australia. The running costs for the extra crew-the fact that we need 2 1/2 people for each berth in a ship-are millions of dollars a year. These are the requirements which are extra to the ILO Convention. What the Government has taken on, by breaching its sensible rule of enforcing the ILO Convention and starting to enforce additional Australian requirements, is taking us down a very slippery slope and one that is going to be paid for ultimately not by the ship owners but by the Australian public and the Australian exporters. For that reason I strongly recommend that this regulation should be rejected and that the Government should be forced to introduce a new regulation that produces and enforces the ILO conventions, not the ILO conventions plus a small number of rorts that Australians seem to have imposed on our shipping industry with the prospect of a great many more rorts being introduced in the future. Question put: That the motion (Senator Hamer's) be agreed to. The Senate divided. (The President-Senator the Hon. Kerry Sibraa) Ayes . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Noes . . . . . . . . . . . 35 —— Majority . . . . . . . . . 6 —— Alston, R. K. R. Lewis, A. W. R. Archer, B. R. MacGibbon, D. J. Baume, Michael Messner, A. J. Baume, Peter Newman, J. M. Bjelke-Petersen, F. I. Puplick, C. J. G. Boswell, R. L. D. Reid, M. E. (Teller)Brownhill, D. G. C. Sheil, G. Collard, S. J. Siddons, J. R. Crichton-Browne, N. A. Teague, B. C. Durack, P. D. Townley, M. Guilfoyle, Dame Margaret Vanstone, A. E. Hamer, D. J. Walters, M. S. Hill, R. Watson, J. O. W. Jessop, D. S. Withers, R. G. Knowles, S. C. Aulich, T. McKiernan, J. P. Black, J. R. Macklin, M. J. Bolkus, N. Maguire, G. R. Childs, B. K. Mason, C. V. J. Coates, J. Morris, J. Coleman, R. N. Powell, J. F. Colston, M. A. Reynolds, M. Cook, P. F. S. Richardson, G. F. Cooney, B. Robertson, E. A. (Teller)Crowley, R. A. Ryan, S. M. Devlin, R. Sanders, N. K. Elstob, R. C. Sibraa, K. W. Evans, Gareth Tate, M. C. Foreman, D. J. Vigor, D. B. Gietzelt, A. T. Walsh, P. A. Giles, P. J. West, S. M. Grimes, D. J. Zakharov, A. O. Haines, J. Kilgariff, B. F. McIntosh, G. D. Carrick, Sir John Jones, G. N. Parer, W. R. Ray, RobertChaney, F. M. Button, J. N. Question so resolved in the negative. Debate resumed from 26 March, on motion by Senator Tate: That the Bill be now read a second time. Senator DURACK(Western Australia)(10.00) —On 10 December last year this Senate, after a most exhaustive debate, threw out lock, stock and barrel the Bill that is now before us again which the Government euphemistically calls a Bill for an Australia Card and which simply is a Bill to impose on 16 million Australians an identity card-virtually a human version of a dog licence. That legislation, as I said, was very carefully debated at great length in the Senate on the days prior to 10 December last year and was voted out by the Senate on that day. Now we have the same Bill back in the Senate in exactly the same terms as the one we rejected then. There was an exhaustive debate in the Parliament-not only in the Senate but in the House of Representatives as well. Afterwards, the Minister for Health, Dr Blewett, who is responsible for this legislation, announced that the Government would be amending the Australia Card Bill and taking note of the criticisms that had been made about the Bill in the Parliament and by many other people in the course of that debate at the end of last year. Yet last week the very same Bill was put before the House of Representatives and passed there. It is now submitted to us again in exactly the same terms as those under which it was rejected in December last year. About six week ago, early in February, the Government announced that it had taken notice of these things and would make a number of amendments to the legislation. I ask the Government: Why is it now producing this legislation in exactly the same terms without any of the amendments and in fact, as far as I am aware, without anyone being told in detail what the amendments were, except that they would be made and would accommodate many of the criticisms of the legislation? So it is quite clear that the Government in presenting this legislation again is doing so for a cynical, political agenda. That is wholly and solely the reason we are being forced to go through a further debate in this Senate on exactly the same Bill which was exhaustively debated and rejected in December last year. The Government has shown no flexibility whatsoever in relation to this matter. It has borne on again with the same tired, old, discredited arguments in this second round as we went through in the first round of this Bill at the end of last year. Throughout the whole of this debate the Opposition has maintained a consistent and principled position. The Government and particularly the Minister in his second reading speech in the other place and the Special Minister of State (Senator Tate) in the second reading speech in this place have accused the Opposition virtually of every political crime that they could think of. Political opportunism is one of the major criticisms that the Ministers made. The Minister in this place described our arguments as trivial, shallow, misleading and so on but one thing shines out in the Minister's argument in introducing this Bill a second time: The Government has given no further justification for the legislation it brings forward. The Minister, as I said, devoted the whole of his time to throwing abuse at the stand the Opposition has taken and has advanced no new satisfactory reasons for why the Government is proceeding again only because it sees some political opportunism of its own-not political opportunism by the Opposition of which it accuses us-in this whole sordid exercise that we are being forced to go through again. The Government's reasons which it advanced earlier have been fully met in extensive public debate outside this chamber probably as much as within it. As I said, the Government has presented no new arguments. The Opposition in this debate, far from taking a politically opportunistic stance, has taken a thoroughly principled stance. We have taken the stance that this legislation is quite unnecessary and unworkable and we maintain the stance that it is a gross and massive violation of the individual privacy and civil liberties of Australians. It could well be the thin end of a wedge to be driven through all those rights of privacy and liberty which we cherish so highly. The Government has totally ignored these arguments, arguments which, of course, are not unique to the Opposition but are widely held throughout the community. It is very sobering to see that in the arguments that the Government has advanced and which the Opposition has rejected we are in very notable company with those who take the same view. So if we in the Opposition are guilty of all the political crimes in the book which Dr Blewett and the Minister representing him here maintain, we are in extremely good company in Australia. Far from any opportunism on our part, the fact is that polling that has been done on this legislation-although results have fluctuated a good deal-consistently has indicated that a majority in those polls support this legislation and that totally undermines the criticism that the Government has levelled at the Opposition. As I have said, the vast number of people and organisations in this country have maintained the very same concerns and have used the very same arguments against this legislation which we have consistently exercised. The President of the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties is a very distinguished Australian lawyer-one who is well known to the Government and one who I am sure is held in very high regard at least by Senator Tate, who is the Minister at the table tonight-and that is Mr Ron Castan, QC. On behalf of the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties he has issued a pamphlet which is headed `Oppose Canberra's UnAustralian Australia Card'. I am holding the pamphlet in my hand, and I hope that Government senators have read or will read what is said in it because it summarises, in a way which could not be clearer or simpler, all the arguments which the Opposition has been using throughout this debate. It points out that the un-Australian Australia Card identity system is not an effective way to beat the tax and social security cheats. It states that the ID card-it quite rightly emphasises that it is an identity card-is an extravagant, highly expensive and bureaucratic waste of taxpayer's money. It goes on to point out that not only will it cost the Government about a billion dollars of taxpayers' money to bring it into operation-- Senator Tate —That is not right. Senator DURACK —That is the very figure that the Opposition has always referred to. Senator Tate —It does not make it credible. Senator DURACK —This is what Mr Castan is saying; it is not what the Opposition is saying, although it happens to be the same estimate as we have made. The Council states that it will cost $800m to $1,000m of taxpayers' money to set it up and that it will cost Australian industry $2 billion which will have to be passed on to Australians in higher prices. The Government says `We don't agree with that figure', but in fact the Government's Business Regulation Review Unit has found that the cost to private industry of government regulation is a factor of about 2:1; whatever is the government expenditure on regulation, private industry has imposed on it twice that figure. That figure of $2 billion is arrived at from the advice and findings of the Government's Business Regulation Review Unit. As Mr Castan points out, it will be at least six years before the card will earn net revenue for the Government-if ever. The pamphlet goes on to point out that the Department of Social Security admits that the identity card will not stop welfare cheating and that that Department has estimated that no net revenue will be received by it from this identity card. It then goes on to give a brief description of the way the card will work. There is a very clear and very detailed analysis of the arguments against the card-not by the Opposition, but it so happens that at this stage of this long debate everything that the Opposition has said about this card is summarised and supported by that independent body presided over by one of Australia's most eminent lawyers. Incidentally, he is not a lawyer who is likely to be a supporter of the Opposition; indeed, he is a most independent, non-political lawyer heading a council which the Government and honourable senators opposite have been constantly quoting in support of many of their causes. It is not just the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties alone that takes that view; I think most of the councils of civil liberties around Australia do. This evening I signed a letter to the Secretary of the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, who has written to me, as no doubt she has to all other senators, expressing strong opposition to this card. A wide cross-section of the Australian community has already given support to opposition to the ID card. An advertisement was placed in the Weekend Australian last November. I refer to some of the names of people associated with that strong protest: I have mentioned Mr Castan whose name appears here again; Bishop Michael Challen, the Assistant Anglican Bishop of Perth; Mr Roger Clarke, a well known academic; and Mr Frank Costigan, QC, who has been a strong Labor lawyer throughout his life, who is probably the most distinguished investigator of crime in this country and who is opposed to this card because he knows and he has said over and again that it simply will not do the job, that it will not work. I will not read them all out, but there is a host of names of people representing a vast range of leading community figures across the political spectrum and from all walks of life in this nation. In addition, however, to individuals who have expressed those views against the card there has been a galaxy of leading organisations in Australia which have expressed the same opposition to it. I will list a number of them to show the variety and significance of organisations which are opposed to the card, for the same reasons as the Opposition has advanced throughout this debate. They include: The Confederation of Australian Industry, the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia, the Real Estate Institute of Australia, the New South Wales Council of Australian Small Business Associations, the Australian Associated Stock Exchanges, the Victorian Chamber of Commerce, the South Australian Chamber of Commerce and the Law Council of Australia which, in its submission to us all, has expressed grave concern about the inadequacy of the Government's watchdog, its Data Protection Agency, and its rules and operations and the provisions in the legislation about that. The Law Council of Australia has been most concerned about the inadequacy of those rules. Other organisations that have opposed the Australia Card proposals are: The International Commission of Jurists, the Australian Catholic Welfare Commission, the Anglican Social Responsibilities Commission of the Anglican Diocese of Perth, the New South Wales Privacy Committee which was set up by the Wran Labor Government, the New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Board, the Administrative and Clerical Officers Association, the Federated Clerks Union of Australia and the Victorian Teachers Union. Only today I had brought to my attention the fact that the National Youth Council of Australia has totally rejected Labor's identity card proposals. It has adopted, according to a recent news bulletin, virtually the same arguments as the Opposition has been using. This is not a piece of political opportunism or some aberration for the political purposes of the Opposition. The Government and Government supporters should be asking: How is it that the arguments that the Opposition has used consistently throughout this long debate are used over and over again by this wide spectrum of the Australian community, both individuals and organisations? It is really very simple because the arguments that are used are so overwhelmingly sensible and convincing to everybody, apparently, except the Government and its supporters. I have already said what the cost of setting up this card will be. The Government said: `It is only about $759m'. How does it arrive at $759m? We have already had many estimates by governments of what things will cost: Just take the new Parliament House as it slowly rises behind us. It will probably cost three, four or five times the original cost estimate. Yet the Government makes a great issue about the card by saying `It will not cost $1,000m; it will cost only $759m' as though it can work out that figure with such accuracy. Even on its own admission, the Government has not taken into account the costs of State and local authorities. So we are quite entitled to add in those costs and take a round figure. But on the Government's own admission 2,150 extra Commonwealth public servants will be needed to set up the Australia Card. All existing Medicare offices will be upgraded and 15 new Medicare offices will be established because this card will replace the Medicare card. Based on the Government's Business Regulation Review Unit's assessment the cost to private industry will be about $2 billion. The banks have just issued some costings of what the card will mean to them. It will cost $60m to implement and $5m a year thereafter. However, in a later submission the banks went further and showed that the card would be quite unworkable for the banks. One will have to use the card to open a bank account or to operate an existing bank account. The banks have shown that the system throughout all their branches in Australia cannot readily be fed into the computerised system that is required to operate the card. Many banking agencies around the country operate manually and it would be simply impossible for the banks to carry out the demands that will be made upon them and maintain their existing standard of service. The banks have said that if the card is to be imposed upon them, it will reduce the convenience and availability of banking services throughout the whole of Australia. The Government says that this card will result in taxation savings of something like $4,000m over 10 years. It will take at least six years before that is any credit at all. The Minister has given various figures in the course of debates on this subject. The Minister has estimated higher amounts at times but he has included savings from the social security system that the Department of Social Security has said will not be made. The Minister has claimed benefits from illegal migration which the joint committee of our two Houses have found in its investigation is a massive exaggeration. Figures are simply plucked out of the air. The Opposition takes the view that the same savings, if not more, can be made in the taxation area by upgrading the Australian Taxation Office and improving its efficiency along the lines of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Expenditure report which is based on a series of Auditor-General's reports on the problems in the Taxation Office. Those reports collected by the Expenditure Committee indicate the massive failure of the Tax Office in recent years to use material that has been given to it, to collect material that it is entitled to have and to spend money on modern computer methods and modern administrative methods to make the most use of the powers and information that it has. Savings of between $400m and $500m a year could be made simply by improving the operations of the Taxation Office. The report `A Taxing Matter' has been tabled in this Parliament and has been the subject of widespread acceptance. In round terms, the Government's own estimates of savings that it is proposing to make by this intrusive, unnecessary, unworkable and highly expensive identity card-as I said, savings will be made over a period of 10 years and we will be many years down the track before any savings at all are made-can be achieved in a much quicker time, with far less expenditure, perhaps a couple of hundred of million dollars, by upgrading the Taxation Office. Perhaps it can insist on its upgrading itself because it is the subject of massive criticism for its failures. If it were made workable in that way savings of about the same as the Government estimates it would get from this card could be made and far less of an assault would be made on Australia's privacy, liberties and traditions; there would be no massive increase in public servants and other expenditures and private industries would be saved from massive increased costs. Finally, the Opposition rests its case on the enormous intrusion into individual privacy that this legislation entails. It entirely reverses the principle that the Government should be accountable to the people. This makes people entirely accountable to the Government simply to establish their own identity. Sixteen million Australians will be asked to establish their identity under this legislation. Indeed, under this legislation if one loses one's card and does not report it within 21 days one would be committing an offence. We simply will not be able to carry on as ordinary citizens in this country without having the card with us at all times. The Government says that the legislation does not say that we have to have it with us at all times, but this card is necessary for opening a bank account, buying any form of property or getting a job. We have to produce it to get a job. As I have said it is a massive intrusion into not only individual privacy; the Government is giving us a licence to live. As I said earlier in this debate, it is the human equivalent of a dog licence. This is what this Government is proposing to impose on each and every Australian citizen-not those who are simply on welfare or paying taxes even. Everybody, every man, woman and child in this country, will have to have this card. The information will all be stored in a central register. Although the Government says that it will be used only for certain purposes, who knows in future what use will be made of a whole range of private information about every individual in this community! As the Law Council has shown in its submission, the protections that the Government is seeking to build into this legislation to protect privacy are inadequate and simply will not do the job. Australians will be massively assaulted in their ordinary rights and in the standards that they have come to enjoy in this country as a result of this card. The Opposition will continue to maintain its opposition to it. We will speak against it in this debate as long as it is necessary to do so and we will vote against it as we did on 10 December last year. Debate interrupted. The PRESIDENT —Order! It being 10.30 p.m., I put the question: That the Senate do now adjourn. Senator NEWMAN(Tasmania)(10.30) —I rise tonight on a matter of concern to some of my constituents in a rural community in Tasmania, the village of Beaconsfield on the Tamar River. It also concerns the South African nephew of one of my constituents. The situation is that Dr Grant, the doctor in this small community, wishes to retire. Some time last year he advertised his practice throughout Australia for sale. He had been unable to sell the practice when Dr Peachey, a South African doctor of medicine and the nephew of a Tasmanian constituent of mine, came to visit his aunt on a holiday in Tasmania. That was in August last year. In the course of his visit he discovered that this practice was for sale and took an option on the practice, which expires this month. Immediately on return to South Africa, Dr Peachey applied in Pretoria for permission to come to Australia. That was at the end of August or the beginning of September. By the middle of November Dr Peachey had still not heard anything from the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, and his aunt came to me to see whether something could be done to find out why there was a delay and what was happening to his application. I wrote on 13 November to the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, Mr Hurford, and received an acknowledgment, but not an answer, dated 20 November. On 15 December I wrote again, reminding the Minister that this needed urgent attention and asking for his urgent reply. On 12 January, a month later, this letter was acknowledged. On 17 February I wrote again to Mr Hurford urging an urgent reply, and on 11 March I received an acknowledgment. I find those delays totally unacceptable. Therefore, last week I contacted the office of the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Minister Assisting the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, Mr Holding, asking for an investigation to be made into what was causing the delays. Mr Malone of the Minister's staff said that he would investigate and try to get back to me. He said he would see whether the matter could be expedited. He agreed that the lack of answers to me was unsatisfactory and said that he would see that it was remedied. I was then rung by a member of the departmental staff telling me that there was a letter in the mail. That was in the middle of last week. I have still not received a reply. I am concerned that my work on behalf of my constituents is being impeded by the lack of efficiency in the Ministers' offices and I feel that we are seeing here a very deliberate attempt by the Government to delay immigration by white South Africans to this country. I think this matter is serious because of a number of things we see happening. One is that the small community of Beaconsfield looks as though it is going to be without a doctor. It is very common in Australia for country doctors to find it quite difficult to find a replacement. Therefore, when we have somebody who is prepared to work in and own a country practice we should not turn him down when Australian doctors are not willing to take those places. In the case of Dr Peachey, his wife is a triple certificated nursing sister. She has applied to the Launceston General Hospital for employment. As the Special Minister of State, Senator Tate, who is at the table, would realise, that hospital needs every qualified nursing sister it can get, and she would have no difficulty in being gainfully employed to the benefit of our constituents in Launceston. In addition, Dr Peachey has special skills relating to underwater medicine. The area of Beaconsfield is in close proximity to the Australian Maritime College and I understand that his skills would be of great assistance to the students and the staff of the College. I am concerned that these delays are occurring for quite deliberate reasons but, if they are not, they indicate severe inefficiencies in both Ministers' offices. I draw this matter to the attention of the Senate not in the hope of scoring political points, particularly against the Government, but in the hope that something can be urgently done to facilitate the immigration of two people to my State who would offer a lot to people in the community in the village of Beaconsfield, in the Launceston General Hospital and in the Australian Maritime College. They seem to me to be just the sort of immigrants we need, and I cannot understand why after seven months Dr Peachey still has no answer and why after four months there has still been no answer to me. Senator MICHAEL BAUME(New South Wales)(10.35) —In the House of Representatives Hansard of last Thursday, 26 March, on page 1663 and reported in the Illawarra Mercury newspaper of 28 March-that is, Saturday-Mr Colin Hollis, the honourable member for Throsby, alleged of me, as Chairman of the Opposition's outstandingly successful Waste Watch Committee: . . . last week he had a Commonwealth car waiting for 1 1/2 hours while he was at the dentist. He went on: He was wasting taxpayers' money while he was at the dentist . . . The Illawarra Mercury, which received a Press release from Mr Hollis advising it of these false allegations he has made under parliamentary privilege, ran them prominently on page 4 under the heading `Baume's wasting tax money: Hollis'. It does no good for the status of the Parliament that this sort of inconsequential matter, which in this instance is simply untrue, should receive such prominence, let alone be raised by a member of parliament. In fact, Mr Hollis's allegations are totally false. I did not visit a dentist either last week or the week before and I have never ever required a Commonwealth car to wait for me while visiting a dentist in Canberra- or anywhere else for that matter. The last time I attended a dentist's surgery in Canberra for emergency work was on Tuesday, 25 February, when the Opposition Whip granted me one hour's leave from the sitting of the Senate from 10.10 a.m. to 11.10 a.m. in order to attend a 10.15 appointment in Civic, which is only five minutes drive from Parliament House, as honourable senators know. The Hansard record for that day shows that I was back in the Senate for a division at approximately 11.15 a.m., barely one hour later. There is no instance of my ever spending 1 1/2 hours at a dentist's surgery in Canberra, nor have I ever kept a Commonwealth car waiting for such a period. Mr Hollis's allegations are simply totally false. There is no record of my having booked a Commonwealth car or my having kept it for any time whatsoever outside any dental surgery. If Mr Hollis is referring to 25 February, I did not book a Commonwealth car for the visit to the dentist. As is usual in such circumstances, I asked the Senate Transport Office to provide me with whatever transport it had readily available from those cars that wait on call outside the Parliament House building during session, whether it be a Commonwealth car, a hire car or a taxi. On this occasion, the Senate Transport Office allocated me a Commonwealth car which was waiting in a line of shuttle cars that are permanently available for the use of senators. I did not require the car to wait for me. I repeat: I did not require the car to wait for me. On the contrary, I asked the Senate Transport Office what would suit it best-the car returning, as it had done on a previous visit I had made for emergency dental treatment last year, or waiting. Whether or not the car was to wait idle in Civic for me or whether it was to return and wait idle outside Parliament House before having to drive back to Civic to pick me up after the dental visit was not my decision. I leave such matters to those responsible for parliamentary transport. In this instance it was apparently considered more practical and cost-efficient to leave the car in Civic during the period of my appointment rather than have it unnecessarily driven back to Parliament House and have it return to Civic later, particularly as there was little likelihood of any demand for the use of the car during that short period, as the Senate was actually in session and senators could absent themselves properly only with leave. As a result, the decision to have the car wait in Civic did not add one cent to taxpayers' or anyone else's costs. On the contrary, it saved the costs of an unnecessary return trip from Parliament House to Civic. This matter raises a question of concern regarding parliamentary privilege. Mr Hollis said that he was satisfied that the source of his information was sound, and Mr Humphreys, the Government Whip with whom I spoke last Friday on this matter, said that the information came from `someone pretty high up'. My concern is that one of the most important reasons for the existence of a Commonwealth car fleet is the confidentiality involved, both as to destinations and conversations conducted in such cars. It is a confidentiality that could not be guaranteed by a hire car or taxi drivers, who are not subject to Public Service regulations. That is a point I made, by the way, in defence of the Commonwealth car pool and the service provided in an interview last year on Channel 9 which, as honourable senators will remember, was involved independently-it bore no relationship to the Waste Watch Committee-in seeking to establish that there was waste in the Commonwealth car pool and that it should not continue. I repeat: I defended the Commonwealth car pool on that principle, among others. If there are people employed in this Commonwealth car service who are prepared to break this confidentiality for political purposes, I believe there is a need to establish what redress senators have in general and in particular against the use of such deliberately false accusations based on such breaches of confidentiality by members of the House of Representatives. In this instance the fact that the allegations are so patently false, although based on the fact of a visit to the dentist, indicates that it may have developed from some misheard casual or mistaken comment, but not, I must stress, from the two Senate transport officers, who both have very high reputations for integrity and who deny having discussed this matter with anyone. Details of the facts of my statement to the Senate are verifiable from the Senate Transport Office, whose officers are aware that I am making this statement. If Mr Hollis, MP, were a man of any repute, he would not have made this false accusation under parliamentary privilege. A decent man would now apologise. I do not expect him to do so. This occurrence is part of a deliberate pattern which, I understand, has been agreed to by various members of the Labor Caucus following a Cabinet meeting last week at which the impact of the Waste Watch Committee, which I chair, on the Government was raised and concerns were expressed about the political damage that the Waste Watch Committee was imposing on this corrupt Government. I use the word `corrupt' in the moral sense. This concern was expressed, I understand, also in the Labor Caucus and, following discussion in the Labor Caucus, it was decided that those Labor members of parliament whose principles allowed them to spread this kind of total falsehood, whose principles encompassed that capacity, would proceed on that course of action. It is an absolute disgrace that the Government does not have the capacity to respond effectively to the accurate and certainly damaging revelations of the Waste Watch Committee and has stooped to this kind of nonsense through one of the least credible and least creditable members of the House of Representatives. To give further evidence of the concern expressed within the Cabinet last week, I refer to this morning's Melbourne Sun-News Pictorial, which reports as follows: The Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, will instruct his ministers this week to keep a tighter control on grants to community groups. He will also ask for greater care in the public description of what grants are for. The move follows more than a year of damaging publicity about the alleged waste of government funds on fringe groups and doubtful projects. Senator Newman —They should have done that before. Senator MICHAEL BAUME —Yes, I agree, Senator. The Government should have done that before. The article continues: The publicity has made difficult the government task of selling to the community the need for restraint and lower living standards to meet the economic difficulties. I interpose that that is absolutely so. While the Government continues to waste money, while it continues to increase these grants to trendy groups, to people whose support it is purchasing with taxpayers' money, it certainly must be difficult for the Government to try to convince the rest of Australia that there should be restraint. I continue reading from today's Sun-News Pictorial: Mr Hawke first raised the problem of grants at a full ministry meeting last November. That is after, of course, the Waste Watch Committee's exposures on the John Laws program had generated enormous unhappiness among those people who are paying the bill-that is, the taxpayers of Australia. The article continues: The continued attention on the issue since then resulted in the grants' issue being raised again in Cabinet two weeks ago. In a letter to be sent to all ministers this week, Mr Hawke stresses the importance of grant allocations being carefully supervised. It says all decisions on grants should be based on well-informed information and should be capable of being publicly defended. I would like to see the Government try effectively to defend the grant to which we gave the golden banana award, that is, the one that Mr Hawke's own Department made to a female surfboard designer who admitted on television last week that this was not a grant for surfing-this was a grant for politics. In fact, she admitted quite happily that she was using this grant not to benefit surfing, but as a tool for the women's movement. It might just as well have been used for kite flying or anything else. The article continues: It suggests any minister having doubts about the desirability of a grant in his or her portfolio should consult colleagues. The letter says most of the criticism of grants is centred on the description of the activity or the name of the group receiving it. While much of the criticism is uninformed, the letter says, it is still to be avoided. I have news for Mr Hawke: The criticism is very well informed. The article continues: The government grants issue was highlighted last week when the Opposition waste watch committee announced its top 10 examples of government waste. Of course, the Committee gave the top award to Mr Hawke. I do not mind that the Government is concerned about the impact that the Waste Watch Committee is having on the Government and its image. It does not concern me that the Government is responding belatedly to it by trying to impose some restraint itself-belatedly. In fact, I am quite pleased that the Waste Watch Committee has at least had that kind of impact and will, hopefully, save some taxpayers' funds from being wasted in the ludicrous way in which they have been in this cynical attempt to purchase support with taxpayers' money. But I object in the most strenuous way, on the basis that this is an attempt to stand over a senator, to members of another place deciding that, no matter what the facts, no matter what the merits of the situation, they will seek to denigrate the Waste Watch Committee and to attack me personally on these false, puerile, and nonsensical grounds to try to divert attention from their own ludicrous behaviour. What Mr Hollis has done is indefensible. He has created a situation in which, I suppose, there is a real risk that the whole question of use of cars by senators and members of the House of Representatives could become the centre of an unfortunate public airing. I have no desire to participate in that, but I have nothing to hide and, as a result, I have nothing to lose in participating in such a battle, if the intention of Mr Hollis and his colleagues is to ensure that this sort of thing is aired in this way. I suggest to those in the Labor Party that it would be in all our best interests if the dogs were called off. In particular, if they want to try to bite me, they should find an issue in which they can at least be on the periphery of accuracy. They should at least try to have truth as the predominant element in what they are saying. On those grounds I am happy to combat them at any time. The reality is, of course, that they do not have available to them any facts, any truth, that would add to their attempts to smear or denigrate me. Senator TATE(Tasmania-Special Minister of State)(10.50) —Very briefly in reply to the honourable senators who have contributed to tonight's adjournment debate, Senator Newman raised the question of the immigration to Australia of a doctor from South Africa together with his wife, a qualified nurse. Senator Newman made out a case for the benefits that will flow to a small community in northern Tasmania called Beaconsfield, if it were to be serviced by the doctor purchasing the practice there, and doing so in the near future as the resident country doctor is moving away from that practice. I shall bring her request for a speedy resolution of this matter to the attention of the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs (Mr Young). I am sure I would be echoing what she has heard already from the Minister's office if I were to apologise for the somewhat tardy response to some of her written requests for a response. Clearly the phone call that she eventually made should have been made a lot earlier. I do not say that by way of reprimand but simply say that that is the way to get action. One point in Senator Newman's remarks requires some rebuttal on behalf of the Government. I suggest that to deal with this couple as illustrative of what she called a very deliberative policy to frustrate the migration of white South Africans to Australia is rather overstating and exaggerating the instance that she has come across. Senator Newman —Why are they deliberately leaving it understaffed? Senator TATE —I do not think they are deliberately leaving it understaffed. In relation to the Royal Hobart Hospital I made representations late last year in much the same situation. It has been the case that the swamping of South African consular and embassy officials by requests from South Africans to migrate to Australia has led to bottlenecks, which occasionally need to be unblocked by the sort of representations which Senator Newman has made and which I hope will bear fruit. But to say that this is evidence of a deliberate policy to frustrate migration of white South Africans is quite false. Senator Michael Baume raised a matter of which I was not aware, apparently an allegation raised by Mr Hollis in another place. Senator Michael Baume asked in the course of his remarks what redress members had in such a situation. I think that tonight's debate is perhaps the most obvious way in which a senator can seek redress, and that is by making the sort of extended personal explanation that we have heard from Senator Michael Baume. I am unable to make any judgment on the matter. I only hope that the elements of falsity in the saga relate to the story rather than to Senator Baume's teeth in this whole unhappy matter. The honourable senator's vigorous defence will stand by itself in the Hansard and no doubt is as adequate a redress as senators normally avail themselves of in these situations. I do not accept that the Government, either in the Cabinet room or at Caucus level, has singled out Senator Michael Baume for destruction. I am certainly not aware of any such policy. I think that it overstates the importance of the Waste Watch Committee in the deliberations of government for that rather egotistical assumption to be made by Senator Michael Baume as the explanation for Mr Hollis's remarks. Question resolved in the affirmative. Senate adjourned at 10.54 p.m. The following papers were tabled: Crimes Act-Regulations-Statutory Rules 1987 No. 43. Dairy Produce Act-Regulation-Statutory Rules 1987 No. 42. Seat of Government (Administration) Act- Determination made under the following Ordinance- Health Authority, dated 23 February 1987. Regulations 1987- No. 1 (Magistrates Court Rules (Amendment) Ordinance). No. 2 (Magistrates Court (Civil Jurisdiction) (Fees) (Amendment) Ordinance). Superannuation Act-Regulation-Statutory Rules 1987 No. 41. The following answers to questions were circulated: (Question No. 1496) Senator Hamer asked the Minister representing the Minister for Communications, upon notice, on 13 November 1986: (1) What restrictive work practices are in force at the Australian Postal Commission, which, in the opinion of management, reduce productivity without any compensatory safety or industrial health benefits. (2) What restrictive work practices in force at the Australian Postal Commission, while having some safety or industrial health benefits, are done in such a way that comparable benefits could be achieved with less loss of productivity. (3) What new restrictive work practices, of the type noted above, have come into force in the last year. (4) What restrictive work practices, of the type noted above, have been eliminated in the past year and what have been the benefits to productivity in each case. (5) Has the management advised the Minister for Communications of the total annual cost of these restrictive work practices; if so, what is the total annual cost of these restrictive work practices. Senator Walsh —The Minister for Communications has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question, based on information provided by the Australian Postal Commission: (1) No restrictive work practices have been identified by management other than those referred to in (4) below. (2) See (1) above. (3) None. (4) The following measures have been introduced in the last twelve months: a continuous shift rostering structure which has aligned staffing more closely to the work available; a Work Improvement Programme for mail processing and supervisory staff at mail centres aimed at ensuring all staff are working to the required standards; a procedure for preventing the creation of unnecessary and avoidable backlogs of mail by transferring mail between mail centres and post offices; the abolition of unwarranted time concessions such as unduly lengthy wash-up times and tea-breaks; and the elimination of unnecessary expenditure through the calling of overtime on an `as required' rather than an `all on' basis. The elimination of these unsatisfactory working arrangements has improved productivity, resulting in a much improved standard of mail service, particularly in New South Wales. (5) No. (Question No. 1610) Senator Bolkus asked the Minister representing the Minister for Communications, upon notice, on 17 February 1987: (1) How many copies of the 1987 edition of the Australia Post Calendar were produced. (2) What was the expense of this produce. (3) To whom are the calendars distributed. Senator Walsh —The Minister for Communications has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question, based on information provided by Australia Post: (1) 10,000. (2) $19,674. (3) The calendars were produced by Australia Post's South Australian Administration for South Australia's Centenary. Twenty-eight calendars were distributed to Federal parliamentarians, approximately eighty were distributed to representatives of South Australian and Northern Territory media organisations and the remainder has been distributed to Australia Post customers throughout South Australia and the Northern Territory. Senator Ryan —On 26 February 1987 (Hansard, page 703) Senator Vanstone asked me about the number of Austudy applications that have been accelerated where students are in extreme circumstances. The answer to the honourable senator's question is as follows: In cases of genuine hardship my Department has given assurances that every effort will be made to issue prompt payments. Manual processing procedures will be used where appropriate to achieve this. According to the records held by my Department the number of applications paid by an advance manual payment up to c.o.b. 11 March 1987 is 3655. A number of applications have also been accelerated and paid through the system. Statistics are not kept on these by all States so an approximate figure was obtained where necessary. The number of applications accelerated but paid through the system is approaching 2000. I should add that all eligible students who apply before the set closing date will in any case have their entitlements backdated to 1 January.