Tuesday, 15 September 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 members of the Senate in Parliament assembled: The humble petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth: The Hawke Labor Government's ID card proposal is the most far reaching and intrusive piece of Australian legislation ever, and that on all the evidence available will not tackle in the most cost-efficient and effective manner tax and social security fraud. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that the Senate in Parliament assembled should reject Labor's ID card proposal to prevent a gross waste of taxpayers' money and a significant infringement of civil liberties. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Archer (from 10 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. We the undersigned are deeply concerned at the impact of the proposed Australia Card legislation on the following grounds: 1. We believe that it represents potentially undesirable interference in the lives of honest Australians and is a grave interference in the civil liberties of Australian citizens; 2. That it will not address the problems of tax evasion and social security fraud; 3. That it will create unnecessary expansion of the bureaucracy; and calls on the Senate to reject the legislation. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Brownhill (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 respectfully showeth: (1) That we are totally opposed to the proposed introduction of the Labor Government's Identity Card. (2) That this form of national and compulsory identification will be intrusive and authoritarian, and alien to the Australian way of life. (3) That we are deeply concerned at the Labor Government's resorting to such a far-reaching and expensive measure to deal with the problems of tax evasion and social security fraud. We call upon the Government to improve management systems within the Australian Taxation Office and appropriate departments to tackle these issues. Your Petitioners urge those members present to reject the Indentification Card proposal. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Harradine (from 585 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 the proposed national ID Card and numbering system threatens the privacy of law-abiding Australians opening the door to computer matching of personal information, will cause inconvenience to rural people in particular, and will result in massive compliance costs for private business. That the Joint Parliamentary Select Committee Report of 1986 showed that the Australia Card will not be effective in combating taxation and social security fraud and illegal immigration, as its cost savings are based on faulty estimates. That accordingly the Senate and Parliament should reject the Australia Card Bill. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Knowles (from 11,648 citizens). To the Honourable President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned citizens of Australia respectfully showeth: 1. That the Bill of Rights will have the power to override and negate our Common Law within five years of its enactment. 2. Because the Bill of Rights is based on an International Covenant, this will take the control of our country out of the hands of the people and their democratically elected representatives, giving the power to those outside Australia. Your petitioners therefore pray: 1. That the Senate rejects the Australian Bill of Rights and all cognate Bills. 2. That as our representatives, you protect our Australian Heritage and Christian culture and values, both in the Education System, and through the Media. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Durack (from 40 citizens). To the Honourable the President and Honourable members of the Senate assembled. The petition of the undersigned in the State of Queensland showeth that the electoral system in Queensland, based on a 4 zonal weighted system, is an affront to democracy. The National Party under the leadership of Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen is always returned to Government with no opportunity for the voting public to bring about a change. Your petitioners point out that under the Queensland voting system the National Party at the State Elections on 1 November 1986 managed to achieve 55 per cent of the seats with only 39 per cent of the votes. This demonstrates that 61 per cent of Queenslanders do not want a National Party Government yet received one. Your petitioners therefore earnestly pray that the Federal Government legislates as a matter of urgency to bring about a democratic system of voting in Queensland State elections based on the principle of one vote one value. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Colston (from 14 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 citizens, call on the Commonwealth Government to introduce a ban on smoking on flights of 90 minutes or less. This ban should be introduced irrespective of the stand-off attitudes adopted by the airlines at present. by Senator Durack (from 590 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% discounting of Commonwealth Occupational Superannuation Scheme pension adjustments on 10 Oct 86 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 Oct 86 to 1 Jul 87 so that pensions are restored to the 9 Oct 86 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 Senators Brownhill (from 50 citizens), Button (from eight citizens), Chaney (from 13 citizens), Gietzelt (from 18 citizens), Knowles (from seven citizens), Lewis (from 22 citizens), Jones (from 44 citizens), Puplick (from six citizens) and Ryan (from 46 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. We the undersigned, (i) are greatly disturbed by the dangers to health posed by passive smoking, and evidence of which is being documented daily by medical authorities around the world; (ii) note that environmental tobacco smoke has been identified as the major pollutant in aeroplane cabins, and that its direct threat to health is recognised in the special leave provisions for flight attendants specifically on grounds of upper respiratory infections; (iii) appreciate the government's undertaking to legislate for smoke-free travel on aeroplanes, but are dismayed at the apparent reluctance to follow up the Minister for Aviation's December announcement with action; and (iv) call upon the government to make smoke-free aeroplane travel a reality without further delay, and to ensure that smoke-free areas which cannot be contaminated by recycled pollutants, are available at all aerodromes. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senators Chaney (from 20 citizens), Jones (from 71 citizens), Knowles (from 21 citizens) and Ryan (from 1,145 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 Senators Jones (from nine citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned respectfully showeth: That there is widespread concern by farmers and consumers, about the proposal to Irradiate Food in Australia. Your petitioners, most humbly pray that the Senate in Parliament assembled, should (1) block the introduction of food irradiation into Australia. (2) ban the import of Cobalt-60 and Caesium-137 and Cesium-134 to be used to irradiate food products. (3) ban the import of all machinery used for food irradiation (Electron beam, x-ray etc.) (4) ban the importation and sale of irradiated food in Australia. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senators Jones (from 280 citizens). To the Right Honourable President, the Senate, Federal Parliament House, Canberra. The humble petition from the people of Tasmania showeth that we, electors and residents of the Commonwealth of Australia, are outraged at the 300% increase in the level of the Overseas Student visa charge, since its introduction which causes many Overseas Students great financial and emotional hardship and also threaten the Overseas Student Programme. According to the Mini Budget this year, the Overseas Students enrolling for the first time in 1988, should have to pay up to $7 000 for their tertiary education, which is far beyond what most Overseas Students intending to study in Australia are able to pay. Require: We urge you, elected members of Parliament- 1. to preserve a democratic opportunity for Overseas Students to study in Australia. 2. to prevent the continuing upward spiral of the Overseas Student visa charge. 3. and further, consider reducing the charge to a level manageable by most Overseas Students. by Senators Jones (from 222 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. We, the undersigned citizens, respectfully showeth: that we are totally opposed to the introduction of the Government's Identity Card; that this form of national and compulsory identification will be intrusive, costly for taxpayers and business and will not be effective in combating the growing problems of tax evasion, illegal immigrants or social security; that we call upon the Government to improve management systems within the Australian Tax Office and other Departments to crack down on tax evasion and fraudulent practices. As in duty bound your petitioners will ever pray. by Senator Crichton-Browne (from 11 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned Australian citizens shows that: An ID Card numbering system for all Australians would give future governments tremendous power to collect sensitive information and use it against us. Criminal elements could benefit by forging cards and documents needed to obtain them, or by illegally accessing the data in the system. The dangers are much greater than with current systems such as Medicare, as the Australia Card number could link so many different confidential records. The cost to government and private enterprise of implementing the ID Card would be enormous, outweighing any gains. Tax cheats can be stopped more effectively by better checks in the present system. Your petitioners therefore pray that you will reject the Australia Card Bill. by Senator Chapman (from 780 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. We, the undersigned citizens, respectfully showeth: that we are totally opposed to the introduction of the Government's Identity Card; that this form of national and compulsory identification will be intrusive, costly for taxpayers and business and will not be effective in combating the growing problems of tax evasion, illegal immigrants or social security; that we call upon the Government to improve management 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 Senator Jones (from 29 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: Moreton Island is an invaluable natural resource for Queensland and the world and that mining on Moreton would gravely compromise its unique flora and fauna and its outstanding recreational archaeological and scientific values. Your petitioners most humbly pray that the Senate in Parliament assembled, should urge the government to use its proven constitutional powers to halt sand mining on Moreton by supporting the Moreton Island Preservation Bill. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Macklin (from 109 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned expresses concern that some scientists in Australia are intent on undertaking destructive experimentation on human embryos. This subject was examined exhaustively by the 1985-1986 Senate Select Committee on Senator Harradine's Human Embryo Experimentation Bill which received 270 submissions and more than 2,000 pages of evidence. The report of the Senate Committee recommended in October 1986 that the Commonwealth Government make unlawful any destructive experiment which frustrated the development of the human embryo. Your petitioners therefore request the Senate and the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia to implement without delay the major recommendation of the Senate Select Committee to outlaw destructive experiments on human embryos. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Harradine (from 194 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament. The petition of the undersigned shows: That the May Economic Statement contained changes in Duty Free Passenger Concessions governing duty free entitlements for Australian Citizens arriving from overseas so that all goods up to a value of $400 may be brought in duty and tax free. In addition to this concession, duty free entry will be allowed for all clothing (other than furs) for the personal use of travellers. Existing separate limits on tobacco and alcohol will remain unchanged. The general limit on goods imported duty free by passengers under the age of 18 years will be set at $200. These revised passenger concession arrangements will commence from 1 July 1987. Your petitioners request that the Senate, in Parliament assembled, should rigorously defend the rights of more than 1.25 million Australian citizens arriving from overseas each year and expeditiously seek to amend the Duty Free Passenger concession to $1000 which represents the recommendation of the 1986 Industries Assistance Commission inquiry into passenger concessions. Such an amendment would equitably restore the purchasing power of Australian Citizens, discourage unlawful importation of goods and contemporaneously facilitate more efficient processing of passengers arriving in Australia by Customs Officers, all of which were recognised by the Industries Assistance Commission at the conclusion of its exhaustive inquiry and which formed the basis of the $1000 limit proposed to the Federal Parliament. And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray. by Senator Jones (from 85 citizens). To the President and Honourable members of the Senate of the Australian Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned residents of Australia respectfully showeth: We the undersigned strongly protest 1987 cuts to ESL programs for adults, conducted by the Adult Migrant Education Service (AMES) in New South Wales. Evening ESL classes have been cut by 25%. The ESL Correspondence course is to be abolished in a few months time. The English-in-the-Workplace Program has been reduced Full-time on-arrival courses have been abolished. AMES day centres have had their teaching hours reduced. Community programs have lost teaching hours. We call for: (i) the full and immediate restoration of AMES teaching programs in New South Wales to at least 1986 levels and (ii) a substantial increase in funding to AMES programs in the 1987 budget, in view of the recently announced increases in the immigration intake. by Senator Puplick (from 80 citizens). To the Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. The petition of the undersigned citizens of the A.C.T. respectfully shows: That X-rated videos denigrate true human values and lower community standards. That the continued availability of this pornography is contrary to the wishes of the majority of Canberra people. Your petitioners therefore ask the Senate to take action to bring about the prohibition of X-rated videos in the A.C.T. And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray. by Senator Jones (from 48 citizens). To the President and Senators in Parliament assembled, your humble petitioners showeth that the proposed Australia Card will have a dramatic impact on the lives of all Australians, and your petitioners therefore request a national referendum on the Australia Card Bill before the proposal is resubmitted to Parliament. As in duty bound, your petitioners will ever pray. by Senators Archer (from 782 citizens), Bishop (from 385 citizens), Crichton-Browne (from 16 citizens), Gietzelt (from 54 citizens), Lewis (from 15 citizens), Jones (from 1,240 citizens), McKiernan (from two citizens), McLean (from 57 citizens), Puplick (from 434 citizens) and Robert Ray (from 20 citizens). To The Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament. The petition of the undersigned shows that there is an urgent need for Commonwealth financial assistance for the provision of multicultural public library services. Your petitioners request that the Senate, in Parliament assembled, should take steps to ensure adequate assistance from the Commonwealth Government to public libraries throughout Australia for the provision of materials and services in languages other than English, as recommended by the Senate Standing Committee on Education and the Arts in its Report on a National Language policy. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Jones (from 60 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 are concerned that the Judeo-Christian moral values which have been fundamental in our laws and education systems since the foundation of the country are now being undermined in the current practice of law making, and we are concerned that the values of the secular-humanistic philosophy have taken place therefore jeopardizing the moral climate of our society and contributing towards immorality and violence in our society. Your petitioners therefore ask the Senate for the restoration of Judeo-Christian laws and moral values. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Jones (from 13 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: millions of dollars of taxpayers money is spent at each Federal election in Australia in the drafting, production and distribution of How-to-Vote cards which are unnecessary and pollutant and that this waste is not desirable or essential in assisting the electorate to vote informatively for their parliamentarians. Your Petitioners most humbly pray that the Senate in Parliament assembled, should urge the Government to introduce legislation which requires that the registered How-to-Vote cards of all political parties and candidates for political office must be placed under glass in every polling booth within obvious sight of all voters, thus making it unnecessary for How-to-Vote cards to be distributed at future federal elections. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Macklin (from 74 citizens). To The Honourable the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled: The petition of the undersigned respectfully showeth: But for a High Court decision narrowly favouring the Federal Government, 20,000 years old archaeological cave sites near the Franklin River, Tasmania, would have been destroyed, like a United Kingdom Government unable to stop a Wiltshire authority from clearing Stonehenge for a freeway. Constitutional protection for historical and environmental assets is needed. Your petitioners therefore most humbly pray that the Senate in Parliament assembled should request the Government to hold a referendum to amend the Constitution so that the Federal Government has the bounden constitutional duty, which any citizen may legally require it to perform and a right superior to state and local governments, to set above the commercial advantage of one generation, protect and restore all we hold in trust for the future-including relics, sites, features, areas, wildlife, buildings or things of Aboriginal and other historical, cultural, architectural, scientific, aesthetic, ecological or environmental importance and-to care for the maintenance of the balance of nature, manage land, marine and atmospheric use so as to avoid their degradation and act nationally and internationally in any matter seen as related to these including-to prevent military and commercial use of uranium and derivatives, beach and related mining; to preserve Heritage Areas, The Great Barrier Reef Region at least as originally defined in the 1975 Act and extended into Torres Strait. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Jones (from 80 citizens). To the Honourable, the President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled. This petition of concern to Australian citizens asks that: If, there is to be legal process against alleged war criminals resident in Australia, the foundations of justice should be clear and equitable. 1. Let the term, ``war crime'', be first clearly defined. 2. Let specific prosecutions be swiftly launched against those individuals alleged to have committed them, thus releasing the rest of their co-nationals from unwarranted slur and suspicion. 3. Let an Australian tribunal hear the charges. Nobody should be deported to face the ``tender mercies'' of any foreign government. 4. Let the presumption of innocence until proved guilt be clearly established. 5. Let all evidence obtained from the Soviet or any other communist government be set aside and totally disregarded. 5. Let all costs of any person charged and found not guilty be paid by the Commonwealth Government so that innocent people are not financially ruined in the course of establishing their innocence. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. by Senator Jones (from 23 citizens). Petitions received. Senator BROWNHILL(New South Wales) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: That the Senate- 1. notes that the National and Liberal parties have a strong record of achievement in the area of protection of the environment with such initiatives as the establishment of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the listing of stage 1 of Kakadu National Park on the World Heritage List and the cessation of whaling in Australian waters; 2. further notes that previous coalition governments regarded soil conservation of equal importance and provided legislation and financial support to encourage protection and preservation of Australia's most vital resource; and 3. strongly condemns the present Government for not displaying the same interest in and concern for land degredation issues as it now is belatedly showing to such issues as rainforests. Motion (by Senator Reid)-by leave-agreed to: That leave of absence be granted to Senator Peter Baume for the period 14 September 1987 to 6 October 1987 inclusive, on account of absence overseas on parliamentary business. Motion (by Senator Macklin)-by leave-agreed to: That leave of absence be granted to Senator Sanders for the period 14 September 1987 to 6 October 1987 inclusive, on account of absence overseas on parliamentary business. Motion (by Senator Jones)-by leave-agreed to: That leave of absence be granted to Senator Zakharov for the period 14 September 1987 to 6 October 1987 inclusive, on account of absence overseas on parliamentary business. Senator MICHAEL BAUME(New South Wales) —I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: That there be laid on the table answers to questions relating to the Parliament House Construction Authority which were asked in the proceedings of Estimates Committee E and which the then Minister for Territories, by letter dated 1 May 1987 to the then Minister for Veterans' Affairs, refused to answer, notwithstanding the expressed willingness of officers to provide written answers. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Leader of the Government in the Senate) —I seek leave to make a statement on administrative arrangements and to move a motion relating to the statement. Leave granted. Senator BUTTON —Following the recent general election at which the Government was returned for a third term of office, the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) announced a range of significant changes to the structure of the Ministry and of government departments. The Parliament will shortly consider the legislation which gives effect to or flows from aspects of these changes. For the information of the Senate I wish today to outline the overall intent of the changes and their impact, including ways they may be reflected in the operations of the Parliament. Since our first election in 1983 this Government has consistently developed policies to reconstruct our economy so that it can meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world trading environment. It is not simply a task for our trade-exposed sectors such as agriculture, mining or increasingly manufacturing and tourism. It is a task for the whole economy, because all sectors can suffer if one is inefficient. In applying measures to deal with the responsible reconstruction of the economy, we are determined to apply the same rigour to the Government's own household. Ministerial and Administrative Arrangements Honourable senators will be aware that early in its life, this Government embarked upon a program of reform of public sector administration. In pursuing a sound administrative basis for the development of its policies, the Government has addressed fundamental issues and implemented far-reaching reform measures. The reforms were given legislative basis in the 1984 Public Service reform package, and have been augmented progressively by Budget reforms, the 1986 streamlining measures and, perhaps most importantly, the arrangements announced last July by the Prime Minister. The Government has been concerned with two basic objectives: to enhance ministerial control over the Public Service and to give to departmental managers more responsibility for day to day management. By establishing mechanisms for greater ministerial control, we have been intent upon increasing the responsiveness of the bureaucracy to the Government's wishes and upon increasing democratic accountability, through Ministers, to Parliament and the community. The second of the objectives, greater responsibility for departmental management, has entailed the devolution of management functions from central agencies to individual departments and a new emphasis on the development of management skills in senior public servants. With greater freedom to manage, departments are in a better position to demonstrate their success in achieving the dual aims of increased efficiency and financial savings. The Government's previous reform measures have resulted in considerable progress towards the achievement of our objectives. The revamping of Budget processes has given Ministers more direct involvement in the way resources are used within their portfolios. The introduction of program and staff budgeting has allowed the Government to tighten up resource allocation, while giving to secretaries and other departmental managers greater freedom and responsibility in applying resources to the implementation of Government policies. The major package of measures announced by the Prime Minister last year resulted in an important streamlining of personnel management practices. With this experience behind us, the Prime Minister decided after the Government's re-election to proceed further along the path of administrative reform. The administrative arrangements approved by the Governor-General in Council on 24 July represented perhaps the most far-reaching reshaping of the Federal machinery of government and of public administration in our history. The number of departments has been reduced from 28 to 18, providing scope for savings through economies of scale and the removal of overlap and duplication across many areas of hitherto separate bureaucratic units. To provide for enhanced ministerial control over the new range of departments, any of which are significantly enlarged, the Prime Minister decided, following receipt of an opinion from the Solicitor-General, that it was time we adopted a two-level ministerial structure and increased the number of Ministers. Under the new arrangements, the burden of administering department is shared, and portfolio Ministers are released from some detailed administrative work, enabling them to give greater attention to strategic directions of policy and priorities. All portfolios are represented in Cabinet without the need for Cabinet to be expanded to an unmanageable size. I am pleased to report that these arrangements have been in place now for seven weeks and are working well. Portfolio Ministers are ultimately responsible for the administration of their entire portfolios and will be accountable to the Parliament for the overall operation of their portfolios. All Ministers, however, have a clear accountability within specific responsibilities allocated to them. This accountability includes responding to questions without notice in the Parliament. The Prime Minister announced the allocation of responsibilities on 11 August, but for the information of the Senate, Mr President, and as a guide to honourable senators in the direction of questions, I seek leave to incorporate in Hansard a list showing the division of functions. Leave granted. The document read as follows- DIVISION OF RESPONSIBILITIES WITHIN PORTFOLIOS PRIME MINISTER-(The Hon. R. J. L. Hawke, AC, MP) SPECIAL MINISTER OF STATE-(Senator the Hon. Susan Ryan) Assist the Prime Minister in relation to the status of women and the bicentenary, and generally across the portfolio. Senator Ryan will also assist the Minister for Community Services and Health and have responsibility for: housing assistance functions, which includes the housing assistance programs of the former Department of Housing and Construction and the Supported Accommodation Assistance program of the former Department of Community Services; the National Campaign Against Drug Abuse; the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories Commission; workforce issues, including the Medical Education Inquiry; implementation of the Australia Card Program; bioethical issues including the establishment of advisory structures. Senator Ryan will also be closely involved in the development of the women's health strategy and will assist Dr Blewett generally in the portfolio. ATTORNEY-GENERAL-(The Hon. Lionel Bowen, MP) Minister for Consumer Affairs-(The Hon. Peter Staples, MP) Responsibility for all consumer affairs matters (including relevant statutory responsibilities under the Trade Practices Act) and representation of the Government on Commonwealth-State ministerial committees related to consumer affairs. Mr Staples also assists the Treasurer in relation to prices. Parliamentary Secretary for Justice-(Senator the Hon. Michael Tate) Bankruptcy; policy and administrative responsibility for legal aid and financial assistance, including carriage of negotiations with the States on new legal aid agreements (but with the Attorney-General retaining overall responsibility for the negotiations with the States); remissions of fines and penalties; prisoners; marriage celebrants; policy and police liaison including membership of appropriate Commonwealth-State committees; Protective Services Coordination Centre; Territories matters coming within the Attorney-General's portfolio (other than the matters involving the ACT); Criminology, including youth and crime; Statute Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bills. MINISTER FOR INDUSTRY, TECHNOLOGY AND COMMERCE-(Senator the Hon. John Button) Minister for Science and Small Business-(The Hon. Barry O. Jones, MP) Science policy and activities including CSIRO and the Australian Institute of Marine Science, and the encouragement of effective linkages between the research community and industry; Policy in relation to small business; Management and day-to-day decision making in connection with the Customs Service; Day-to-day administrative matters associated with the building industry. The two Ministers will work together in such areas as the National Industry Extension Service, the Management Investment Companies program, and policy in relation to the information industries. MINISTER FOR TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATIONS-(Senator the Hon. Gareth Evans, QC) Minister for Land Transport and Infrastructure Support-(The Hon. Peter Duncan, MP) Land transport policy and programs including road safety; operational aviation matters including airport operations, airway systems, flight standards and the Bureau of Air Safety; general maritime safety matters; radio frequency management and broadcasting services; support in areas where Senator Evans has prime carriage including broadcasting, telecommunications, postal policy, domestic and international airline policy and major airports projects. MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION, LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND ETHNIC AFFAIRS-(The Hon. Michael J. Young, MP) Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government-(Senator the Hon. Margaret Reynolds) Local Government and regional development. MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND TRADE-(The Hon. Bill Hayden, MP) Minister for Trade Negotiations-(The Hon. Michael Duffy, MP) Day-to-day responsibility for the administration and implementation of Australia's bilateral and multilateral trade policy and negotiations, including relevant Ministerial meetings and diplomatic contacts; Coordination and conduct of Australia's position in the ``Uruguay Round'' of multilateral trade negotiations-and more generally the promotion of a more equitable international trading environment; Administration and implementation of the agreement on Closer Economic Relations with New Zealand; Implementing Australia's relations with UNCTAD; Responsible for operations of trade related councils involving the Australian business community. Mr Duffy also assists the Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce and the Minister for Primary Industries and Energy in relation to major commodity negotiations and export promotion. MINISTER FOR EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION AND TRAINING-(The Hon. J. S. Dawkins, MP) Minister for Employment Services and Youth Affairs-(The Hon. A. C. Holding, MP) Employment and Training-Community Employment Program, including New Enterprise Incentive Scheme, JOBSTART, Mobility Assistance (Relocation Assistance Schemes and Fares Assistance Scheme), existing programs of Industry and Regional Employment Assistance, Community Youth Support Scheme, Community Training Program, including Information Technology Centres, Community Volunteer Program, and Training for Aboriginals Program; Commonwealth Employment Service-network operations, including responsibilities under Unemployment Benefit and Job Search Allowance arrangements, youth access centres, and job search training; Education programs and services-national language policy, multicultural education, and aboriginal education, including National Aboriginal Education Committee. Mr Holding also assists the Treasurer in a range of matters referred to him, including taxation, foreign investment, loan raising and debt management, and functions of an administrative nature. MINISTER FOR DEFENCE-(The Hon. Kim C. Beazley, MP) Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Science and Personnel-(The Hon. Ros Kelly, MP) Defence Science and Technology, including development of policies and programs for the marketing of products; Oversight and administration of service personnel policies relating to members and ex-members of the Australian Defence Force and their families; Defence Housing Authority; Some categories of Australian Defence Force assistance to the civil community; Community matters arising from, and in conjunction with, Australian Defence Force operational training activities; Development of a strategy to ameliorate the difficulties created for Service personnel on postings arising from differing States laws and requirements relating to education, transport, etc. MINISTER FOR PRIMARY INDUSTRIES AND ENERGY-(The Hon. John Kerin, MP) Minister for Resources-(The Hon. Peter Morris, MP) Energy programs; Mineral commodities; Natural resource management; Fisheries matters; Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service; Bureau of Mineral Resources; Bureau of Rural Science. MINISTER FOR ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES-(The Hon. Stewart West, MP) Minister for Home Affairs-(Senator the Hon. Robert Ray Electoral matters; Parliamentary and ministerial services (including the New Parliament House Executive Wing, the National Media Liaison Service and Ministerial Press Pool) Information coordination; National Archives; Honours and national symbols policy. MINISTER FOR THE ARTS, SPORT, THE ENVIRONMENT, TOURISM AND TERRITORIES-(The Hon. John Brown, MP) Minister for the Environment and the Arts-(Senator the Hon. Graham Richardson) Cultural affairs, including support for the arts, film, national collections and national heritage; The environment and conservation; Antarctic matters. MINISTER FOR COMMUNITY SERVICES AND HEALTH-(The Hon. Neal Blewett, MP) Minister for Veterans' Affairs-(The Hon. Ben Humphreys, MP) Administration and policy development of services to veterans. Mr Humphreys will also assist Dr Blewett in day-to-day administration of: The Home and Community Care program; and The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Minister for Aboriginal Affairs-(The Hon. Gerard L. Hand, MP) Administration of Commonwealth Aboriginal affairs responsibilities. This will include the development of the new Commission to replace the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and the Aboriginal Development Commission. Mr Hand will also assist Dr Blewett in the day-to-day administration of Children's Services. Within the portfolios not covered in the above list, other Minister have not been appointed. Senator BUTTON —Within their areas of responsibility all Ministers will be available to answer questions in the Parliament, and will, of course, take an active role in the legislative process. Within the Parliament, the changes will bring a number of benefits. The combination of the additional Ministers, and of portfolio Ministers having a wider spectrum of responsibility across major sectors of government activity, means that Ministers will be placed in a better position to be responsive to the Parliament. This will apply particularly in the Senate, where The number of Senate Ministers will have been increased from six to eight, after Parliament enacts the relevant legislation, thus augmenting the capacity of the Government to respond to the concerns in this chamber. I should add that, in the meantime, pending the amendment of the Ministers of State Act to permit the appointment of 30 Ministers, there are three Parliamentary Secretaries, two of whom are in the Senate. It is intended that the people holding these positions will be sworn as Ministers as soon as possible. Until that time, as they are not Ministers, they will not answer questions without notice, carry legislation or perform chamber duty. In allocating functions among departments we have been able to provide for improved co-ordination and broader perspectives within portfolios. We have increased our capacity for imposing functional and strategic directions on government activity in the major areas of economic reform on which Australia's response to the challenges of a highly competitive international environment depends. The new arrangements allow for greater speed and consistency in the delivery of services and advice to the public. The abolition of the Public Service Board takes its place in this package of reforms designed to eliminate duplication of functions and as a further step in the process of increasing departmental responsibilities. All operational aspects of personnel matters are now to be devolved to departments. A new office of Public Service Commissioner will have responsibility for the policy aspects of recruitment, promotion, mobility, discipline and retirement, and for monitoring continuing progress in relation to equal employment opportunity. A part time Public Service Management Advisory Board will advise the Government on significant issues relating to the management of the Public Service. Public Service pay and conditions matters are to be transferred from the Board to the Department of Industrial Relations; and some aspects of classification issues have been transferred to the Department of Finance. The services of Mr David Block, of which the Government has been most appreciative, will continue to be available to the Prime Minister and the Government. His unit, now called the Administrative Reform Unit, is currently overseeing the preparation of reports on matters such as the possible integration of Social Security and Commonwealth Employment Service local offices, the use of the Department of Social Security as a payment agency, a single foreign service and the future of the National Capital Development Commission. The task the Government has set itself in this area is wide-ranging and ongoing. To ensure that it receives proper co-operation and sustained momentum a special committee of the Cabinet has been set up, under the chairmanship of Ralph Willis, specifically to address Public Service Reform. The revised ministerial and administrative arrangements which I have summarised today are an important part of the Government's strategy of concentrating on its policy priorities while working within a streamlined structure which reflects both the need for financial restraint and the importance of responsiveness and effectiveness. I believe that the arrangements will provide a sound basis from which to undertake the tasks of meeting the present and future policy needs of the nation. I draw attention to the fact that there is a division of responsibility. A document headed, `Division of responsibilities within Portfolios', has been appended to the document distributed to honourable senators. That document has been incorporated in Hansard. I move: That the Senate take note of the paper. Senator CHANEY(Western Australia-Leader of the Opposition)(2.18) —The Senate has Question Time, a matter of urgency and other matters before it this afternoon. Whilst the Opposition would like to debate this matter, we also have on today's Notice Paper legislation which relates to the ministerial statement and which presumably will be dealt with today or tomorrow. In those circumstances, I seek leave to continue my remarks so that this paper can be debated in conjunction with the relevant legislation, rather than having two separate debates on the same matter on one day. Leave granted; debate adjourned. Senator CHANEY —Is the Leader of the Government in the Senate aware that his Australian Labor Party Senate team colleague Mr John Halfpenny said that the Government `does not have a mandate from the electorate' for the Australia Card? Is it not a fact that parties opposing the Australia Card gained more votes at the election than the Labor Party? Will the Government have the honesty to abandon its phony claim of a mandate arising from the election and seek a mandate from the Australian people by referendum? Senator BUTTON —I am aware of many things that Mr Halfpenny says. I am not parti-cularly aware of his wisdom on this particular matter. I do not think it is very important in terms of the question which Senator Chaney has directed to me. I am aware that parties not represented on the Government benches had a significant-perhaps I should say insignificant-majority of votes at the election. The fact of the matter is that we are here and they are there and they will stay there until the end of this century. That is the fact. Insofar as the question of the Australia Card is concerned, that is a matter of public debate. It will be a matter of debate in this Senate over the next few weeks and honourable senators opposite will have plenty of opportunity to express their views on that topic in the course of that debate-and I wish them every success. Senator CHANEY —I ask a supplementary question. Does the Leader of the Government agree that widespread public concern is being expressed about this legislation, that it will affect the basic individual rights of all Australians and, in those circumstances, that it would be appropriate to determine the view of the community on this measure? Senator BUTTON —The Government has already announced in the Governor-General's Speech what referenda it proposes to hold during the life of this Government. That is the extent of the list and there will be no reference to the people on this particular question, in spite of widely misinformed agitation about the Australia Card at the present time. Senator COONEY —My question is directed to the Minister for Home Affairs. I congratulate him on his well deserved elevation. May I say, as the only Victorian Government senator presently sworn in who has been modest enough to stay on the back bench, I think it is appropriate that I ask this question. It is also a matter within the Victorian context. Allegations have been made in the context of the recent elections that people-- Senator Michael Baume —That he suddenly decided to wear a tie. Senator COONEY —No-- The PRESIDENT —Order! Senator COONEY —Sorry, Mr President. Allegations have been made in the context of the recent elections that people connected with the Australian Labor Party used the office of the Australian Electoral Commission to place ALP propaganda inside official electoral letters. Has the Minister, as I said, since his well deserved elevation, had occasion to review those allegations? If so, has he established who the maker of these allegations was, the reliability of the allegations and whether there was any-and, if so, what-evidence to support the allegations? Did the police investigate the allegations and, if so, with what result? What impact, if any, did those allegations have on the reputation and standing of the Electoral Commission, and could the Minister answer such other questions relevant to these matters that he feels fit? Senator Chaney —Mr President, I raise a point of order. I hesitate, in the first Question Time, to rise to object to the number of questions asked by the honourable senator, but I draw your attention, Mr President, to the concluding words and the invitation which has been made to give this Minister a chance to say anything he likes. I would respectfully suggest, Mr President, that the question is far too wide and should be ruled out of order. Senator Cooney should be given an opportunity to ask a more precise question which will not waste time in Question Time. The PRESIDENT —Order! A number of specific questions were asked within the question. I would ask the Minister to answer only those questions. Senator ROBERT RAY —Some two days before the last Federal election Mr John Ridley, the then Director of the Victorian Branch of the Liberal Party of Australia, did make some allegations referring to the electorate of Aston in which he said that one elector received an Australian Labor Party how to vote card within that person's postal ballot papers. I might say that, from my experience of elections, I have never known a campaign to go by in which some similar allegation has not come to my attention or someone else's attention. Quite simply, what normally happens is that political parties distribute how to vote cards by mail or by letter-boxing. People pick up their postal ballot papers with the rest of the material and get them mixed up in that process. Mr President, I ask you: What sort of genius would it take to put a mole in the Electoral Commission to put only one how to vote card in one set of postal ballot papers in a seat that needed 6 per cent of the vote to lose. What sort of a genius in politics would it take to work out that scheme? The Electoral Commission, on the day that those allegations were made, investigated the claims. It took statements from everyone working in the Aston electoral office and it found there was absolutely no case to answer. The southern division of the Australian Federal Police also investigated that incident and also found that there was no case to answer. I might point out that in that electorate Mr Saunderson, the Labor Party candidate, posted his how to vote cards to every elector rather than letter boxing them. This allegation got a lot of publicity. The main reason it got publicity was, I think, the inexperience of certain journalists. Those of us who are heavily involved in politics know that this sort of accusation comes out at every election. Indeed, the same allegation was made just some months before in respect of the Central Highlands by-election in Victoria. That allegation was investigated by police and the same conclusion was reached as was reached in the Aston case-that is, that there was a misunderstanding by the recipient of the postal ballot papers and that there was no wrong-doing by the Electoral Commission. I conclude on this note: I know that in the heat of campaigning people think that by throwing out some wild allegation they will get some political gain. We have all done that, but the unfortunate thing in this case is that honourable senators opposite are denigrating people who are working for the Electoral Commission and who basically cannot defend themselves. I think the Australian Electoral Commission has always had a reputation for impartiality. Having impugned it for cheap political opportunism, it is no wonder that Mr Ridley had to resign some weeks after the election. Senator STONE —My question is addressed to the Minister representing the Treasurer. Does the Minister agree that, for the purposes of assessing the effects of the Treasurer's Budget this evening on the financial markets and the economy, it is the borrowing requirement which that Budget will impose upon them which is fundamental? Does he further agree that that borrowing requirement is represented by the sum of whatever so-called deficit will appear in the Budget, plus any proceeds from sales of Government assets which have been credited to the receipts for the purpose of arriving at that deficit? Senator WALSH —As Senator Stone would know very well, the public sector borrowing requirement is something that has a precise definition, and borrowing money to buy assets from the Government is not recorded as part of the PSBR. The question of the sale of assets and the Budget deficit has always been acknowledged by the Treasurer-very explicitly-by me, by the Prime Minister and by various other people. Indeed, the $1,000m worth of assets sales announced in the May statement were very clearly and separately identified as such. I happened to read the `policy speech', I suppose one could call it, that was presented by the Queensland Premier. I recognised the literary style in which it was written. It certainly was not the literary style of the Queensland Premier; it was written by someone who is obviously highly literate, which the Queensland Premier's greatest admirers would not accuse him of being. In that document I noticed that even after taking into account the sale of assets-that is, taking the sale of assets and the proposed tax and deficit policy presented in that document-there was still a $1 billion deficit. In other words, there was a $2 billion deficit if the assets sales proposed in it had not been subtracted, or a $1 billion deficit remaining even after that happened. From that I assume that the Queensland Premier and those who are associated with him regard a Commonwealth Budget deficit of $1 billion, after subtracting from that deficit any proceeds from assets sales, as appropriate. Senator STONE —I ask a supplementary question, Mr President. I have some difficulty in distinguishing in the Minister's response between matters of substance and matters which I think were rather peripheral to the question. Would I be correct in understanding that the Minister's responses to my two questions were yes and yes, respectively? Senator WALSH —I did not have time to write them down. I will have a look at the Hansard when it comes out. Senator MORRIS —I direct my question to the Minister for the Environment and the Arts. Is it true, as the Queensland Premier has alleged, that the Federal Government is nominating the unique wet tropical rainforests of northern Queensland for world heritage listing only so that the hippy mates of the Australian Labor Party can continue growing marihuana plantations? Given these allegations and others by the Queensland Government about world heritage listing, is the Federal Government negotiating with the Queensland Government about a joint management authority and plan for the area and about re-employment of and compensation for workers affected by world heritage listing? Senator RICHARDSON —I thank Senator Morris for his question. It certainly is true that the Premier of Queensland has insisted that the nomination of the wet tropics for world heritage listing is being done to set aside `the greatest plantation area for the whole of Australia and a big part of the world to grow marihuana'. He said: The forests will become completely infested with all the hippies and all the drug growers in Australia. I might say that that is not the purpose of the world heritage listing of these rainforests. On the purpose of the world heritage listing of these forests, I can quote no better person than Senator Puplick, who said: . . . they are unique, they are of international significance; they contain one of the greatest and scientifically most significant concentrations of unique flora and fauna in the world. Senator Puplick was certainly right on that, if not on much else; he did get that right. But there is a problem between Senator Puplick and the National Party of Australia on this issue and I will allow them to sort that out over time. However, the second part of Senator Morris's question is probably more important. That concerns what we are going to do for the people of northern Queensland who may be affected by the Government's decision to apply for world heritage listing. The setting up of a management authority with the State Government, as has been done in South West Tasmania and the Great Barrier Reef adjacent to this world heritage listing area, is exactly what this Government has in mind. The difficulty is, of course, that the Premier of Queensland will not talk to us. Not only will he not talk to us; he is making sure that nobody else can either, by threatening councils and the industry. That makes our task very difficult. If in the end we are to help the people of north Queensland and make sure that there is a transition period from one industry activity into another-that is what will happen in that area; the vast majority of those with jobs in the industry can be re-employed-we need to talk to the Queensland Government. I have no doubt that that will happen, and I might say that, in spite of some claims by the Queensland Premier, it is already happening. While the Premier said in the Brisbane Telegraph only a few days ago, `There wouldn't be a man in my Department who would dare to say one single thing without my authority', I have to report that there have been discussions between officials of the Queensland Premier's Department and officials of my own Department. They took place several weeks ago. We are led to believe that they took place with the full knowledge of the Queensland Premier and that further discussions will take place. I have no doubt that that will be the case. But the reality is that while on the one hand the Queensland Premier bludgeons local government, bludgeons the industry and bludgeons free workers into trying not to talk to the national Government, he then does so himself. Perhaps that is a question the people of north Queensland might start asking. Senator HAINES —My question is directed to the Minister representing the Treasurer. Is the Minister aware of the statement made on Sunday, 13 September, on Channel 10's Business Week program by the Chairman of Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd, Brian Loton, that BHP is to be listed on more foreign stock exchanges and that the Chairman has no objection to foreign residents owning 40 per cent of BHP shares? In view of this statement, is the Government concerned about the possibility that foreign interests may gain considerable influence or effective control of a company whose activities impact heavily on employment and production in Australia? If BHP's international competitors do gain substantial ownership of the Big Australian, will that not limit BHP's capacity to compete in export markets, and to undertake research and development in Australia to make BHP more efficient and competitive? Would the Government therefore be prepared to take action to prevent foreign ownership of BHP reaching 40 per cent, or anything like that figure? Senator WALSH —I did not hear Mr Loton say that, nor have I read it anywhere. I knew nothing about it until Senator Haines mentioned it in her question. I shall see what the Treasurer has to say about the other questions asked, but I would make this point: Concern has been expressed by a number of people, particularly by the sorts of people with whom Senator Haines normally associates, about cash borrowings overseas by Australians for share purchase, or investment or for whatever purpose. Fashions and fads change over time. Through the 1960s and most of the 1970s the conventional wisdom was that governments should impose limits on foreign equity holdings in Australian business, which was a policy that inevitably pushed new mining developments in particular into a situation of high gearing, based on borrowings abroad, usually from foreign banks. That was seen to be the popular, trendy thing to do at that time. Ironically, when gearing, again often based on borrowings from abroad, appeared to increase in recent years, the same people were very concerned about the happening and said that something should be done to stop it. I wish that such people who comment about these matters would at least make up their minds whether they are for or against gearing. They supported policies in the 1960s and 1970s which put many businesses in the situation where they had no alternative but to become heavily geared, and then when some other company does so in the 1980s they are opposed to that as well. I will refer the other questions to the Treasurer to see whether he has any comments to make. Senator SCHACHT —Did the Minister for Finance hear Mr Des Moore on AM this morning advocating severe reductions in government expenditure? Is this the same Mr Moore who was Deputy Secretary in the Treasury, and under what circumstances did Mr Moore leave the Treasury? Senator WALSH —I did hear Mr Moore this morning shortly after AM on 2CN. I do not have a transcript of the program, but essentially he was saying that welfare spending should be very substantially reduced, that there were too many spongers, freeloaders and double dippers around the place and that it was about time that their activities were curbed. Mr Moore, according to a report in the Australian newspaper of 6 January, had resigned from the Treasury. I do not think that is entirely true. I think that he had retired since he had attained the age of 55 years just before that. The Australian also reported: The Heritage Foundation where Mr Moore worked while in the US has just published an article by him called `Kangaroo Economics'. I do not know whether Mr Moore did work for the Heritage Foundation in the United States, but if he did he did so while he was also being paid by the Australian taxpayer. I doubt that he was formally working for the Heritage Foundation although I understand that he wrote an article called `Kangaroo Economics' which that organisation published. Mr Moore left Australia on 27 August 1986 to begin a senior executive fellowship-that is, a training scheme financed by the taxpayers and administered at that time by the Public Service Board in which senior public servants undertake overseas visits of up to three months duration in order to pursue projects of interest to their departments and to the Public Service. Mr Moore began such a fellowship on 27 August 1986 and returned to duty in the Treasury on 5 January 1987, the day before it was reported in the Australian that he had resigned. As I said before, I think that report was not strictly correct; I think that he retired rather than resigned. However, the day that he resumed his duties at the Treasury he either terminated his employment there or gave notice of the impending termination of it. Prior to leaving Australia, Mr Moore, like all fellowship applicants, signed an undertaking that he accepted `the need for a continuing commitment to the Service'. He also signed an undertaking that he would `expect to remain in the Service for at least three years after the completion of the fellowship'. He then spent a total of almost five months overseas as can be seen from the figures I have given, three months on the fellowship which cost the Australian taxpayers about $30,000. Notwithstanding the undertakings he had signed he promptly resigned-or retired-on the day that he got back to Australia. If Mr Moore wants to say much more about double dipping, sponging and freeloading, I suggest that he clean up his own nest before he starts looking into somebody else's. Senator SCHACHT —I ask a supplementary question. Is there any chance of the Australian Government being able to recoup any of the $30,000 from Mr Moore, that being the cost of his visit overseas on behalf of the Australian Government? Senator WALSH —I am no lawyer but if I were I probably should not give an opinion on this matter. Since I am not, it is probably all right for me to do so. It seems to me that the only way that the Commonwealth could take action for recovery would be by special legislation. But that would not go through the Senate because there are too many friends of the spongers and freeloaders in the Senate for such legislation to get through. Alternatively, there is the remote possibility of some civil action being taken to recover the money on the grounds that Mr Moore signed a false declaration. The PRESIDENT —I draw the attention of honourable senators to the presence in the President's Gallery of a parliamentary delegation from Zimbabwe led by Speaker Mutasa. I had the pleasure of meeting the delegation at the recent Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference in Malaysia. On behalf of honourable senators I extend to you, Mr Speaker, and the delegation a warm welcome and trust that your stay in Australia is a success. Honourable senators-Hear, hear! Senator PUPLICK —I ask the Minister for Transport and Communications the difference between a normal Telecom line and the landline that Senator Ryan says will be used to interconnect the various computers and computer terminals that will carry confidential information accessible by the ID card number? Is the line referred to by Senator Ryan in fact a dedicated Telecom line? Will this line still require linkage through Telecom exchanges? Would such a line be more easily identified because of its dedicated status? Finally, can the Minister guarantee the absolute security of such a connection in the light of recent evidence about phone tapping in Australia? Senator GARETH EVANS —I request Senator Puplick to put that question on notice. Senator PUPLICK —Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. Is the reason that Senator Evans wants the question put on notice first, that he does not know what Senator Ryan has been saying or, secondly, that he does not know the difference between a Telecom line, a landline and a dedicated line? The PRESIDENT —I hardly think it is a supplementary question, because it really does not relate to the reply, but, as Senator Evans is obviously keen to answer, I call him. Senator GARETH EVANS —There are a number of reasons why I would like Senator Puplick to put that question on notice, not least in order to stir him up. Senator COLSTON —I direct a question to the Minister representing the Treasurer. It refers to allegations being made at the Queensland Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct-normally referred to as the Fitzgerald inquiry. Can the Minister advise whether the Australian Taxation Office is taking an interest in allegations that large amounts have been offered and accepted in bribes, as an indication of possible non-payment of taxes by both those involved in criminal activities and those who have not declared bribes received as part of their assessable income? Senator WALSH —It has been reported in today's Courier-Mail that the Taxation Office did in fact issue a Supreme Court injunction against a Licensing Branch officer, one Jack Reginald Herbert, claiming unpaid taxes of more than $800,000. The report went on to say that in the application of the Commissioner of Taxation to have Herbert's four Westpac bank accounts frozen, the Commissioner estimated that Herbert had received protection money averaging $120,000 a year for five years. I note, and I ask the Senate to note, the reference to the four Westpac accounts that Mr Herbert had, and to note also that operating multiple bank accounts in the knowledge that some would not be all that easy to trace, particularly if they were in different names, is a device that has been used by various crooks for a very long time. I hope that that lesson will actually be acknowledged or received by the Opposition, although I am not optimistic about that. I do not know whether the Tax Commissioner has knowledge of people other than former Inspector Herbert having evaded tax or not having declared income received, even income received illegally, but I think I can confidently give Senator Colston an assurance that if or when the Fitzgerald inquiry manages to trace that money to its final recipients, if there is a tax liability, those people who have evaded tax will be relentlessly pursued by the Commissioner. It would, of course, be very much easier for the Tax Commissioner to do that if there was an effective identity system through which such movements of cash obtained illegally, or funds legally obtained upon which tax had been evaded-either or both of those forms of antisocial or criminal activity-could be stamped out. The Tax Commissioner would find it very much easier to do that if there was an effective identity system such as the Australia Card. Senator LEWIS —My question is addressed to the Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce. I ask whether the Minister recalls saying, in a speech in Canberra about a year ago, when the Australian dollar was at a level just over US60c: Manufacturers should be making their investment plans on the basis that the dollar will remain very close to its current levels . . . Now that the dollar is trading at around US73c, does the Minister regret having given this advice? What advice can he now give to manufacturers who took his advice? Does the Minister recall having previously expressed concern about the impact on manufacturing of a dollar valued at around or just below US70c? Does he agree with the President of the Australian Manufacturing Export Council, who said last week that a dollar valued above US73c would be disastrous for industry? Senator BUTTON —First of all, I do not recall making that statement when, as Senator Lewis said, the level of the Australian dollar was US60c. If he checks his facts-and he can ask me the question again tomorrow-I think he will find I did not make that statement when the level of the dollar was about US60c. Senator Watson —You asked the same question last session. Senator BUTTON —The honourable senator is still here; I had forgotten about him. I would be very grateful to see the speech in which I referred specifically to the level of the dollar in those terms. Senator Haines —You're about to get it. Senator BUTTON —I am not about to get anything; he is about to get it. I am not like other senators who have time to read their own speeches all the time, particularly in the middle of Question Time. A number of factors impinge on investment decisions. If Senator Lewis is a more avid reader of my speeches than I am, he will see that I have drawn attention to many of those factors over a considerable period. I have particularly drawn attention to the fact that a wide range of factors such as interest rates, wage rates and anticipated wage rates are very relevant to investment intentions, not just the level of the Australian dollar against either the United States dollar or the trade weighted index. A whole range of other factors are relevant to investment intentions, particularly I believe for small business. I do not in any way resile from the fact that I believe that I said on a number of occasions during last year that my anticipation was that the level of the dollar would remain for some period in the mid-sixties. A variety of circumstances have changed since then, particularly the fall of the United States dollar which is not relevant in a vast variety of circumstances in which companies are trading into other countries with other currencies. For contracts written in United States dollars it is, of course, a significant factor. I am not familiar with the views of the Australian Manufacturers Export Council President which were expressed last week, but let me just say this: many manufacturers are of the view that they would prefer our dollar at about US70c or slightly less, and their anticipations of an increasing value for the Australian dollar relatively are the factors which concern them most, rather than the actual current value of the dollar. The honourable senator may have got me on some sort of debating point. But let me just make the observation that, in spite of the apparent aggregate unsatisfactory investment figures in manufacturing, anticipations are currently much beter than they were a quarter ago or six months ago. That is reflected in the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Metal Trades Industry Association surveys which were published last month. According to those surveys, the anticipations are better, and I believe that throughout significant sections of the manufacturing sector the actual performance is better than the aggregate figures currently reveal. Senator Lewis —Mr President, I seek leave to incorporate in Hansard one page of a speech by Senator Button, Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce, at a conference of the Heavy Engineering Manufacturers Association in Canberra on Monday, 22 September 1986. Leave granted. The document read as follows- Address by Senator the Hon. J. B. Button, Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce at the Heavy Engineering Manufacturers Association Canberra International Motor Inn Monday 22 September 1986. I am very pleased to be here at your annual dinner. With the finalisation of the heavy engineering industry package in June and the recent establishment of the Heavy Engineering Board (HEB) this is a very opportune time for me to explain and emphasise the Government's preferred approach to support for the industry. As you all are keenly aware the balance of payments deficit is placing a constraint on the growth potential of the Australian economy and on the living standards of all Australians. The problem has its roots in our over dependence on the export of commodities-agricultural products and minerals. High inflation and low productivity growth over many years have sapped our competitiveness and resulted in the contraction of our industrial base. The poor medium term prospects for our agricultural and mineral commodities exports means that manufacturing and services sectors must improve their performance significantly. The depreciation of the Australian dollar to a level just above 60 cents to the US dollar has substantially restored Australia's international competitiveness and will provide major opportunities for import replacement and economic growth. Manufacturers should be making their investment plans on the basis that the dollar will remain very close to its current levels and that the government will successfully influence the course of wage and price growth to preserve gains we have made in international competitiveness. The heavy engineering industry is in an excellent position to benefit from the dollar depreciation because 80 per cent of components and materials inputs can be sourced domestically. I am aware that a number of heavy engineering companies have found new export markets and many more are actively searching them out. Whether the industry's potential is fully realised is going to depend on whether it is willing to make the necessary structural adjustments and attitudinal changes. The growing willingness to tackle undesirable work practices is a good start. We also have to acknowledge and use our undoubted engineering knowledge and skills rather than believing that we always have to rely on overseas expertise. We have to obtain that recognition from the wider community. I believe the government is establishing the right macroeconomic settings for industry. It is also attempting to get the microeconomic settings right as well and in a number of sectors including heavy engineering is taking on a role as a catalyst for and a facilitator of industry restructuring. Senator CROWLEY —My question is addressed to the Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce. The Minister is no doubt aware of the many claims that the number of days lost due to industrial unrest is excessive and out of hand. Can the Minister elaborate on the recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures showing that the number of working days lost in the year to May 1987 was the lowest since 1968-fewer than 200 working days lost per 1,000 employees, compared to 832 working days lost per 1,000 employees under the Howard-Fraser Government? Do not these figures indicate that the great majority of employers and employees have behaved most responsibly, in particular in contributing to employment growth of 2 per cent during the year ending May 1987? Senator BUTTON —It greatly relieves me of my obligations as a Minister when Senator Crowley not only poses the question but gives the answer in the same breath. The figures stated in her question, if she wishes me to confirm them, are correct. They are based on the ABS figures of 4 September 1987, which show that the level of industrial disputation is at a near record low since the figures have been kept. The number of working days lost in the year to May 1987 was the lowest since 1968. There were 1.13 million working days lost due to industrial disputes during the year to May 1987, a 20 per cent drop on the number lost during the previous 12 months and a 71 per cent drop on the number of working days lost during the 12 months to May 1982, during the period of the Howard-Fraser Government. Senator Reid —What about the days affected by work bans? Senator Chaney —How is the coal industry going-and the North West Shelf? Senator BUTTON —It is not the responsibility of any government if somebody puts on a work ban somewhere or if there is a dispute in the coal industry. Honourable senators opposite know that. If it is a question of government responsibility, honourable senators opposite have a lot to answer for because in their last year in government, 1982, this country had the worst record of industrial disputation for years. The figures for 1987 represent a 71 per cent drop on the figures recorded under the Fraser Government. I am surprised at these silly interjections which have provoked me to draw the Senate's attention to some unpalatable facts for the Opposition. The figures demonstrate how the great majority of employers, unions and employees have recognised their special responsibilities, imposed by difficult world economic conditions. They have been able to discharge those responsibilities due to the environment created by a government which has dedicated itself to improving this situation. Senator CHANEY —My question is addressed to the Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce and, in a sense, follows the question he has just answered, asked by Senator Crowley. I ask the Minister: Is he aware that, in terms of the reduction in the number of industrial disputes which has occurred over recent years, there was a 55 per cent reduction in 1982, a 30 per cent reduction in 1983, during part of which, of course, the Fraser Government was still in office, a 0.8 per cent reduction in 1984, a 7.6 per cent reduction in 1985 and an increase of 6.5 per cent in 1986? I ask the Minister: Is it not a fact that the bulk of the substantial reduction in the number of industrial disputes, of which he is so proud, occurred during the period of the Fraser Government and is a reflection of the inter- national recession which affected this country? Is it not a fact that at the moment the largest single investment project in this country, the North West Shelf, is strikebound? Is it not a fact that our first or second largest export industry, the coal industry, is also strikebound? Is the Minister saying that none of that is the responsibility of his Government? Senator BUTTON —I do not know where Senator Chaney gets those questions from. Sure, there was a reduction in industrial disputes in 1982; my God, there needed to be. How did the then Government attain that reduction in industrial disputes? It was by having the greatest number of Australians out of work since the Great Depression. That is how the Liberal Party did it when in government. That is how it reduced the number of industrial disputes in 1982. The gentleman creeping forward to the table, Senator Stone, was a principal adviser of the Government of the day. He saw to it that the greatest number of Australians since the Great Depression were unemployed in 1982. That is how that figure was brought about. I concede that in 1987 there are strikes in the coal industry. There are strikes on the North West Shelf. Most of those coal strikes relate to a major structural problem in the industry, as there was in the steel industry in 1982 which the Fraser Government walked away from and did nothing about. As has happened with the coal industry before, Liberal governments have walked away from these issues. This Government has not. One can go around the country from time to time and find various industrial disputes taking place. That is inevitable. It is a question of what the government of the day does about them that is important in terms of allocating responsibility as Senator Chaney seeks to do by the last part of his question. Senator CHANEY —Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. I take the Minister's answer to be a concession that the major drop in industrial disputes did in fact occur in 1982 and 1983 because of the substantial level of unemployment which occurred in that year. Does the Minister also concede that that substantial unemployment flowed from excessive wage rises which were extorted from the system by the trade union movement in 1981 and 1982? Senator BUTTON —I concede that in 1982 wage levels in this country were too high given the overall economic performance of the country over a number of years. Wage levels were too high, particularly in 1982 because the Prime Minister of the day in 1981 walked away and went to a royal wedding instead of dealing with the question of wages policy which confronted this country. There was no wages policy in this country in 1981 and 1982. Senator Chaney cannot claim to have succeeded in 1981, 1982, 1983 or 1987 for that matter in attaining a substantial, significant and ongoing reduction in real wages in this country as this Government can. He cannot claim that at any period of his Liberal Government a growth in employment as this Government can in the last four years. Senator Chaney can claim none of those things. If he seeks to make comparative claims about the performance of Liberal and Labor governments on these issues, none of those things are things Senator Chaney ought to boast about and, if I might give him a word of fatherly advice, they are not even things about which he ought to lead with his chin at Question Time. The PRESIDENT —I draw the attention of honourable senators to the presence in the gallery of former Senator Geoff McLaren from South Australia. On behalf of all honourable senators I wish him well on his return to Canberra. He has promised me that he will not interject. Honourable senators-Hear, hear! Senator COOK —My question, which is directed to the Minister representing the Treasurer, concerns the blighted State of Queensland. Is the Minister aware of the special arrangements for bread marketing which apply in Queensland? Does the Commonwealth Government intend to take steps to ensure that similar arrangements are brought to apply throughout Australia? Senator WALSH —In regard to the latter part of the question, I do not think that the Commonwealth Government would have any power to extend the laws that apply in Queensland to other States. It certainly would not have any inclination to do so because Queensland has some very special arrangements regarding the marketing of bread. In 1979 the Bread Industry Committee Act was passed, and in 1983 a new Bill had been drafted, in the words of the industry President, `to discipline some persons who threatened to destroy the benefits of the Act'. That Bill lapsed, but in October 1986 Mr J. G. Sheeron, MBE, in his presidential address, said that under the 1979 Act the industry had obtained regulations which would give the Committee the power to make determinations regarding the areas of distribution of bread manufacturers, the jurisdiction of the Committee in respect of disputes between the various sections of the bread industry and the giving of directions or advice by the Committee to the various sectors not to deliver or accept bread delivery. In other words, in Queensland the decisions about the people who may supply bread, where they may supply bread and to whom they may supply bread are made by a committee appointed pursuant to a statute of 1979 and to regulations. The statute was introduced, of course, because some bakers in country towns were members of the National Party of Australia. The National Party Government passed that legislation because those bakers did not like competition. Mr Sheeron also said: The Committee has already determined that activities by a major Brisbane manufacturer in Murgon, a small town near Kingaroy in the central Burnett area of the State, 230km north-west of Brisbane, should be curtailed. For all those reasons I can assure Senator Cook that the Commonwealth Government would not be extending the Queensland law to the rest of the country even if it had the constitutional authority to do so. Indeed, the Commonwealth Government would hope that this sort of misuse of governmental power to protect private vested interests would cease in Queensland as well, and it would expect the legislation to be repealed. I think there is an excellent opportunity here for Senator Stone to demonstrate his intellectual domination of the National Party in Queensland-and to demonstrate that he is not just a mouthpiece for the latest flat tax fantasies-by getting the Queensland Government to repeal the legislation. If anybody could lead the Queensland National Party rednecks along the path of economic righteousness to a free market, I am sure Senator Stone could, and I wish him well. Senator MESSNER —My question is addressed to the Minister for Transport and Communications. I preface it by saying that I realise that certain matters concerning the Coastwatch contract are before the Federal Court of Australia, and I in no way want to canvass any of those today. My question goes to an issue on which any senator who was here in the latter period of the Fraser Government would know the Minister considers himself something of an expert; that is, the principle of ministerial responsibility. I ask whether the Minister recalls the then responsible Minister, Senator Gietzelt, speaking on behalf of Mr Peter Morris, the then Minister for Transport, telling Senator Durack on 25 March this year: The proper tendering processes were followed and the Minister had insisted upon the process. and, later that day: The Government did what it was logically required to do, that is, satisfy itself about the technical capacity of the lowest tenderer. I ask further whether he recalls Senator Gietzelt chiding Senator Durack on 1 April for `continuing his line of questioning in respect of a matter that has been properly handled by the Minister'. Finally, I ask whether he recalls hearing Senator Gietzelt, responding to Senator Vanstone's urgency motion on 13 May, say: The Government, through its committees, took every available opportunity to check out the bona fides and the competence with which the successful tenderer would be able to meet the Government's requirements. Does the Minister agree that Mr Morris was at all times aware of matters concerning the contract? Why has the man responsible for the Coastwatch fiasco not resigned as he obviously should do, consistent with interpretations of ministerial responsibility much narrower than those Senator Evans sought to apply to others in 1982? Senator GARETH EVANS —There is no question but that the broad guidelines that the Government lays down for the conduct of tendering processes were followed in this instance and there is no question of any impropriety or lack of probity in the operation of the tendering process in this instance-certainly not on the basis of any of the material that I have seen or that has been sighted by the senior officer whom I have had reviewing this whole vexed question on my behalf in recent weeks. What has become apparent, and what I have frankly admitted in public statements on this subject in recent days, is that there were deficiencies in the detailed administration of aspects of that tendering process. There were failures to fully secure an evidentiary foundation for some rather confident conclusions about managerial and technical competence that were communicated in the tender board's report and in other minutes and other material that was communicated to the Ministers of the time. Let me make it clear that Mr Morris was the Minister at all relevant times but he had no personal involvement in terms of any-- Opposition senators interjecting- Senator GARETH EVANS —Let me finish the sentence. Mr Morris had no personal involvement in the matter until after the particular contract had been signed. The material relating to the acceptance of the tender, the conduct of the Cabinet submission which sought endorsement for the necessary financial authority for the tender to proceed and the actual signing of the contract were all carried out by an Acting Minister in Mr Morris's absence overseas. Senator Walters —Who was the Acting Minister? Senator GARETH EVANS —The Acting Minister was Mr Scholes. He acted on the basis of submissions, minutes and tender board reports, all of which I have closely reviewed. Every one of those documents addressed itself to technical and managerial questions and did so in the terms of the most robust conviction that these tests had been satisfied. Let me give the Senate one example. I will quote-- Senator Walters —Why was it given to Scholes? Senator GARETH EVANS —If the vision in pink over there, Mr President, stopped haranguing me, I would be only too pleased to communicate my perception of this state of affairs. Let me give one example of the kind of thing that was contained in the tender board's report which was on the desk of the Ministers concerned, or at least Mr Scholes, at the relevant time, before the contract was awarded. The contract was in the following terms: Aviation have given Amann and Gosner- that was the chief pilot in question- a clean bill of health, both as to proposed aircraft and technical competence. It subsequently became clear well after the contract had been awarded that the particular clean bill of health that the Department of Aviation had given was nothing of the kind, that all that the Aviation officer who had been involved in a desultory fashion in this process had addressed himself to was the question of whether there was likely to be any difficulty in Amann Aviation securing an air service licence in due course without undue delay. There was never any particular question about that. What there was a question about, which subsequently came to light, was the level of aviation expertise that was available to the tenderer which did raise very serious questions as to whether or not it would be able to perform the contract or meet the contract obligations within the time available. There are many matters of this kind, all of which are spelt out in my Press release of a couple of days ago, and all of which will be evident in the documents that I am very happy to make available. This has been the subject already of a freedom of information application and as soon as the necessary scrutiny has been done to apply FOI guidelines relating to commercial in-confidence and so on-that material will be made available in a matter of days-it will become perfectly apparent to anyone viewing this material that what occurred is as I have described it. There were administrative failings within the tender evaluation process which were simply not apparent and could not have been apparent to the Ministers who were handling the matter in the way that they did. When the matters did come to light about the nature of these failings and when questions did arise in Ministers' minds as to whether or not the contract could or would be able to be satisfied, the difficulty confronting the Ministers and the Government was that there was no way at that stage that the contract could have been terminated. There were no contractual deadlines earlier than 12 September and it was not at all clear right up until 12 September that the contract, despite the considerations to which I have referred, would not be able to be honoured. That was the difficulty that was confronting people such as the Minister, Mr Morris, and Senator Gietzelt, representing him in this place, as they responded to questions over that period. The key statement was that made by Mr Morris in answer to a question without notice on 7 May when he said: The contract that has been let imposes obligations on the firm concerned. That firm has a responsibility to carry out its obligations. If that responsibility is not met, it will be dealt with at that time. Well, the time has now come and the Government, as is now well known, has acted on the contract. There was nothing in any of the responses or any of the behaviour of any of the Ministers that were involved in this matter at any stage which is colourable in the way that the Opposition has sought to assert. Senator MESSNER —I ask a supplementary question, Mr President. I remind the Minister again of his definition in 1982 of ministerial responsibility. I ask: Which Minister of the Hawke Labor Government was responsible for the control of this issue of the contract and the calling of tenders? Senator GARETH EVANS —In response to that question, the short answer is that it is the Minister for Transport or the Acting Minister for Transport, as the case may have been at the relevant time, because the Department of Transport had the managerial conduct of the tendering process and the award of the tenders. The whole question of coastal surveillance is much complicated by the fact that a number of other Ministers have an involvement in it, including the former Special Minister of State through his responsibility for the Australian Federal Police which had responsibility for the general oversight of coastal surveillance, and so on. In terms of the managerial conduct of the tendering process, that is squarely the responsibility of the Department of Transport and the Minister for Transport or the Acting Minister for Transport. There is no mystery about that. Senator JONES —My question is directed to the Minister for the Environment and the Arts. Has the Minister's attention been drawn to media reports in today's Courier-Mail and Daily Sun, and on the AM radio program, concerning the Queensland Government's decision to allow ICI Australia to build a caustic chlorine plant on land previously owned by the Commonwealth Government at Lytton in Brisbane? Is the Commonwealth Government satisfied that all environmental safeguards and studies have been met with regard to this proposal, particularly in light of the Queensland Government's sudden turnaround on this issue following the Federal election? Senator RICHARDSON —Yes, I am aware of today's report in the Courier-Mail. Naturally, I am concerned about the potential environmental hazards that a caustic chlorine factory could cause. Only one environmental impact statement has been done on the project, and that was done by the company, ICI, itself. Even ICI admitted, in an article in the Daily Sun of 31 August, that there were serious risks. What is worse is that no consideration has been given to other alternatives that have been suggested. I understand that Lytton is located 1 1/2 kilometres from residential areas and right near the mouth of the Brisbane River. Alternative sites have been suggested-- Senator MacGibbon —I raise a point of order, Mr President. The Minister is out of order in answering this question. It is not within his ministerial portfolio because it deals with a State matter. The PRESIDENT —There is no point of order. Senator MacGibbon —If you reject that point of order, Mr President, I will advance a further one. The Minister simply cannot go into fields for which he has no legal responsibility and give an opinion. If he is not dealing with a field which is within his boundary, he is giving an opinion; and he is forbidden to do that under Standing Orders. The PRESIDENT —The Minister's portfolio covers a wide range of responsibilities. I am listening to the answer. I think it is in order. Senator RICHARDSON —It must be acknowledged that two other sites have been suggested-one by a local company, Denison Resources N/L, in Blackall in central Queensland. Even the Deputy Premier of Queensland has offered an alternative site in his electorate. The Lytton proposal has been opposed by 3,000 residents at a rally. Sir Robert Sparkes has distanced himself from the proposal. It has to be said that the Queensland Minister for Industry and Technology, Mr McKechnie, prior to the election, said, `It is not politically acceptable to have the plant on Lytton industrial estate'. However, as soon as the election was over, a change occurred. I can be no more eloquent than was the Premier of Queensland in trying to outline the problem. I want to quote him, and I am sure that Senator MacGibbon would not wish to stop me quoting the Premier of Queensland. In speaking of the Labor Party, he said: . . . they've even sought to create an atmosphere of hysteria and a such a lot of people without stopping to think, without knowing the facts, without knowing this material is used of course in the our drinking water for all the councils that's the purpose of it, for the City Council to create the material that they use in the purifying and making of water drinkable. All this sort of stuff and the effluent to say that it's dangerous and all the rest of it of salt water you ought to know that. If you don't know it, but if you knew all the facts as I'm sure you must know, . . . While the Commonwealth acknowledges serious concerns not only about the project itself but about the Premier's knowledge of it, it has to acknowledge that it is outside the provisions of the Environment Protection (Impact of Proposals) Act, and while expressing concern, I am afraid that I cannot take any further action. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce) —by leave-I claim to have been marginally misrepresented by Senator Lewis. Senator Lewis asked me a question about predictions made on 22 September 1986 about the value of the dollar. I want to place on record what I actually said because Hansard will reveal that Senator Lewis put certain things into my mouth, or purported to do so. I want to get on the record what I said, and I quote: The depreciation of the Australian dollar to a level just above 60c to the United States dollar has substantially restored Australia's international competitiveness and will provide major opportunities for import replacement and economic growth. Manufacturers should be making their investment plans on the basis that the dollar will remain very close to its current levels and that the Government will successfully influence the course of wage and price growth to preserve gains we have made in international competitiveness. That was the context from which Senator Lewis's question was taken. I remind him that the average value of the Australian dollar in September 1986 was just above 63c, not 60c as was implied by the question. I do not think that we are very much at issue, because the point of the question is to indicate that politicians should never make speeches. The question slightly misrepresented the position I put in that speech, and I want that put on the record. Senator LEWIS(Victoria) —by leave-I wish to make a personal explanation about the same matter. I want to draw attention to the specific words I used in the question. I said `was at a level just above 60c' and in the Minister's speech, which I incorporated, the Minister used the words `to a level just above 60c'. Senator MESSNER(South Australia) —by leave-I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: (1) That a select committee, to be known as the Select Committee on Coastal Surveillance, be appointed to inquire into and report upon the circumstances surrounding the calling of tenders for the `Coastwatch' contract for the surveillance of Australia's northern coastline and the subsequent grant of the contract to Amann Aviation Pty Ltd and, in particular, the following questions: (a) was the investigation of Amann's resources thorough enough before the contract was awarded, including investigation of Amann's: (i) financial backing and status (was it a two dollar company?), (ii) access to a supply of appropriate aircraft, (iii) access to maintenance bases, fuel supplies, etc., (iv) access to appropriate personnel, and (v) proven background in aviation operations and logistics? (b) What questioning of Amann's ability was there by the Tender Board? Was there a thorough Federal Police report on Amann and what law enforcement agencies were involved? Did the Federal Police investigate the possibility of vested interests on the Tender Board? (c) What role did the Department play in attempting to cover up Amann's shortcomings? Did any officers of the Department act as de facto recruitment officers for Amann? (d) Were there any changes to the original tender which assisted Amann, in areas such as start-up dates, technical changes, and aircraft to be used (both number and type)? Select Committee on Coastal Surveillance (e) what information did the Minister at the time, Mr Morris, have that could indicate that he might have misled the Parliament? (f) Did Amann Aviation mislead the Department and the Minister concerning the equipment to be used, start-up dates, frequency of surveillance, numbers of aircraft, etc.? (g) Why did the Department allow a start-up date for Amann Aviation (12.9.87) to be nearly three months later than the date on which the original contract lapsed? (h) What did Mr Morris do to thoroughly investigate and to expedite the Amann contract after he had twice been warned by the Opposition in April/May that all was not well with Amann? (j) When were the alternative arrangements for coastal surveillance made with Skywest and what were the terms of those arrangements? (k) Why did the Amann contract not contain legally enforceable appropriate arrangements to phase in surveillance operations rather than have a single start-up date? (l) On what grounds did the Government terminate the Amann contract and what were the details of that contract? Mr President, the balance of the notice of motion concerns procedures for a committee to adopt and these are standard. I seek leave to incor- porate the rest of the notice of motion in Hansard. Leave granted. The notice of motion read as follows- (2) (a) That the Committee consist of six Senators, three being Government Senators, and three being Senators who are not Government Senators nominated by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate or by any minority group or groups or Independent Senator or Independent Senators. (b) That the nominations of the Opposition or any minority group or groups or Independent Senator or Independent Senators be determined by agreement between the Opposition and any minority group or groups or Independent Senator or Independent Senators, and, in the absence of agreement duly notified to the President, the question as to the representation on the Committee be determined by the Senate. (3) That the Committee proceed to the despatch of business notwithstanding that all members have not been duly nominated and appointed and notwithstanding any vacancy. (4) That the Chairman of the Committee be appointed by and from the members of the Committee. (5) That the Chairman of the Committee may, from time to time, appoint another member of the Committee to be the Deputy-Chairman of the Committee, and that the member so appointed act as Chairman of the Committee at any time when there is no Chairman or the Chairman is not present at a meeting of the Committee. (6) That, in the event of an equality of voting, the Chairman, or the Deputy-Chairman when acting as Chairman, have a casting vote. (7) That the quorum of the Committee be four members. (8) That the Committee and any sub-committee have power to send for and examine persons, papers and records, to move from place to place, to sit in public or in private, notwithstanding any prorogation of the Parliament or dissolution of the House of Representatives, and have leave to report from time to time its proceedings and the evidence taken and such interim recommendations it may deem fit. (9) That the Committee have power to appoint sub-committees consisting of three or more of its members, and to refer to any such sub-committee any of the matters which the Committee is empowered to consider, and that the quorum of a sub-committee be a majority of the Senators appointed to the sub-committee. (10) That the Committee be provided with all necessary staff facilities and resources and be empowered to appoint persons with specialist knowledge for the purposes of the Committee with the approval of the President. (11) That the Committee be empowered to print from day to day such papers and evidence as may be ordered by it, and a daily Hansard be published of such proceedings as take place in public. (12) That the Committee report to the Senate on or before the last sitting day in October. (13) That, if the Senate be not sitting when the Committee has completed its report, the Committee may provide the report to the President, or, if the President is unable to act, to the Deputy President, and, in that event: (a) the report shall be deemed to have been presented to the Senate, (b) the publication of the report is authorised by this Resolution, (c) the President or the Deputy President, as the case may be, may give directions for the printing and circulation of the report, and (d) the President or the Deputy President, as the case may be, shall lay the report upon the Table at the next sitting of the Senate. (14) That the foregoing provisions of this Resolution, so far as they are inconsistent with the Standing Orders, have effect notwithstanding anything contained in the Standing Orders. The PRESIDENT —I inform the Senate that I have received the following letter, dated 15 September, from Senator Puplick: 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 need for further consideration and adequate public discussion of the Australia Card in view of increasing concern about the threat it poses to individual privacy and civil liberties, the burden it places on business and industry and the failure of the Government to prove the Card will be cost-effective. Yours sincerely CHRIS PUPLICK Senator for the State of New South Wales Is the proposal supported? More than the number of senators required by the Standing Orders having risen in their places- Senator PUPLICK(New South Wales)(3.27) —I move: That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency: The need for further consideration and adequate public discussion of the Australia Card in view of increasing concern about the threat it poses to individual privacy and civil liberties, the burden it places on business and industry and the failure of the Government to prove the Card will be cost-effective. The Australian Labor Government has at last decided on its bicentennial gift to the nation. Its bicentennial gift for 1988 will be to enforce a system of numbering the people of Australia, men, women-even children. It will be a gift to the nation designed to limit and reduce the civil rights and freedoms of ordinary Australian citizens, to put them in thrall to the bureaucratic authorities who will retain data on them and use it to control them and spy on them without their knowledge. Senator Tate —Absolute rubbish! Senator PUPLICK —The Parliamentary Secretary for Justice says this is nonsense knowing full well that at the moment he is in the position of being a full-scale political neuter. He can speak in this place but we cannot question him. We find that the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke), having read his history books, has found that 200 years ago the majority of people who were brought to the then colony of New South Wales were brought enslaved and numbered. He has thought it a good idea to bring the wheel full circle so that 200 years later the people of Australia will be numbered and will be put in relation to the bureaucracy in exactly the same sort of situation as they were two centuries ago. We know full well that the Government has a series of its own secret internal arrangements as far as this card is concerned. We know that there are documents being prepared for Cabinet indicating that this Government has a preference for introducing this legislation and getting it operative by 7 October this year, and if not by then certainly by the end of the year. We believe that the majority of members not only in the Senate but in the whole Australian community demand that there be a fuller, more open public debate and examination of the matters which are raised in terms of the threat to our civil liberties, the burden to be placed upon industry, commerce and the private sector and the failure of the Government to explain not only the purposes of this card but the cost effectiveness of it. For those reasons this motion should be supported. We know from the efforts of the Australian Privacy Foundation that there are documents floating around in the bureaucracy which expose what the Government really has in mind as far as this card is concerned. We know that that information is circulating within the bureaucracy. Despite Senator Ryan's attempts to deny that any of this material exists, we find the following report on the World Today program of 14 September: An officer from the Health Insurance Commission has confirmed that at least one of the documents released by the Privacy Foundation was written by him. Ken Hazell, an assistant general manager responsible for the Australia Card, says he did write a discussion paper on recording changes to the data base. Mr Hazell is indeed an interesting character as far as this debate is concerned, because he was one of the witnesses before the Joint Select Committee on an Australia Card. I had the pleasure of asking him certain questions, and I shall read part of the transcript of that Joint Selection Committee report. I said to Mr Hazell: I wish to direct a question to Mr Hazell, as the person who was responsible for the overseas visit. Needless to say, there was an interdepartmental committee on the card and the IDC had to make a lengthy overseas visit. I asked: Which countries did you visit which have legal systems based on British common law principles? Mr Hazell-Could you explain what you mean by that? Senator PUPLICK —Which common law countries did you visit as distinct from civil law countries? Mr Hazell-I am afraid I do not understand what you mean? So I explained to him the difference between civil and common law. Mr Hazell then went on: I believe the only one would be Hong Kong. Mr Hazell continued: In Europe we went to France and Belgium. Then we visited Israel, Hong Kong, the USA and Canada. Canada and the USA have very common systems but I am afraid the implication of your question is still lost on me. This is one of the people responsible for putting together the regime to back up and enforce the Australia Card legislation. These people do not know the difference between common and civil law. They do not know the purport of having a common law system to protect our rights and liberties. Not only are they impervious to it but they do not even take it into consideration as they proceed with their plans. In the last couple of weeks public opinion on the Australia Card has shifted dramatically. It has shifted as the opportunity has presented itself to the Australian people to get a clearer understanding of what it is that this Government has in mind: a message that has been hidden from the people both by the Government and by the dereliction of duty on the part of the Australian media to put the facts before them. We know that in June of last year 65 per cent of Australians were allegedly in favour of the introduction of the card. We know that that number has now fallen to 39 per cent. The number against the card has almost doubled from 27 per cent to 50 per cent. The editorial writers who in October and November of last year were so in favour of all these wonderful new plans are going through a change of view. An article in the Australian Financial Review of 28 August, headed `The genuine problems with the Australia Card', concludes with these words: It is simply obscene to use revenue arguments (``we can make more money out of the Australia Card'') as support for authoritarian impositions rather than take the road of broadening national freedoms. The Sydney Morning Herald editorial of 7 September, headed `The doubts about Australia Card', states: It is a gold-plated answer to the Tax Office's problems. Something not quite as cost-effective but much less capable of being abused would be preferable. The editorial in the Australian of 10 September is headed `Closer look needed at card alternatives'. The Daily Mirror of 14 August, in an article headed `Australia Card Bill flawed', states: Senator Susan Ryan has introduced a totally new element into the Australia Card debate by talking of possible changes to the legislation and at the same time has cast grave doubts on the Government's credibility. It is the Government's credibility and Senator Ryan's credibility which will be tested in this debate. We know that the standard reply from Senator Walsh, and those who follow his tactics in this place, is to say: `This is all the work of those who are the friends of tax cheats and the friends of people trying to rip off the system'. We shall see tonight whether he says that if there are changes to the negative gearing arrangements, which honourable senators will recall was the argument of the Treasurer (Mr Keating) about that matter just two years ago. I turn to just two examples of people who have expressed their opposition to the Australia Card. I invite Senator Ryan, Senator Walsh, Senator Tate, Senator Cook, or anybody else who is going to participate, to tell us whether these people are significant friends of cheats, frauds and bludgers. I quote from the following article written by James Murray, the religious correspondent of the Australian, on 10 September: One of the first vocal opponents of the Australia Card was the Anglican Primate of Australia, Sir John Grindrod. . . Are we going to say that a person such as that is part of this conspiracy-the cheats, the frauds, the bludgers, the spongers and the people who want to rip off the system? On 14 September the Anglican Church Synod in Tasmania unanimously passed a resolution condemning the introduction of the Australia Card. Are these people fools, are they misled? Are they victims of the sorts of hysterical pressures that Senator Ryan wants to say are the responsibility of the Opposition for having generated them? No. They know the truth. We know full well that the Government is conscious of the public ground swell against the Australia Card. Poor Mr Hurford, who has had his bags packed since he magnanimously gave up his spot in the Ministry in order to take up a nice diplomatic appointment overseas, has had to unpack his bags. The Government cannot afford to send him overseas or to allow him to leave the country and cause a by-election. The same thing is happening in the electorate of Robertson. Mr Cohen is anxious to get out. One thing he learnt from opera when he was Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Environment is that when one gets stabbed, one does not die; one sings. He is waiting for half a chance to sing, but the Government is making sure that we do not have a by-election in Robertson for the purpose of exposing what the electorate has to say about the Australia Card. We have seen a broad-based coalition of Australian citizens who have indicated their opposition to this card. We have seen that the Australian Privacy Foundation can put together a group of people comprising Professor Wheelwright on the one hand and Professor Chipman on the other, united in their view about the Australia Card, and distinguished Australian citizens have expressed their views on the matter. Interestingly, one of the people who has expressed his view is Ben Lexcen. People will recall the Prime Minister the other day saying on the steps of Parliament House: `Who is this Ben Lexcen fellow? What is this strange coalition that he is involved in-strange bedfellows around the place?'. What did the Prime Minister have to say in his Address to the Nation on the economic situation on 11 June 1986? We know the definition of the Prime Minister. He is the guy standing next to the sporting hero whenever there are cameras around. He said: As Australians we take enormous and obvious delight in the achievements of international excellence by our fellow countrymen and women. Just think of Robert de Castella, Joan Sutherland, Ben Lexcen and John Bertrand . . . It requires the same elements as have brought Deek, Joan, Ben and John to the top- to get on with the job. Where is Ben when we need to rally the nation? It requires the characteristics that Ben has; good old Ben. What did we hear within a couple of days of his statements? The Prime Minister said: `Who is this Ben Lexcen fellow? What is he all about as far as the Australia Card is concerned?'. This level of hypocrisy would be almost mind-blowing if it were not coming so regularly from the Australian Labor Party. We know the threats to personal privacy from not having an adequate system. Senator Ryan would do well to tell us what she thinks of the behaviour of the Health Insurance Commission as far as files in the McGoldrick case are concerned, and to tell us what she thinks of the Health Insurance Commission allowing the records of abortions in a medical clinic in Melbourne to be made available to the Australian Federal Police. We wait to hear what Senator Ryan has to say in defence of the Health Insurance Commission. We wait to hear what she has to say in defence of the Commission's leaking the details of doctors' incomes to the Sunday newspapers in order to blackmail them during a confrontation with a Labor government on doctors' salaries. We wait to hear what she has to say about the fact that, when a patient went to the Southport Hospital for treatment of an asthmatic condition, by using the Medicare file number the hospital authorities were able to determine that the last occasion on which that person had been treated for an asthmatic condition was when he was in gaol. We wait to hear what Senator Ryan has to say about the civil liberties of Australians under those circumstances. When this matter was before the Senate some time ago we were concerned about overseas experience. On 25 September last year I asked Senator Grimes, as he then was, a question about Sweden. He could not give a detailed answer-a bit like Senator Gareth Evans at Question Time today. He thought that he knew something about the matter but he certainly was not going to say anything, not the least because he would have exposed the nonsense being talked about the Australia Card. However, Senator Grimes replied to me as follows in the Hansard of 7 October 1986: Mr Freese has specifically denied that his resignation was in any way to be interpreted as a protest against or an indication of any incapacity of the Swedish Data Inspection Board to undertake its functions in respect of the protection of the privacy and civil liberties of Swedish citizens. Today in the Sydney Morning Herald we see part of an interview from Stockholm with the same Mr Freese in which he stated that he was `prompted to quit partly as an act of protest' because he was `fed up with the increasing computerisation of Swedish society'. He offered to come to Australia and I invite the Government to pay for him to do so. After all, it brought Lars Tegnhed from the Swedish tax board to Australia to give evidence to the Joint Select Committee on an Australia Card. I now invite the Government to invite Mr Freese to come to Australia to give public testimony and evidence about his experiences as the so-called protector of civil liberties in Sweden because he warns Australia to think very carefully about the introduction of an Australia Card system. Of course, the Government does not care about these things. Of course, it does not care about privacy. Why should it? The Minister for Community Services and Health (Dr Blewett) has defined privacy: Let me say as a socialist that it is the interests of the community that should come before the individual right . . . we shouldn't get too hung up as socialists on privacy because privacy, in many ways, is a bourgeois right that is very much associated with the right to private property. This is the same Minister who, on 18 November in the other place, admitted that the system would not be able to pick up forged cards quickly. It is the same Minister whose colleague, Mr Howe, when dealing with leaks from the Department of Social Security, put out a Press release which stated, in part: Any organisation with extensive records is vulnerable to such approaches. Those were the approaches to leak and to misuse information held by the Government. We know that the Government admits that the legislation is defective. Dr Blewett put out a statement on 5 February this year headed `Changes to Australia Card Bill'. The Australian of 14 August had the following to say, in an article headed `ID card flawed, Ryan admits': At this stage I think there are some minor amendments we would be happy with . . . Senator Ryan has said in relation to privacy protection, `Don't worry about all of these things; there is adequate protection. You will not have to spend any money to go to the Ombudsman or the AAT'. On 17 August she said that it does not cost anything to go to the Ombudsman or the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. This is the Minister whose Government introduced a $200 charge to take appeals to the AAT and who then said, `You can go to the AAT. You do not need to put up any money because it will help you to protect your privacy'. It will cost $200 a time to protect one's privacy against the sort of system which Senator Ryan and her Government are seeking to put in place. One almost has to feel sorry for Senator Ryan. She was included in the Cabinet not on the basis of her number of neurons but on the basis of her number of chromosomes and was given the task, like Simon of Cyrene, of carrying the cross of the ID card the last few paces to Calvary. I can tell her that she will end up nailed on it, as will the Government on behalf of which she is attempting to make out the defence that this is a system which is needed and wanted. I do not think there has ever been such a ground swell of public opinion against this card as has been manifest in the newspapers, commentaries, marches, protests, committees and representations made to members of this Parliament. Senator Cook —You still would not win an election. Senator PUPLICK —Senator Cook has been thrown into this debate once again. We will have a great deal of fun exploring Senator Cook's behaviour at a later stage, because undoubtedly Senator Collins will have some comments about border hopping pirates who fiddle with other people's backyard empires. So we will come to Senator Cook and have the opportunity to deal with him in due course. He should retain his patience because we will not ignore him; we will not overlook him. In fact, we will deal with him by name rather than by number. We have made it quite clear in this debate that the Opposition has consistently stood for certain principles. We have said consistently that we will co-operate in any attempt to police the taxation system properly and fairly. And no Treasurer has a better record than John Howard in introducing legislation to that effect. We will ensure that the social security system is properly policed. We will ensure that fraud does not take place and that the concerns of Costigan, the Australian Federal Police, Inspector Merv Beck, and all of those who have raised concerns about this matter, are properly addressed. We will demand that there be a full and adequate public debate and that the Government explain, if it can, the sort of system which it is intending to put upon people. We will not see our Bicentenary marred by the turning back of the clock two centuries to a system of bureaucratic control and numbered people in this country. Whatever Senator Ryan says amounts to a defence of this Government's retreat of 200 years to the sorts of civil liberties which are unacceptable and unconscionable so far as the people of Australia are concerned. Senator RYAN(Australian Capital Territory-Special Minister of State)(3.47) —When I saw that Senator Puplick was going to make his debut as a parliamentary shadow Minister in this debate, and knowing that in the past he appeared to have some genuine interest in civil liberties, I thought that we might actually get a reasonable debate, that the tone might be raised and that we might actually get some specific expression of concern about the Data Protection Agency or its mode of operation or something to which we could respond in a sensible and rational fashion. However, my hopes were disappointed. Unfortunately, all we have had is the same old thing: hysteria, emotional claptrap, personal abuse, selective quoting from newspapers, sourced and unsourced-usually unsourced-and generally the crazy idea that, somehow because we have a number, we have something that goes back to the convict days. Before I address, as I guess it is my responsibility to try to address, the nonsense we have just heard from Senator Puplick, I pose to him the question which I have posed constantly to John Howard, to Senator Chaney, and to Jim Carlton, who in those days had a bit of interest in what was happening to revenues: Where was all this concern, fear, trembling, harking back 200 years and the suggestion that the convict system was about to be restored during the eight weeks of the election campaign? If Senator Puplick now finds himself outraged to the point where he can barely speak without foaming at the mouth, why was he silent on this issue during a very long election campaign in which Mr Howard daily had numerous opportunities on television, radio and at Press conferences to point to all of these horrors? Why was Senator Puplick, a senator not renowned for his silence and restraint, never to be heard raising any of these threats of a convict system, so on and so forth? All that Opposition senators say in response to this very reasonable question put by me and my colleagues is: `It was the media's fault. We are blaming the media. We were interested in the issue but the media was not'. They scapegoat the media for failing to run the campaign which they now wish, in retrospect, they had run. John Howard admitted in a report in the Australian Financial Review shortly after the election that the reason the Opposition had not discovered all these dreadful threats, terrors and defects in the Australia Card legislation to the extent where they might squeak up about it during the election campaign was that Opposition polling had shown that 67 per cent of the Australian people were in favour of the Australia Card. What happened after that? There was blithering and blaming of the media. A few high profile individuals have decided that this is the best way they have ever found of getting their faces on television and have leapt into the debate, creating confusion and concern. Now the Liberals, the Johnny-come-latelys, have leapt on to the bandwagon and said, `Me, too. Me, too. We really think the Australia Card is dreadful. We forgot that it was dreadful during the election campaign, but we have discovered that it is dreadful again and we do not want the likes of Peter Garrett getting all the publicity. We want a bit of publicity, too'. So we hear the sort of thing we have heard from Senator Puplick. Let me address some of these issues. Senator Puplick said that the worst thing about the Australia Card, a system of identification which will protect the taxpayers' revenue, stop social security fraud and reintroduce public decency and morality into the system-all of the things that the Australian people want; a simple, streamlined, straightforward identification system-is that it will have numbers, and numbers are what convicts had. With an incredible leap of illogic Senator Puplick says that because the Australia Card will have numbers and because convicts had numbers ergo the two are the same. Terrific! Senator Puplick should go back to school. Senator Haines, who is to join the debate, is a great advocate of the tax number system. Frank Costigan, who does not like the photograph on the Australia Card, is also a great advocate of a tax number system. In fact, all members of the Joint Select Committee on an Australia Card argued in favour of a unique numbering system. Where they fell apart and made different reports was in respect of whether it should be a tax numbering system or an Australia Card system. On the one hand we have the likes of Senator Puplick saying, `We cannot have this system because it involves numbering' and on the other hand honourable senators opposite, such as Senator Haines, saying that they want a number system, but not the system the Government has put up. Before we all shrivel up and die at the thought of having a number associated with us, let us remember that every Australian already has a Medicare number. That was introduced some years ago. If the mere fact of having a number attached to one's name somewhere in the system is going to bring down democratic civilisation as we know it, where was Senator Puplick, the great civil libertarian, when Medicare numbers were introduced? To follow the logic of what Senator Puplick is saying, why should we have a passport number? Why should we not be free to come and go? Why should we not let anyone come into the country? Why should we insist on a number on a passport? Is this not an invasion of our civil liberties? Driving licences will have to be abolished if Senator Puplick's stance is to have any logic, particularly those licences in States such as Queensland, which carry a photograph. Senator Collins —The Northern Territory. Senator RYAN —And the Northern Territory. Senator Puplick —Are they compulsory? Senator RYAN —If one wants to drive, of course a drivers licence is compulsory. Now Senator Puplick wants people driving on the roads without driving licences. Now he does not want driving licences to be compulsory. The irresponsibility of the kind of debate our opponents are putting up astounds even me, and I have had to put up with this sort of thing from the Opposition for 12 years. Senator Puplick also makes a number of spurious claims about the timetable and leaked documents. He quoted in a highly selective and dishonest way from the Hansard record of the Select Committee's hearings. Senator Puplick —I take a point of order, Mr Deputy President. I do not mind being called disorderly but the term `dishonest' is unparliamentary, Mr Deputy President. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —To say that Senator Puplick is dishonest is unparliamentary. It should be withdrawn. Senator RYAN —I withdraw the term `dishonest'. Senator Puplick quoted part of an exchange between himself and an officer from the Health Insurance Commission concerning the investigation of overseas systems. He did not go on to quote the very adequate explanation given by Mr Michael Clarke, who is the officer in charge of the Australia Card Secretariat. Similarly, Senator Puplick rushes to the newspapers, finds the odd editorial that might have expressed some misgivings and quotes it. He does not bring into the Senate the dozens and dozens of positive editorials there have been in a whole range of newspapers. For those who had the misfortune of having to listen to Senator Puplick and had hoped that he might shed some light on what has become an issue of concern to the community, I am just setting out that he has, in the most gross fashion, used sources where they suited him and ignored the weight of evidence there is that the Australia Card is a system which many people judge to be in the interests of the Australian people. The wording of the urgency motion the Opposition has brought to us today refers to the need for adequate public debate. Even the most avid opponent of the Australia Card could hardly say that there has not been public debate. There has been over 40 hours debate in the Parliament, we are to have another full scale debate in the Senate and we will have further debate on the issue at the joint sitting. As well as that, speaking as someone who has been in the Australian Senate for 12 years, I have never been involved in so much concentrated media debate, which is very public as we know, on a particular issue as I have been on this issue. I am sure that other people can say the same. To suggest that somehow there has been a paucity of debate on this issue is as illogical and silly as all the other things the Opposition has to resort to in an effort to continue to blow the bushfire until it goes out. Certain matters have been raised and, even if Senator Puplick does not want to get down to facts and real information and an accurate description of the legislation, I am prepared to do so. I want to say a few things about the civil liberties protections during the debate. My colleagues Senator Michael Tate and Senator Peter Cook will address the other matters, such as the alleged cost to business and the costing, which is very important. The Government would not be proceeding with this legislation unless we were confident that there were billions of dollars to be saved for honest taxpayers and genuine social welfare recipients. I want to say a few things in regard to civil liberties. I want to say on the record that I recognise and acknowledge that by now, since there has been so much fear mongering and so many false things said about the legislation, there are people in the community who are genuinely concerned that there may be some impairment of civil liberties. I want to address my remarks to them because I realise that it is pointless to address my remarks to the likes of Senator Puplick. I want to go very quickly through the ways in which civil liberties will be protected and, as a preamble, say that there has never been such a wide-ranging package of civil liberties protections for the individual in relation to data kept about him or her in government and in private sources as we have here. Another question I would like to put to Opposition senators, formally and informally, is why, if they are apparently so concerned now about the misuse of simple identity data, which is all the Australia Card database will have, have they not in the past expressed a similar or even greater concern about the enormous amount of data that is held about individuals in the private sector, with no protections, no scrutiny, no Data Protection Agency and no rights of appeal-nothing? Apparently it is all right if all the credit agencies, private finance companies and the rest of the private sector find out what they like about us and use it in whatever way they want to. In the private sector that is okay and one will never hear anything from Senator Puplick, Senator Reid or anyone else about it. But as soon as the Government wants to improve, correct, streamline and protect basic identity information it is the end of civilisation as we know it. There are many questions to be asked but they are mainly to be asked by these newfound, born again opponents of the Australia Card, rather than the Government. However, we stand ready to answer any genuine queries that are raised with us. In relation to civil liberties I simply point out a number of things that have been raised by our opponents and make the appropriate reference to the clauses in the legislation. It might be of interest to those who are genuinely concerned with what is in the Australia Card legislation. People are under no obligation to carry the card at all times-clause 8. Card applicants have the right to object to the requirement for a photograph and specimen signature-clause 12. Card applicants have the right to object to the Authority's request for further documentation-clause 13. The Authority is restricted to obtaining information from a limited number of data banks-clause 14. Person will be given a statement of reasons if they are refused the issue of a card-clause 16, and notice if their card is cancelled-clause 19. Information shown on the card will be strictly limited-clause 17. As I pointed out, it is less information than any driver's license contains. The Authority is to maintain the Register in compliance with directions issued by the Agency, preventing unauthorised access to or disclosure of information contained in the Register-clause 24. Information to be held on the Register is clearly defined-schedule 1, and so forth. I ask for the leave of the Senate to incorporate in Hansard the list of protections and their appropriate clause number as I fear that time will not allow me to go through them all. Leave granted. The list read as follows- Attachment B CIVIL LIBERTY AND PRIVACY PROTECTION IN THE AUSTRALIA CARD BILL People are under no obligation to carry the Card at all times (Cl. 8) Card applicants have the right to object to the requirement for a photograph and specimen signature (Cl. 12) Card applicants have the right to object to the authority's request for further documentation (Cl. 13) The Authority is restricted to obtaining information from a limited number of data banks (Cl. 14) A person will be given a statement of reasons if they are refused issue of a Card (Cl. 16) and notice if their Card is cancelled (Cl. 19) Information shown on the Card will be strictly limited (Cl. 17) Authority is to maintain the Register in compliance with directions issued by the Agency, preventing unauthorised access to or disclosure of information contained in the Register (Cl. 24). Information to be held on the Register is clearly defined (Schedule 1) Authority is required to log all access obtained to information on the Register (Cl. 25) A person has the right to request that information about that person on the Register be amended (Cl. 26) Authority is required to give notice of any proposed amendment to person to whom Card issued (Cl. 28) A person has the right to object to amendment of the Register by the Authority (Cl. 31) Operation of the FOI Act is maintained in respect of all documents except for the Register (Cl. 55) Persons can request access to information in the Register concerning themselves (Cl. 56) Authority is prevented from providing to a parent who is no longer living with a child the address of the child (Cl. 56 (4)) Access to Register is limited to agencies specified in Bill (Cl. 59-Cl. 66) There are strict controls established over officials who have access to the Register (Cl. 65-66) The same strict controls for access to the Australia Card Register will be applied to the BDM Register (Cl. 81) There are strict controls established over officials who have access to BDM Register (Cl. 82) A Data Protection Agency with extensive powers is to be established to protect the rights of individuals (Cl. 87) An Advisory Committee representing community interests is to be established to advise DPA on privacy issues (Cl. 104) The DPA is allowed to review all decisions by the Authority (Part VII, Div. 4) A person affected by a decision the subject of a review may appeal to the Federal Court on a question of law (Cl. 129) Legal assistance may be provided to a person who applies to the DPA for a review of a decision of the Authority (Cl. 135) The DPA, with powers similar to those of the Ombudsman, will investigate a wide range of complaints: (Part VII, Div. 5); Dishonest use or improper possession of a Card is an offence (Cl. 165) Unauthorised requirement that a Card be produced is an offence (Cl. 167) Access to the Register or BDM Register by persons not permitted by the Bill is an offence (Cl. 168) Secrecy provisions apply to past or present members of the Authority or the DPA. They are prohibited from divulging or communicating information obtained in the course of their duties, except for the purposes of the Bill (Cl. 169) Information acquired under Act is prohibited from use or disclosure for unauthorised purposes (Cl. 170) Senator RYAN —I refer to the major questions which have been raised. The first is that as a result of this legislation the Government will collect a whole lot of new data that it does not currently have about individuals and that that will be a risk. That is wrong. As a result of the legislation the Government will authenticate identity data only-that is, seek information or use information that it currently has to establish that one is the person one claims to be. That identity data will be the only data kept in the Australia Card databank. Senator Puplick —Why should we have to prove that to you? Senator RYAN —The answer, I think, was implied in one of the questions asked in Question Time today. There are an enormous number of people, as Senator Puplick knows, who are running around this community operating under false names-operating bank accounts under false names, taking social security payments that they have no entitlement to. Senator Puplick —How many? Put a figure on these enormous numbers. You have the police Minister here. Tell us how many? Senator RYAN —Senator Puplick wants to know how many. Is he suggesting that this is not a problem? Senator Puplick —You are saying there are enormous numbers. We have the police Minister here. Tell us how many. Senator RYAN —Senator Puplick is trying to distract the debate from the fact that everybody in this chamber knows, and everybody listening to this debate knows, that there are crooks and frauds running around the community with false identities, using-- Senator Vanstone —Do you know any? Senator RYAN —There are thousands. If Senator Vanstone is not prepared to admit that there is a massive problem of fraud in this community, she should go back to the drawing board and read the report of the Costigan Royal Commission on the Activities of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union, and other reports, that have established-- Senator Puplick —Why is the Department of Social Security opposed to the card? Senator RYAN —The Department of Social Security is not opposed to the card. Honourable senators on the other side of the Senate always seem to think in terms of rich people-that is, that if a rich person says something it must be true, that we must not question what is said and that we must immediately withdraw the legislation because a rich person has said that it might inconvenience him. I wish these honourable senators would give a little thought-a very rare thing for them-to the poor people in this community. The poor people in this community do not run around with wallets containing American Express cards, Bankcards and other credit cards. The poor people cannot operate on plastic credit. They cannot go into a store and spend thousands of dollars because they happen to have a credit card which entitles them to do so. The poor people in this community deserve a better deal than they are able to get while we have this extent of fraud in the social security and taxation areas. A woman who has been deserted by her husband and needs to get a social security benefit cannot just go and get it without identification, as a rich man cannot open a bank account without some identification. Senator Puplick seems to suggest that requiring identification is a new thing that has never happened in Australia. We all know how absurd that is. A poor woman cannot go into the Department of Social Security and say that the kids are starving and that she needs money straight away. She has to establish her identity and her entitlement to that benefit. Senator Haines —Why should she need an ID card? Senator RYAN —Senator Haines is a person who has shown some interest in poor people. The poor woman I am talking about needs an efficient, protected system which will establish immediately that she is who she is, that can be immediately used to check that she is not in employment, that she is not a fraud and that she is able to get that benefit straight away. At the moment-and Senator Haines might know about this because she does seem to take a bit of interest in the poor-people in that circumstance have a great deal of difficulty establishing their entitlement. The Australia Card will make it efficient, quick and honourable for that woman to get her benefit straight away. It will also mean that when all the frauds who are moonlighting and running around getting payments they are not entitled to have been weeded from the system, honest, decent social security recipients will be able to regain a reputation in our community. As it is, they are often dragged down by the cheats and frauds, and there is a backlash against them. As we know, single mothers suffer terrible prejudice in the community, not because the community is not sympathetic with the genuine women in that circumstance, but because the community is sick and tired of frauds who give the whole thing a bad name. I ask members of the Opposition to stop and think about the advantages to poor people of having an identity system which has integrity, which is fraud proof and which provides speedy entitlements to people who have a need. Senator Puplick raised the question of the Health Insurance Commission. Much has been made in the media lately of alleged leaks. I want to say a number of things about the Health Insurance Commission. First, in relation to the documents that are in circulation, it appears that they have come from the Commission. Let me draw the Senate's attention to a few things about them. They are not relevant to the current stage of preparation for the system. They were early working drafts of proposals and discussions. There will be no assistance from such documents to those who are interested in how the system will actually operate. Second, they have nothing to do with personal information. They are flow charts and discussions about how processes can be managed and things of that kind. They have nothing to do with individuals. They are not in any sense a violation. There will be an investigation of the Australian Federal Police into that matter and there will be an upgrading of security. My colleagues Senator Tate and Senator Cook will speak further on this. In conclusion, I have never heard so much illogical, hysterical and abusive content as I have had to put up with in the Australia Card debate. It is simply because the people opposite never were able to produce a substantial argument against it when it counted during the election campaign. The Opposition lost the election and it is trying to have a second bite of the cherry. It will lose that too. Senator HAINES(South Australia-Leader of the Australian Democrats)(4.08) —The matter of urgency moved by the Liberal Opposition states: The need for further consideration and adequate public discussion of the Australia Card in view of increasing concern about the threat it poses to individual privacy and civil liberties, the burden it places on business and industry and the failure of the Government to prove the Card will be cost-effective. What needs to be said first and foremost is that there is no one in this chamber, I would imagine, who in any way supports tax or social security fraud. To have that allegation flung at opponents of the ID card is a childish way of attempting to rebut some fairly solid arguments. I am not going to suggest that everybody who is arguing against the card has always been putting forward logical arguments. But in the main they have been logical. The cheap shot that the only people who are opposed to it are people who have something to hide and therefore something to fear is a nonsense. It does not do any credit at all to the Special Minister of State (Senator Ryan) who currently has charge of the legislation. What we in this place and those in the community want in effect is a system that will work to cut back as much as possible the tax and social security fraud that we all acknowledge has got away from governments, past and present. I agree, too with Senator Ryan that the Opposition's motion could well have included a reference to disadvantaged people as well as to the well off people who are mentioned in it. For example, it could have included some reference to those supporting parents that Senator Ryan mentioned, in particular those women who are currently escaping a violent marital relationship, and in order to do so successfully move themselves and their children to another city or to another town-maybe to the country somewhere-and without any attempt to defraud anybody at all, assume another name. But how will they be able to do that successfully when the Government introduces this sort of system? The motion should also have included the fact that the Card will not be effective in any significant way at all in doing what the Government argues it will do; that is, eliminate or cut out tax or social security fraud. How can it? No country which currently has a system even remotely similar to this one has managed to eliminate the cash economy or get rid of the criminal element. That is as true of the psuedo-ID card system that America has as it is of the ID card systems that apply in Europe. There is no way that the cash economy or the criminal element will be affected by the national identification system that this Government is planning to use. On the contrary, the criminal element especially could well be aided by it through the system's validation of a very invalidly assumed identity. So of course we need what the urgency motion says we need: we need much more consideration of this legislation and we need adequate public discussion. I suspect that one of the reasons why there was not an outcry from the public over this legislation during the election campaign or before it was simply that the public assumed that it did not matter if Labor got back into government as long as the Senate was not in the hands of the Government, because in the majority of cases members of the public were simply not aware of the constitutional device of having a joint sitting. They were certainly not aware that the Government was going to get the increased majority that it did. For the Government to argue that the election result provides some kind of magical mandate is an absolute nonsense. The Senate was deliberately kept out of the hands of the Government by the voters and the Government itself should pay heed to that fact. The Government needs to make a much greater effort to educate the public about the inadequacies of this legislation and to explain why it is trying to do what it is trying to do when there are so many alternatives available to it that would not be as costly, both in monetary terms and in terms of invasion of privacy, but which it does not seem to see fit to introduce. Senator Schacht —What are the alternatives? Senator HAINES —I will come to them in a moment. To begin with the Government needs to answer the challenge from the Law Council of Australia, a not insignificant body of people, that the Government's attitude-that is, its attitude to the safeguards allegedly provided in the legislation-seems somewhat contradictory. The Law Council of Australia says: On the one hand it- that is, the Government- argues that the information contained on the Australia Card and in the central data base will be limited and of such a character that there need be no concern about its being vulnerable to unauthorised access. On the other hand, the Government sees the need to establish a complex and costly system to protect that information-a system said to be the most secure available. It might be asked why such tight security is needed if the information held is as insignificant as the Government asserts. The Law Council goes on to point out that, of course, `the DPA will have no weapon to ensure protection of privacy', because it can only act after the event-and anybody who has read the legislation will have become aware of the fact that the penalties applying to somebody who does leak information are quite inadequate and significantly lower than those applying to ordinary individuals in the community who do not in some way comply with the requirements of this legislation. The Government also needs to explain why it is trying to implement a supposedly high integrity system by basing it on low integrity documents. Clause 13 (1) makes the following point: Where an application has been made for the issue of a Card, the Authority may, by notice in writing given to the applicant, require the applicant to give to the Authority, within the period specified in the notice, such information or documents as are required in the notice, being information or documents reasonably required to enable- (a) the identity of the person in respect of whom the application is made to be verified. Presumably that means documentation such as a birth certificate or a passport-documents which we all know are quite readily falsely acquired. Why this Government is arguing that it can produce a high integrity system based on low integrity documents and verifying data is beyond the comprehension of most people in this chamber. That point was made very strongly in the majority report of the Joint Select Committee on an Australia Card, which recommended the use of the tax file number and underlined the fact that that tax file number had to be made of very high integrity indeed for it or any other system to be workable. Indeed, the Australian Taxation Office acknowledged that at the moment the tax file number system is of appallingly low integrity. So for this Government to provide, as it has in the Cash Transactions Bill, for having verifying documentation produced to banks before bank accounts and so on can be opened and citing, in order of preference, tax file numbers, passports, and birth certificates, is to ignore the fact that this documentation is worse than useless because it can only be used to give an improper validity to something which should have no validity at all. The Government needs to explain to the Australian public why it is putting the cart before the horse in this way and not setting about getting a better integrity for the documents that we all use from time to time to verify that we are who we say we are; why it is not getting the births, deaths and marriages registry nationalised and computerised first; why it is not ensuring that passports can no longer be got on false birth certificates; and why it is not ensuring that those birth certificates cannot be fraudulently obtained in the first place. It needs to explain why it is not using alternative methods-things like a high integrity tax file number-to crack down on the tax and social security fraud that, as I said before, we all deplore. The Government should make that system one of improved integrity. We do not need to come up with a piece of legislation that is 130 pages long, has 189 clauses in it and a schedule that contains statements such as the statement that the Government will digitise the image of the cardholder. For what purpose, one wonders. I suggest that if this legislation is enacted-if it is forced through a joint sitting-there would not be a student in the country who would be prepared to go out and protest against increased tertiary fees or a peace activist who would be game to rally at Pine Gap, without being afraid that he or she will be identified from videos of those rallies matched against the identifying data that is contained in the computer, that is, the digitised image or photograph. Why is the Government on the one hand crowing about the effectiveness of its crack down on social security fraud, implemented a few months ago, while on the other claiming that welfare cheating is still going on significantly and can be cut back only by the introduction of an ID card of the sort that is provided for in this legislation? Why is the Government on the one hand encouraging, as it should, the Commissioner of Taxation to carry out audits on high profit making companies, raising, according to Mr Boucher recently, something like $2.5m on average from the companies so audited-indeed, he is also suggesting putting auditors permanently on the premises of some of the major companies-- Senator Schacht —Excellent idea. Senator HAINES —I do not agree with Senator Schacht on much and I will probably agree with him on less as time goes on, but I certainly agree with him on that. Why, then, is the Government on the one hand arguing how effective these measures are in eliminating tax avoidance, evasion and fraud while on the other hand arguing that that same tax fraud can be stopped only by a national intrusive identification system? Can the Government explain, too-to me, to others on this side of the chamber and to the Australian public-why privacy legislation is to be introduced only if the ID card legislation goes through, legislation which will not in fact impinge in any way at all on the private sector, despite Senator Ryan's comments rather acidly directed at this side of the chamber earlier on? We have certainly made a point, through my colleague Senator Michael Macklin, of the need for adequate privacy legislation that affects the private sector as much as it does the public sector. Can the Government explain the so-called voluntary nature of a card which has to be held by every individual who wants a rebate on medical expenses or wants to sell a home, hold down a job, collect family allowances, sell goods or undertake any of the other numerous activities that we in this country have been used to doing without being fettered in any way at all-activities that are part and parcel of a democratic country. More importantly, can the Government explain why it has failed so dismally to inform the people of Australia that all of this is the case-that there are these problems, there are these loopholes and there are these likely infringements-that this card is in fact not like a driver's licence which, despite Senator Ryan's odd comments, is in fact an item which we hold voluntarily, which we choose to hold if we want to drive and for no other reason. The ID card is not like a bankcard with our photograph on it. It is not like the sort of ID card that some people need to carry to have access to a high security building. It is not like any of those cards and licences, because they provide access to information pertinent only to the department that is issuing them, not a sort of catch-all department administered by the Health Insurance Commission which, as Senator Puplick has already indicated, has one of the most appalling records for preserving confidentiality of any department that this Government administers. Finally, can the Minister and the Government deny absolutely the argument put by the Society of Labor Lawyers in Victoria-which, by the way, her colleague the Minister for Transport and Communications (Senator Gareth Evans), who is at the table, helped set up and was the inaugural president of-that the ID card has the potential to become an internal passport and that the data bases established by the card may in the future be used for surveillance of the entire population? Of course they cannot explain any of those things. But the public needs to be made aware of the problems and to be made aware of the deficiencies in the legislation that this Government is so proudly claiming is going to end all the rorts, welfare and tax, in the Western world as we know it. Senator BJELKE-PETERSEN(Queensland)(4.23) —Number 59687364 rises today to speak on the urgency motion before the Senate chamber. I have no doubt that if the Australia Card Bill goes through this is what will happen to every senator in this place. I do not desire a number like that to be Australia's bicentennial gift to me. This point was put so very well by Senator Puplick when he led for the Opposition in the debate this afternoon. Most certainly, I do not want to protect tax cheats or social security frauds. I would not say that anyone on this side of the chamber wished to do that. As the Special Minister of State (Senator Ryan) said of many of us, I hold a bankcard number. I hold a tax file number, as everybody does. I have a driver's licence with my photograph on it, because I like to drive a motor car whenever I get home and have the chance to do so. Those who receive social security benefits, I have no doubt, also have a number. What I object to, and what the Opposition parties object to, is the fact that the Government, with this legislation, wants to put all of this information together in a data protection agency. This, of course, is what we are all so very concerned about-invasion of privacy. I say first of all that I do not believe that this Labor Government has any mandate to inflict on our country this most un-Australian piece of legislation. Statistics have a way of being used and abused for the sake of an argument. However, one set of statistics clearly shows that the Hawke Labor Government does not have a mandate to implement this most dangerous threat to privacy ever to be seen in this freedom loving country. I point out that 768,527 more Australians voted for the anti-ID card parties than voted for the Australian Labor Party at the last election. The anti-ID card parties won more votes than the ALP in every State and Territory with the exception of the Australian Capital Territory. So for the Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, to suggest that the return of his Government is proof positive that Australians want the ID card is to prove that he has completely lost touch with Mr or Mrs Average Australia. I am sure that most honourable senators in this chamber have been bombarded with letters and petitions from ordinary people who are very concerned about this ID card proposal. They are concerned about what it is to be used for, who will have access to it, and that they will not be able to manage without it. Of course, they have real concerns about the ability of hackers to infiltrate the system quite easily. I was very interested to see in the Australian newspaper this morning two pages of letters to the editor from people who are very concerned about this matter. These are letters from ordinary people-not cheats and frauds, but people are concerned about this matter. The newspaper received so many letters that it felt it had to devote two pages to them. It said that of the 526 letters that were written in respect of the ID card, an overwhelming 475 were against the proposal, 25 were for and 26 were from people who did not make their ideas quite clear. I believe that there is an increasing concern about the Australia Card and why the Government is bringing it in. The people who wrote those letters have not been organised by slick lobby groups. They are ordinary men and women who are concerned. Perhaps `concern' is too gentle a word. These people are scared stiff about which direction the socialist government that we have in power is taking them. The Government has failed convincingly to demonstrate that the ID card will achieve its stated aims. I want to put some of the facts about this ID card on record. The ID card will not stop tax fraud or evasion. The Australian Taxation Office is on record as saying so. The ID card will not catch the welfare cheats because the Department of Social Security has said so. The ID card will not catch illegal immigrants. Who said that? The Department of Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs said that, and it ought to know. Organised crime will benefit from the introduction of ID cards because it will be able to forge and use them. I believe that civil liberties and privacy are threatened by the ID card. The cost to all taxpayers will be excessive. With the introduction of this ID card, more public servants will be needed to control it. Goodness gracious me, the Government, with its deficit at the present time, ought to be thinking of ways and means of having fewer public servants rather than more. Private sector costs will also be increased by this ID card. New personal penalties and fines will be introduced to try to ensure the ID card's complete acceptance. Actually, the Prime Minister said recently on the media that it would not be compulsory to have an ID card. That is all very well, but how is one going to get on without it if the information that we have received is correct? The Government says if one does not produce an ID card one will not be able to deposit or withdraw money from a bank, one will not be able to claim Medicare benefits, one will not be able to get a job and one will not be able to buy or sell property. So the list goes on. I inform Senator Robert Ray that that is stated in division 2 of part IV of the Australia Card Bill 1986, which deals with when the card has to be produced. Senator Tate, the then Special Minister of State, spelt it out in his second reading speech that the card would have to be produced for deposits and accounts with financial institutions, investments, income from certain trusts, primary production income, rental income and foreign remittances. Goodness gracious me, the list is as long as my arm, and my arm is fairly long. One can see that it will be necessary for people to carry and produce their ID card almost on a daily basis. These are some of the reasons why we are all very concerned about it. Democracies closest to our own such as Britain, the United States of America and Canada have all rejected national ID card proposals. Senator Puplick told us earlier about the Director-General of the Swedish Data Protection Board who resigned in protest, after 12 years in the job, because of the failure of the Data Inspection Board and the data Act to stop `our shrinking privacy and the extremely new vulnerability of the computerised society'. There I am speaking about a country which has an ID card. Turning to the United States of America, a United States congressional report released in June this year states that the United States privacy Act is failing to give privacy protection to United States Government records. This is really what we are concerned about in this debate-the privacy aspect. When the Australia Card was first debated, 17 government agencies lobbied for access to the central identity register. The decision by the Government to allow three departments access to it has not fooled anybody. Once the card is introduced, no doubt other departments will subsequently be allowed access to the register as people start to worry less about it. Certainly, at present, everybody is very concerned. Very many eminent persons have expressed reservations about the ID card. Frank Costigan has told us in no uncertain terms what he thinks of the ID card, as have Justice Michael Kirby, Dr Ian Spry, QC, Editor of the Australian Tax Review, and the Right Reverend Michael Challen, the Anglican Bishop of Perth, who said: No family, no community and no nation can really work very happily except on the basis of trust . . . We believe that people will require the card to be produced as a normal practice and therefore people will not be trusting one another . . . What is abnormal at the moment, we suspect, would become normal. I do not believe, as Senator Ryan has suggested, that people such as those are tax cheats and frauds just because they are against the Australia Card. There are certainly very many people who feel very strongly about it. In fact I suggest to Government senators opposite that many people in their Party are against the introduction of the ID card. The Victorian branch of the ALP rejected the proposal for a national identity card at a State conference as far back as October 1985. The South Australian branch of the ALP has opposed a national identity card. The ALP National Conference held in Hobart in July 1986 considered, but ultimately defeated, a motion calling on the Party to reject totally any form of universal national identification card or system. Senator Tate —In other words, they agreed. Senator BJELKE-PETERSEN —Yes, they did, but that showed to me that they did not have too many brains. The Premier of New South Wales, Mr Unsworth, has warned the Federal Government that it should drop plans for the Australia Card because of the widespread and growing opposition to it. Unfortunately, at this point in time the Prime Minister has not taken any notice of him. Mr Unsworth told Mr Hawke that he should re-evaluate the proposal and take it back to the drawing board. I believe that it should not go back to the drawing board but should be thrown out completely, or at least a referendum should be held to see whether Australians want an identity system introduced. If the opinion polls conducted by the media organisations are anything to go by, I am sure that the people of Australia as a whole will say no. That is what we want. We certainly want to make sure that all Australians have a chance to say whether they really want this card or not. I am sure that an overwhelming number of Australians will say that they do not want it. The other day in Brisbane there was a march and a rally against the identity card. People such as Mr Jones and Senator Stone marched and spoke out against the ID card. Ordinary people everywhere are very concerned about the fact that the Government wants to bring in a card. Senator Burns —Do you agree with marching in Queensland? Senator BJELKE-PETERSEN —One is allowed to march in Queensland if it is about something sensible like this. We realise that it is a very important matter. Everybody realises it, except people who strongly support and belong to the Labor Party. However, there are even members of the Labor Party who are willing to march and be counted on a subject like this. The author Mr Morris West is one of the latest opponents of the proposed Australia Card, but time will not permit me to go through all the reasons why, he says, Australia does not need a card like that. The Prime Minister and the Government have said that one of the main purposes of the card supposedly is to crack down on welfare cheats. But on the Ray Martin show the other day the Minister, Senator Ryan, admitted that an ID card would not prohibit people from obtaining employment. A person who is on the dole and who wants to go off it and do some seasonal work, bearing in mind that he will not have to produce an ID card, will still be able to work under a false name. So I really do not see that the Government is achieving anything by having this card, especially when one considers that it will cost about $2 billion to change the private sector's system and that it will cost taxpayers about $1 billion-that is a lot of money for a government that is really working hard to reduce a tremendous deficit-and when one realises that it will require 2,000 public servants to administer it. These are some of the reasons why I am very pleased to support Senator Puplick's urgency motion today. I believe that Australians as a whole will give their wholehearted support to our urgency motion because they certainly re- alise that we do not need an Australia Card. The key factor of the whole debate centres around freedom and the gradual erosion of freedoms that we have enjoyed in this country. I hope that the Government will decide not to proceed with this proposal. We certainly would like to make sure that the scheme does not go forward. Senator TATE(Tasmania-Parliamentary Secretary for Justice)(4.38) —Mr Deputy President, it ill becomes a senator who has just said that people will be given permission to march if the issue on which they march is a sensible one to talk about freedoms in this country when that is her attitude-may I say, a totalitarian attitude-to the rights of citizens in this nation to express themselves by way of peaceful demonstration and political dissent. Nevertheless, I have to deal with the debate as it has been brought into the chamber. It is perhaps time that we came back to the actual terms of the urgency motion before the Senate. There is a claim in the early wording of the urgency motion that there is a need for further consideration and adequate public discussion of the Australia Card in view of certain matters. As far as I am aware, there has never been any suggestion that other than very adequate time has been given for the community and indeed this Parliament to come to grips with this particular notion. It was raised as long ago as June 1985 by the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) at the Tax Summit and has been the subject of continuous public discussion therefore for well over two years. Of course, it has been the subject, I believe, of something like 30 hours of debate in this chamber alone, let alone that which has occurred in the community at numerous rallies and meetings that have been called to discuss it. What is really at stake in this urgency motion, though it has not been much adverted to, is that this is part of the softening-up process. What Senator Puplick is trying to get the Senate to do and to become accustomed to is the notion that we need more time. This is really part of the softening-up process to precede the filibuster that will carry through no doubt well into the autumn session next year. That is the object of this particular urgency motion-to begin that process of frustration of what is a constitutional process undertaken on 12 June when the Prime Minister visited the Governor-General. It is all very well to talk about referendums. If we are talking about the Australian Constitution, the fact is that we had arrived at a time when the impasse between the two chambers of this Parliament needed to be resolved. The Governor-General accepted and concurred in that advice from the Prime Minister and therefore gave a double dissolution. This has led to the situation where we will have a joint sitting so that the elected representatives of the people, meeting in a different structure from when they meet separately in their two Houses, can come together to vote on this matter, which was the cause for the Prime Minister successfully obtaining the concurrence of the Governor-General in the granting of a double dissolution. That is the constitutional process on which we are embarked and which needs to be resolved in a reasonably speedy time-not in a time that does not allow for adequate deliberation and debate in this chamber. We do not give up our rights to engage in those processes which are proper to us as elected representatives and parliamentarians, but the time will come, as is constitutionally provided for, when the process of joint sitting has to be undertaken. This urgency motion begins the softening up process by suggesting that there has not been enough time for discussion in the community, when this matter was introduced into public debate at the tax summit in June 1985. This is something on which we should be watchful. Senator Bjelke-Petersen also spoke of her long arm. I was waiting for her nose to grow a little too, because some occasional little fibs were creeping in. Her assertion that the Australia Card will become something of a daily necessity is quite ludicrous. The scaremongering that has gone on among very ordinary, decent people in the community to get them into a state of almost hysteria, where they think they will have to produce this card on demand, is woeful. When I look back over the last year or perhaps two years as to the number of occasions on which I would have to produce the Australia Card under this legislation, I can think of three or four instances where I have had to obtain a Medicare benefit. I have not changed my employment-although no doubt many Opposition senators wish that I had been put in that position very recently-nor have I had to purchase a new home, nor have I had to open a new bank account. In fact, most Australians will have to produce this card, apart from the normal Medicare arrangements, perhaps only twice a year, three times in two years. The claims and the scaremongering that somehow we are introducing an internal passport, some sort of system which will require production on demand, as Senator Bjelke-Petersen said, on a daily basis, are so far removed from reality as to lead to the conclusion that there is a deliberate attempt to arouse hysteria and emotions among people who, when they come down to it, can see the good sense of this proposal. After all, what is the card about? I am not saying that Opposition senators are friends of tax cheats and of those who would defraud the social security system. It is a question of a simple photographic card which has to be produced on those occasions when by manipulating one's claim to an identity, one can avoid making a proper contribution to the revenue by way of taxation, or obtain a benefit from the social security system or under Medicare. Senator Puplick asked, `How many?' I agree that it is hard to estimate, but the fact is we know. We see a small portion represented in media reports and there are cases where people use multiple identities to get money out of the social security system. We know that there are hundreds of thousands of unclaimed group certificates sitting in the Australian taxation Office, and one can make a fair guess that many of those are sitting there because a person has taken a second or even a third job under a different name and does not want them all to be brought together under the one identity because then he will have to pay far more tax than he does. What it gets down to in much of this debate is a question of whether the very mild proposal embodied in this admittedly very large piece of legislation amounts to an attack on our democratic traditions, as has been stated time and time again. As I understand it-and I may understand it a little better than the witness Senator Puplick had before him at the Joint Select Committee on an Australia Card-there is no principal in either our democratic traditions or common law which allows a person fraudulently to claim a wrong identity to obtain benefits or to refuse to pay his fair contribution to the revenues by way of taxation. That is all we are talking about. Since when has dishonesty of that nature had the honourable name that should obtain some protection either by reference to some common law principal or to some democratic tradition? Of course, it never has and the Australia Card Bill is designed to try to stamp out that sort of deception. What undermines a democracy is the deprivation of those moneys which it requires to carry out the programs which have been decided upon by the people in electing their representatives to this Parliament. If democratically elected governments are deprived of those revenues on the scale which has been put forward by the Tax Office and which could be met by the introduction of this Australia Card, and if that undermining of the revenue of government continues, that is the real attack on the sinews and very structure of our democratic way of governing ourselves in this country. Not only is there an attack on the system in that respect, but the ordinary taxpayer is, I believe, becoming somewhat disillusioned, becoming very begrudging in the moneys that he or she will make available through payment of tax to support those who genuinely need social security or Medicare support. Unless we as a parliament can demonstrate to ordinary taxpayers that we are trying to crack down on the fraudulent misuse of identity and other matters which lead to the defrauding of social security and Medicare systems, I believe that we stand in danger of taxpayers withdrawing their support for those social security and Medicare systems in a way which will then bring about once again a diminution of what we are trying to create by way of a civilised, democratic society in Australia which offers support to those genuinely in need. I see that Senator Bjelke-Petersen has left the chamber. That is unfortunate because I wanted to bring this point to her attention. She mentioned that there could be an impact on our society such that daily demands could be made for production of the card. I wanted to quote to her clause 167 of the legislation, which states: Except as authorised by this Act, a person shall not require another person to produce a card. Penalty: $5,000 or imprisonment for 2 years, or both. There one has the firmest statement that could come from this Parliament, that if an over-zealous public servant or officious policeman demanded production of the Australia Card in any situation other than is provided under this legislation-and for the ordinary average Australian, as I have pointed out, that would be on very rare occasions indeed, perhaps two or three times a year, apart from production of the Medicare card in claiming benefits under that system-we will punish that person in a very severe way, and be stating as a parliament our intention to punish in a very severe way. The fact is that the Opposition only comes up with the old tax file number as the alternative-that is the stale old alternative which is brought up time and time again. As Senator Ryan said quite rightly, in the end even if the Opposition were correct in that matter and had its way, one would have to upgrade the tax file number to such an extent and bring about such a level of integrity by the production of documents to support the identity of a particular person with the tax file number, that one would virtually have a rose by any other name. One would virtually have everything that is required by way of the Australia Card, apart from the photograph. One would have a high integrity number identifying a particular person in the community. The fact is, as we know, that the tax file number is totally inadequate because, as the name implies, it is merely a number, attached, I suppose, in the old days to a manila folder as it travelled around the Tax Office. It bears no definite relation to a particular person in the community. It is a number which identifies a file that moves around in its manila folder. The fact that we now have computers rather than the mere physical transfer of manila folders does not diminish the force of what I am saying. We have to find a reason for the Opposition's continuous whipping up of emotions. This urgency motion is very sanitised and talks in quite muted terms about what is wrong. Opposition members feed on the creating of hysteria and grave misgivings and real concern out in the community, by those who portray the use of this card in totally wrong and unrealistic, but nevertheless frightening, ways. I have been in Tasmania joining in the debate and I have heard of old people being frightened by claims that unless they have their Australia Card number attached to their will, it will be void and have no effect and they will die intestate. This sort of thing causes tremendous concern out in the community. Others within religious congregations have been told that the Australia Card amounts to the mark of the beast in Revelations and that it means we are on the verge of the second coming. These are very real concerns being whipped up in the community. Senator Puplick's sanitised motion is feeding off these fears and he knows that out in the community terrible distortions are taking place. The Opposition's reasoning can be stated fairly quickly. We are getting not only at those who are involved in defrauding the social security system; we are also attacking those who are not making their proper contribution to the taxation revenues of the elected government of the day. I believe that Mr Elliott let the cat out of the bag when he said that he was quite happy with an Australia Card which merely dealt with social security fraud. That is almost a class thing. As far as he is concerned those who are unfortunate enough to be beneficiaries under the social security system can carry a card but he and his ilk certainly will not. This legislation attacks both social security fraud and those who are not paying their proper contribution to the revenues of government. Of course the Liberals and those on the other side of the chamber will always try to protect those who try to pervert the tax system. The fact that we are attacking the perversions of the tax system really rouses the ire of honourable senators opposite. Senator Haines —Everybody opposite? Senator TATE —No, I am talking about the Liberals in this respect, and I think that Mr Elliott let the cat out of the bag. There is a certain unanimity between the Liberal Party of Australia and the National Party of Australia, which comes down to the fact that they really want to deprive the Labor Government of the sinews of government. As honourable senators know, this legislation will be a tremendous revenue raiser. The benefits will be something like $5.6 billion recouped by way of taxes and lower welfare payments over 10 years. Establishment and running costs over those 10 years will be $759m. Therefore the net benefit will be $4.6 billion over 10 years. We need those revenues in order to fulfil the programs for which we have been elected by the Australian people. In depriving us of those revenues the Opposition will force us either to go into different forms of taxation or to cut back those programs. That is a political impediment that it is trying to place in our way be depriving us of the revenues that will be obtained by the implementation of this proposal. Senator ALSTON(Victoria)(4.53) —This motion is clearly one of great significance to almost all Australians but its impact is still quite clearly lost on the Government. It addresses specifically the burden that the Australia Card proposal places on business and industry and the failure of the Government to prove that the Card will be cost effective. Apart from the apoplectic fulminations from the Special Minister of State, Senator Ryan, who is the Minister responsible, and a fairly pedestrian contribution by the Parliamentary Secretary for Justice (Senator Tate), we have had one minute-that is, the last minute of Senator Tate's speech-which addressed the revenue-raising implications. It is quite clear that revenue is the last thought on the Government's mind. It is very difficult to understand why that should be. The silence is deafening when it comes to supporters of this legislation. Two Ministers and one near Minister, who is obviously on a promise for next time, have been wheeled out today by the Government. Apart from that no one is prepared to stand up. I have been trying to organise a public meeting for October. So far I have invited Senator Tate, Senator Ryan, Mr Brumby and Senator Aulich-the latter two of course strongly espousing the Government line on the Select Committee on an Australia Card. None of them are interested any more; they have all gone to ground. It is really very sad that the Government, which professes an interest in democracy, is not prepared to recognise the overwhelming view of the people. If we look at the basic motivation behind this legislation we find that it was aimed at preventing losses to revenue through the tax system and through the payment of Commonwealth benefits. The four major areas targeted by the Government's proposal are taxation evasion, social security fraud, illegal immigrants and benefit protection and other areas of Commonwealth expenditure. Of course, the reality is that this proposal does nothing to address any of those areas. It is a sad reflection on the Government's supposed commitment to efficiency, to being good economic managers and to being latter day champions of privatisation. However, one has to say that the Government has very quickly gone off the boil in that regard-Telecom Australia and Australia Post are now sacrosanct and we now see that airport terminals are not going to be flogged off. Of course, it is quite clear that the Government is going to water in that area. Nonetheless, it puts itself before the people as being very concerned about the cost-benefit implications of legislation. No doubt we will have a Budget presented to us tonight that will achieve a better Budget deficit than some commentators have suggested. That is the sort of nonsense that is usually put forward in praise of a government initiative-that somehow it is better than the commentators thought it might have been. In other words, it manages to improve on the leaked misinformation that had been put out sometime earlier. Nonetheless, that Budget will be presented tonight on the basis that somehow there are much greater revenue gains than were previously thought and therefore the Government is able to achieve a lower deficit. One of the principal reasons why it will achieve greater than expected revenue gains is the increased efficiency in the tax and social security systems, which has nothing to do with the yet to be introduced Australia Card. That in itself blows out of the water the whole notion of an Australia Card aimed at recouping all those massive escapings of Government revenue. I will put to one side the selective squeals that we have heard to date and deal with something that has not been touched on so far-that is, the whole question of cost in this area. If one goes back prior to the formation of the Select Committee on an Australia Card, the draft White Paper on the reform of the Australian taxation system estimated that an additional tax revenue sum of some $800m would be collected from the system within a period of three years of the implementation of the Australia Card. By September of that year-in other words, some three months later-the Treasurer (Mr Keating) was forced to concede that that estimate was significantly higher than was now anticipated. The Australian Taxation Office estimated that benefits would accrue of the order of $700m by the fourth full year of the system. On the other hand, the Health Insurance Commission put out figures which were light years removed from that sort of level. It estimated that the cost benefit in total over a 10-year period on a net present value basis would be of the order of $2.4 billion. At the very same time in a submission to that Select Committee the Department of Finance, using a 10 per cent discount rate which was precisely the same approach adopted by the Tax Office, came up with a figure in excess of $3 billion. It is quite clear that the figures vary wildly and that the Government is not in a position to assess anything like the real benefits of this legislation. This Government, which is supposedly committed to open government, still has freedom of information on the books although it makes life harder every day for those who wish to pursue it. I can announce to the chamber that James Porter will be appearing at a preliminary conference hearing next Thursday in order to obtain a copy of the Business Regulation Review Unit report. This report, which is more than 12 months old, recommended very strongly against the introduction of the Australia Card legislation on the grounds of massive costs to business. It has not yet been released by the Government despite numerous attempts to secure that release and, as I say, a FOI request which is to be dealt with at a preliminary stage. That is the sort of open government we get. The fact is that the Government is not in a position to reveal in any manner of accuracy the sorts of cost savings that will accrue because it simply does not know what they are. If one looks at the extent to which this legislation might have any impact on the black economy, one finds that the Tax Office estimates that income tax evasion costs this community about $3 billion per annum. That is a very conservative figure, as put before Senator Aulich's Committee. The draft White Paper estimated that income tax avoidance was of the order of $1.5 billion. By putting together avoidance and evasion one arrives at a figure of $4.5 billion at the very least. What is this sort of legislation going to do? If we are prepared to wait five or 10 years, it will recoup some hundreds of millions of dollars, apart from the massive start up costs of the order of $750m to $1,000m, which have to be paid up front. Where is the benefit in that? If the Government were serious about acting on decisions taken at tax summits and the like, it would have adopted option C and introduced a consumption tax that would have done something about the black economy, but no, here we are faced with a nebulous proposal that will do virtually nothing for the black economy. I am sure that those honourable senators who have read the Select Committee report will know precisely that: that all of the evidence demonstrated that the card simply would not achieve those sorts of gains. One of the witnesses before the Committee was Doug Meagher, QC, who is no wimp in anybody's language. He said that the ID card system would have no effect on the cash economy as moneys would simply not be put into bank accounts and would not be traceable. In the two major departmental submissions to the Joint Select Committee, the Australian Taxation Office favoured increasing the integrity of the present taxation system and the Department of Social Security pointed out that most overpayments to welfare recipients are due to departmental error or false information on income rather than falsification of identity. The Department of Social Security favoured pursuing its own automatic data processing strategic plan. The inevitable recommendation of that Committee was this: The majority believes the creation of a new bureaucracy of 2000 public servants within the HIC- the Health Insurance Commission- with the sole task of identifying every man, woman and child in Australia, is a wasteful exercise which will not address the problems of tax evasion and social security fraud but will provide the mechanism by which the very fabric of our society will be irreversibly altered, opening the way for the greatest attack on the privacy of individuals as the `Identity Bureau' identifies, monitors, and updates information on every person in Australia. That report was able to come to the Australian people only by courtesy of one courageous member of the Australian Labor Party. Of course, anyone else doing the same thing now would have his membership revoked and would go the same way as former Senator Georges. Nonetheless, that is the penalty one has to pay for being truthful. Senator Robert Ray —Or Francis and Jennings. Senator ALSTON —They got their just desserts, I can assure Senator Ray. But one cannot say the same about Mr Saunderson. I inform the Senate what he said to his colleagues. I happen to be on the mailing list for Caucus. Mr Saunderson, in his letter to all Caucus members, said: The majority report, for which I take some credit in its preparation, has rejected the introduction of an ID card with or without a photograph. It did so after receiving overwhelming evidence that Tax Evasion and Social Security can be tackled successfully, using the alternate Extended Tax File System, in a cheaper and more effective manner. If we look at the extent of tax evasion, the Tax Office by its own concessions is now getting its act together. Clearly, it needed to do that because the House of Representatives Expenditure Review Committee, reporting on five Auditor-General efficiency audits of the Tax Office, made it abundantly clear that it was not even in the game, that it was letting massive amounts of revenue go past because it did not have the resources, because it was significantly underspending on the provision that had been allocated to it. Now, of course, the Tax Office has finally and belatedly started spending something like $700m on updated computer equipment and, as a result, it is at last giving effect to the recommendations of the Auditor-General and the Expenditure Review Committee. The result of that, of course, is that it pulls the rug out from under the very proposition that we somehow need an Australia Card to catch up with tax evasion and social security fraud. It is vastly overstated in any event, but the reality is that the Tax Office is now performing very much better than it ever has in that area. It is doing the sort of job that it should have been doing quite some time ago, and it does not need any help from the un-Australian card. I come to the cost to business. Business has an entitlement to know what it is likely to be up for. Business costs, it is estimated by the Confederation of Australian Industry, will be of the order of $377m. The Government has never provided any information to the contrary. We therefore have to assume that that is a best endeavour to assess the cost. What do the banks say about the cost to them? It would be of the order of $100m, so we thought, until the other day when the Westpac Banking Corporation came out and said that 64,000 customers may well need to have spent on them about $5 per account. That amounts to $300m. That is the sort of cost to industry that we are talking about. Who is that going to be passed on to? It will be passed on to the taxpayers who are supposedly to benefit from this iniquitous legislation. It is clear that the benefits do not add up at all. The proposals that are envisaged are clearly short-sighted, have been blown out of the water and are being pursued only because the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) is still sufficiently ego-obsessed that he is not prepared to back down in the face of overwhelming community opposition. Even his State Premiers are not prepared to stand up and be counted. Mr Cain must have a very painful and tender private region from the amount of time he has spent sitting on the fence in recent weeks. Mr Bannon has said that he is not prepared to make the register of births, deaths and marriages available until he knows how much money is going to be reimbursed to the State Government. Mr Unsworth, of course, wants to call the whole deal off, and we know that the Premier of Queensland will not have a bar of the system. What sort of an arrangement is that going to be? It is quite clear that it is going to be ineffective and unworkable. But, more importantly, the costs of the system are going to be all one way. There are not going to be any benefits. Indeed the Prime Minister, in his address to the Australian Council of Trade Unions Congress, went so far as to put forward this master of equivocation. He estimated that the benefits of the Australia Card would ultimately be $900m per annum. He then went on to say, as have Senator Ryan and Dr Blewett, that the Government was losing $2.5m a day for every day that the Australia Card legislation was not introduced. If we do our sums, we see that the current figure would be $1.3m. Do honourable senators know how the Government gets to the $2.5m figure? It says that if we go to a 10 year period that is when it will start costing $2.5m, and that we can somehow bring that figure forward to today. It is a nonsense and it is a ludicrous proposition. It is quite clear that it is a desperate attempt by the Government somehow to try to shame its supporters into standing up and supporting this legislation. I am afraid the game is up. It is quite clear that the Prime Minister is only waiting until a convenient time to withdraw this legislation, probably around Christmas when the Parliament has risen. Until then we are going to have to put up with the time of this Parliament being wasted on debating what is clearly a totally ineffective and useless piece of legislation which will not achieve any of its objective, which the Government is not prepared to address sensibly in terms of the cost benefit implications, which ultimately has no mandate at all and was not even given a guernsey during the election campaign and the benefits of which clearly do not leave much of an impact on the Prime Minister's mind. Senator Maguire —Why didn't you make it an issue? Senator ALSTON —I am sure that Senator Maguire, if he were allowed to speak today, would trot out the same sort of canard that Senator Tate was gracious enough not to throw in this direction-that we are not the friends of tax cheats, nor are we those who did not pursue the matter during the campaign. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —Order! The honourable senator's time has expired. Senator COOK(Western Australia)(5.08) —We are debating an urgency motion which has been put down today, the first working day of the new parliament after an election, which followed a double dissolution because the Senate refused on two occasions to pass legislation to deal with the Australia Card. It is passing strange that this first debate is on the very issue which led to the dissolution of the Senate and the House of Representatives. I thought the Opposition would have less shame than that, but obviously that is not the case. Since the debate is about the Australia Card, let me put a direct challenge to all of those who have spoken in this debate in opposition to the Government. My challenge is: `Put your plastic on the table. Show us whether you have a Mastercard. Put down your Visa card. Show us whether you have a Diners Club card. Produce your American Express card'. By seeking consumer credit have we not voluntarily given all the details and more that the Opposition complains the Government might have-but in fact which it will not have-not to the Government but to private organisations with controls which the Opposition complains the Government might have in that position? Those opposite have no idea what sorts of controls over information they have given up to private organisations, yet they come in here and criticise the Government for trying to establish a high integrity identification system which is, as best it can be devised, foolproof from hackers, foolproof in terms of the penalties and other technological restraints on the system and foolproof from being in any way abused. I bet that all those who have spoken in this debate have some sort of credit and that much more information is available about them-and they pretend it is a matter of privacy. If they do not have any credit cards, they do of course have a Medicare card. One of the functions that an Australia Card will perform is to rationalise the Medicare system and help it to operate more effectively. Senator Haines —Tell that to the people of Victoria. Tell that to the surgeons in New South Wales. That is precisely the problem. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —Order! Senator Haines, there are too many interjections. Senator COOK —Mr Deputy President, Senator Haines is not troubling me one wit with her interjections. I will deal later with what she said. Let me go back to the beginning of this debate. The Senate has twice debated the legislation that will shortly be presented to it so that it can again debate the Australia Card. It has conducted an inquiry which brought down a majority decision and reported it here. The Parliament was dissolved prior to the election, and the people of Australia had a chance during the election campaign to express a view on the matter. We are on the Government side; members of the coalition are on the Opposition side. It seems that we won the election. In expressing a view the people of Australia have returned us, not them. In the dying throes of Senator Alston's speech he said that the Australia Card would have been an election issue had it been given a chance, or words to that effect. Let us deal with that matter because there are motions on notice in the Senate suggesting that there should be a referendum. We have just had an election but the Opposition now wants a referendum. Why did the Opposition not take advantage of the democratic processes laid down by the Australian Constitution and argue in the election campaign the issues about which it now claims to have some conscientious view? Anyone who saw the 7.30 Report last week would have seen an interview conducted by Paul Lyneham with some of the doyens of the parliamentary Press Gallery in Canberra. Paul Lyneham put this question to the Gallery journalists: Was the Australia Card raised as a serious issue for debate during the campaign by either side? Let us see what the Gallery said about that. If members of the Press have been cited as impartial umpires in this debate, which I have never accepted they were, let us see what the direct observers of this process had to say. Michelle Gratton of the Age stated: I think it was a minor issue, I think the government was quite happy to talk about it because it felt that certainly at that stage it was quite a popular issue but I think it was just overwhelmed by other issues. Michelle Gratton recognised that we certainly talked about the matter; we never hid our light under a bushel. Laurie Oakes said: It was certainly raised by the government, I remember the first of the Labor Party newspaper ads was about the I.D. Card. It had four photographs of the card and in Hawke's speech in Adelaide, where a bloke threw himself in front of the car that got all the headlines, but that speech was primarily about the Australia Card and the Senate. Oakes continued: So Labor raised it but the Opposition certainly didn't because their research showed that it wasn't an issue and they let the chance go. What did Geoff Kitney of the Times on Sunday say? He talked about his newspaper's efforts to raise the matter and stated: . . . largely because John Howard didn't have his heart in it. In fact John Howard, when they first proposed the idea, was in favour of an I.D. card. What did Kerry O'Brien of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation say? He said that the Opposition did not raise it; it let it go. Gregory Hywood of the Australian Financial Review said: The government triggered the double dissolution on it. The Opposition obviously didn't feel it was enough of a vote winner to raise in the campaign. What did Mike Steketee of the Sydney Morning Herald say? He said: I think John Howard said after the election when this was raised with him-why didn't you make more of an issue of it-he said. I wanted to concentrate peoples attention on tax and there's a limited number of things that you can get people to focus on. He wanted to concentrate people's attention on the fraudulent effort to pretend that he could buy votes in Australia by cutting taxes, selling off everything and operating voodoo economics to try to swindle Australian voters into believing that he could do miracles, which was not true. The interviewer on the 7.30 Report turned to Mr Howard and asked: Mr Howard, thanks for joining us. With the benefit of hindsight, could you have done more with the Australia Card as an election issue? What did John Howard say to that? This is the first issue the Liberal Party has put down for debate in the new Parliament; this is the one issue which the Liberal Party has tacked its banner to the masthead to go into battle over. What did Mr Howard say when asked why he did not make the Australia Card an issue during the election campaign? He said: Well we could have but I don't regret the priority I gave to certain issues in the campaign . . . I don't regret the priority that I gave to other issues. Was John Howard fair dinkum and can we expect the Opposition to be fair dinkum now? The answer is that those who talk about a referendum had their chance during the election campaign. They know the Constitution and the parliamentary process. They blew it and they are now trying to regurgitate a campaign which, I suggest, is based mostly on a motion, primarily on fear, and fundamentally on a misrepresentation of the facts in order to gull Australian electors into believing that something will happen to their privacy which will not happen and which is not intended. In any case, if they volunteer to take consumer credit, they are open to risks that this high integrity system is absolutely not open to. Before I leave the Liberal Party, there is one other person in the Liberal Party who ought to get a run in this debate but who has not been mentioned. He deserves to be given a go: John Elliott, the aspirant President of the Liberal Party and its former treasurer, a person who sometimes goes abroad and shafts the Australian economy to foreign audiences-the so-called possible future Leader of the Liberal Party. What is John Elliott's view about the Australia Card? Emphatically he does not have an in-principle objection to it. All he says is that certain people should be required to have it. Who are those people? They are only those on welfare, that is, only those citizens in this country who are poor, only those in unfortunate economic circumstances. He does not have a principled objection to the idea as long as the poor are made to have the card. I ask John Howard: Why, when this card is directed at tax avoiders as much as it is at welfare fraud, does he not want those who pay tax and have the option of defrauding the tax base in this country to have the card? That may or may not be a question which John Elliott will answer. Some of us sat through the arguments in the Senate about bottom of the harbour tax avoidance in the 1983 sessions and in 1984 when this Government put two Bills before this Parliament in order to stamp it out. Which parties voted down those Bills? The Government introduced them but who knocked them off? It was the Liberal Party, the National Party and the Australian Democrats. If a government is to stamp out tax avoidance of the sort that the Government aimed at, it needs the capacity, once it has identified a fraudulent taxation system, to retrospectively recover the ill-gotten gains that those who have been operating that system have acquired. If a government has that ability, there is absolutely no incentive for people to engage in tax avoidance. Who denied this Government that ability? It was the Liberal Party, the National Party and some-not all-of the Democrats. Some of them had principles, stuck with us and voted for the proposition. We hear arguments in this chamber that those opposite really are opposed to tax avoidance and that we should look at the record to decide not what they say but what they do and take what they do as a guide to what they may do in the future, but the record on tax avoidance is very patchy. Unfortunately, some of my friends in the Australian Democrats are subject to that allegation just as much as those in the Liberal Party and National Party. How did we get into the question of the Australia Card in the first place? We won government in 1983 because there were widespread tax rorts and tax ramps in this country. The people of Australia disbelieved and regarded as non-credible any fundamental conviction that a Liberal government would do anything about them. They elected a Labor government to clean up the tax base of this country. We have done that. In 1985, after being returned to office for the second time, we published a White Paper on tax reform. Options A, B and C all proposed an Australia Card. We had a National Economic Summit. No one can say that there has not been enough debate. The debate has been raging backwards and forwards since 1985. The Australia Card was part of our fundamental commitment on coming to power in 1983. It survived the election in 1984. We have been returned again in 1987. No one can say that there has not been adequate debate on the issue. No one in this chamber can say that there has not been adequate debate, except those new senators who have just joined us. We welcome them to our ranks. They will hear the debate pretty soon. We have had the Bill here twice before and argued every single stitch and clause of it. It will be back here again soon and the new senators will have their opportunity to take part in the debate then. The other point I want to make before my time expires is that I am fundamentally, as is Neal Blewett and Susan Ryan-the two Ministers who have carriage of the card-and as is the Australian Labor Party, committed to the protection of civil liberties in this country. We are a party with that record of protection. We are a party that is believed by the constituents of this country to stand for those things. I do not say that because we are believed to stand for them we can rest on our laurels. In this sort of an issue one has to prove one's achievements every day and every hour of every day all the time. Civil liberties are a delicate question that constantly requires defence. But when the articulate middle class in this country raises the question of our civil liberties I want to pose the question on behalf of the poor and on behalf of people who rely on welfare: What about their civil liberties? By holding up the introduction of this card, the Opposition is denying $4.7 billion which it will net in real government revenue over 10 years. That is money this Government can use to improve the situation of people in real need. Who speaks for them? The articulate middle class, with their Visa Cards in their hip pockets who have surrendered all their information to the privately controlled privacy banks, do not speak for them. Who speaks for them? They are entitled to say: `We want more out of this economy. We want an end to tax fraud. We want an end to welfare fraud. We want a bit more of the revenue base that goes to government because we are the people in real need'. The Labor Party speaks for them. That is why this urgency motion should be defeated today. Senator PUPLICK(New South Wales)(5.23) —in reply-A couple of points need to be made in concluding this debate. The first is that if Senator Cook is so anxious to argue the figure of $4.7 billion, perhaps he can also explain to the Senate why his Government refuses to release the Business Regulation Review Unit report on this legislation and why he can indicate to us that $4.7 billion is the figure when no calculations have been made of the cost to be imposed upon the private sector, State governments or local government. Those matters are covered in the Business Regulation Review Unit report which Senator Cook's Government is deliberately seeking to suppress. The second point I make in relation to what Senator Cook has had to say is that if there has been adequate debate, what does he say about the fact that Ministers in his Government admit that this legislation needs amendment and that we are not going to be given the opportunity to debate the amendments which the Government itself accepts are correct and proper and which ought to be made? I turn to the matters raised by Senator Ryan. Senator Ryan says quite glibly that there may have been leaks from the Health Insurance Commission. She is not prepared to do anything about that. Her Government is not prepared to do anything about it. When she makes claims that there are thousands of fraudulent people in the community, let her and let her Government explain why Senator Tate and his Department are deliberately suppressing the report by the Australian Federal Police on fraud against the Commonwealth. I come to Senator Tate. Senator Tate says that it will not be necessary to produce the card perhaps more than three or four times a year for most people in the community. If he is telling the truth he will have to admit that, for instance, if one employs a babysitter once a week one will have to obtain the Australia Card number of that babysitter. The same applies to somebody who might do one's gardening, cleaning work or whatever. Every one of those transactions will require one to obtain the Australia Card number. I can understand why Senator Tate might not understand these matters, but the Australia Card legislation requires a person to obtain the Australia Card number of the individuals concerned in such transactions, to record them and to report them to the Australian Taxation Office. The idea that one might have to have the Australia Card produced for such purposes only three or four times a year is absolutely spurious. I believe that our case in this urgency debate has been adequately made out by speakers on this side of the Parliament, particularly by Senator Bjelke-Petersen and Senator Alston. I commend the motion to the Senate. Question resolved in the affirmative. Senator Chaney —Mr Deputy President, I rise to record the total support of the Opposition for the motion and the failure of the Government to be prepared to call a division to put its votes where its mouth has been in this debate. Senator Haines —Mr Deputy President, I rise to record the total support the Australian Democrats have for this urgency motion. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —Pursuant to standing order 28A I lay on the table the President's warrant nominating Senators Bjelke-Petersen, Burns, Colston, Giles, MacGibbon, Morris, Powell and Teague to act as Temporary Chairmen of Committees when the Deputy President and Chairmen of Committees is absent. Assent to the following Bills reported: States Grants (Tertiary Education Assistance) Amendment Bill 1987 States Grants (Schools Assistance) Amendment Bill 1987 States Grants (Education Assistance-Participation and Equity) Amendment Bill 1987 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Amendment Bill 1987 Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment Bill 1987 Australian Institute of Health Bill 1987 Sales Tax Laws Amendment Bill 1987 Customs Tariff (Commonwealth Authorities) Amendment Bill 1987 Health Legislation Amendment Bill 1987 Local Government (Financial Assistance) Amendment Bill 1987 Wool Tax (No. 1) Amendment Bill 1987 Wool Tax (No. 2) Amendment Bill 1987 Wool Tax (No. 3) Amendment Bill 1987 Wool Tax (No. 4) Amendment Bill 1987 Wool Tax (No. 5) Amendment Bill 1987 Customs (Valuation) Amendment Bill 1987 Customs Tariff Amendment Bill 1987 Excise Tariff Amendment Bill 1987 Bounty and Subsidy Legislation Amendment Bill 1987 Customs Tariff Validation Bill 1987 Excise Tariff Validation Bill 1987 Customs Tariff (Uranium Concentrate Export Duty) Amendment Bill 1987 Taxation Laws Amendment (Company Distributions) Bill 1987 Income Tax (Franking Deficit) Bill 1987 Income Taxes Rates Amendment Bill 1987 Taxation Laws Amendment Bill 1987 Taxation Laws Amendment Bill (No. 2) 1987 Bank Account Debits Tax Amendment Bill 1987 Income Tax Amendment Bill 1987 Defence Legislation Amendment Bill 1987 Radio Licence Fees Amendment Bill 1987 Television Licence Fees Amendment Bill (No. 2) 1987 Broadcasting (Ownership and Control) Bill 1987 Communications Legislation Amendment Bill 1987 Egg Industry Research (Hen Quota) Levy Bill 1987 Ministers of State Amendment Bill 1987 Nursing Homes and Hostels Legislation Amendment Bill 1987 Proceeds of Crime (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 1987 Ships (Capital Grants) Bill 1987 Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment (No. 3) Bill 1987 Customs Tariff (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 1987 Social Security Amendment Bill 1987 Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment Bill 1987 Broadcasting Amendment Bill 1987 Broadcasting Amendment Bill (No. 2) 1987 Customs and Excise Legislation Amendment Bill 1987 Customs Tariff Bill 1987 Customs Tariff (Installations at Sea) Bill 1987 Egg Industry Research (Hen Quota) Levy Collection Bill 1987 Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Bill 1987 Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters (Consequential Amendments) Bill 1987 Proceeds of Crime Bill 1987 Social Security and Veterans' Entitlements Amendment Bill 1987 Telecommunications (Interception) Amendment Bill 1987 Wool Marketing Bill 1987 The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —In accordance with the provisions of section 81 of the Reserve Bank Act 1959, I present the report of the Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia, together with financial statements and the Auditor-General's report thereon, for the year ended 30 June 1987. The report was released on 20 August 1987 and copies of the report were forwarded to honourable senators. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —In accordance with the provisions of the Public Service Act, I present the annual report of the Joint House Department for the year ended 1986-87. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT —For the information of honourable senators, I present the publication `Business of the Senate' for the period 1 January to 5 June 1987. Ordered that the paper be printed. Motions (by Senator Button)-by leave-proposed: Sessional Orders 1 Days and Hours of Meeting (1) That, unless otherwise ordered, the days and hours of meeting of the Senate be as follows: (a) during the first sitting week- Tuesday, 2 p.m.-6.30 p.m. 8 p.m.-10.30 p.m.; Wednesday, 10 a.m.-12.45 p.m. 2 p.m.- 7.30 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m.-6.30 p.m. 8 p.m.- 10.30 p.m.; Friday, 9 a.m.-12.45 p.m. 2 p.m.-3.45 p.m.; (b) during the second sitting week- Monday, 2 p.m.-6.30 p.m. 8 p.m.-10.30 p.m.; Tuesday, 2 p.m.-6.30 p.m. 8 p.m.-10.30 p.m.; Wednesday, 10 a.m.-12.45 p.m. 2 p.m.- 7.30 p.m.; Thursday, 10 a.m.-6.30 p.m. That, from the termination of the last sitting in the second week, the Senate stand adjourned until 2 p.m. on the third Tuesday after that termination, or such other time as may be fixed by the President or, in the event of the President being unavailable, by the Deputy-President, and that the time of meeting so determined be notified to each Senator; and the 4-weekly cycle then be repeated: Provided that the President, at the request of an absolute majority of the whole number of Senators that the Senate meet at a certain time, shall fix a time of meeting in accordance with such request, and such time of meeting shall be notified to each Senator. For these purposes a request by the Leader or Deputy-Leader of the Opposition in the Senate shall be deemed to be a request by every Senator of the Opposition and a request by the Leader or Deputy-Leader of the Australian Democrats shall be deemed to be a request by every Australian Democrat Senator: Provided further that a request may be made to the President by delivery to the Clerk of the Senate, who shall immediately notify the President. That, in the event of the President being unavailable, the Clerk without delay notify the Deputy-President, or, should the Deputy-President be unavailable, any one of the Temporary Chairmen of Committees, who shall be required by the Senate to summon the Senate on behalf of the President, in accordance with this Resolution. (2) That the Sessional Order relating to the adjournment of the Senate have effect at the terminating time each day. 2 Adjournment of the Senate That, at the terminating time each day, the President put the question-That the Senate do now adjourn-which question shall be open to debate; if the Senate be in Committee at that time, the Chairman put the question-That the Chairman leave the Chair and report to the Senate; and upon such report being made the President forthwith put the question-That the Senate do now adjourn which question shall be open to debate: Provided that if the Senate or the Committee be in division at that time the President or the Chairman shall not put that question till the result of such division has been declared; and if the business under discussion has not been disposed of at such adjournment it shall appear on the Notice Paper for the next sitting day. 3 Routine Business That, unless otherwise ordered and notwithstanding anything contained in the Standing Orders, the Senate proceed with its ordinary business in the following routine: Week 1 Tuesday: (1) Petitions (2) Notices of Motion (3) Questions (4) Any proposal pursuant to Standing Order 64 (5) Consideration of Government Papers pursuant to Sessional Order (6) Formal Motions-Discovery of Formal Business Proceedings of the Senate (7) Postponement and re-arrangement of Business (8) Government Business Wednesday: (1) Petitions (2) Notices of Motion (3) Formal Motions-Discovery of Formal Business (4) Postponement and re-arrangement of Business (5) Government Business (6) At 2 p.m., Questions (7) Any proposal pursuant to Standing Order 64 (8) Consideration of Government Papers pursuant to Sessional Order (9) Consideration of Committee Reports pursuant to Sessional Order (10) Further consideration of Government Business Thursday: (1) Petitions (2) Notices of Motion (3) Formal Motions-Discovery of Formal Business (4) Postponement and re-arrangement of Business (5) Government Business (6) At 12.45 p.m., Matters of Public Interest (7) At 2 p.m., Questions (8) Any proposal pursuant to Standing Order 64 (9) Consideration of Government Papers pursuant to Sessional Order (10) General Business (11) Further consideration of Government Business Friday: (1) Petitions (2) Notices of Motion (3) Formal Motions-Discovery of Formal Business (4) Postponement and re-arrangement of Business (5) Government Business (6) At 2 p.m., Questions (7) Any proposal pursuant to Standing Order 64 (8) Consideration of Government Papers pursuant to Sessional Order (9) Further consideration of Government Business Week 2 Monday: (1) Petitions (2) Notices of Motion (3) Questions (4) Any proposal pursuant to Standing Order 64 (5) Consideration of Government Papers pursuant to Sessional Order (6) Formal Motions-Discovery of Formal Business (7) Postponement and re-arrangement of Business (8) Government Business Tuesday: (1) Petitions (2) Notices of Motion (3) Questions (4) Any proposal pursuant to Standing Order 64 (5) Consideration of Government Papers pursuant to Sessional Order (6) Formal Motions-Discovery of Formal Business (7) Postponement and re-arrangement of Business (8) Government Business Wednesday: (1) Petitions (2) Notices of Motion (3) Formal Motions-Discovery of Formal Business (4) Postponement and re-arrangement of Business (5) Government Business (6) At 2 p.m., Questions (7) Any proposal pursuant to Standing Order 64 (8) Consideration of Government Papers pursuant to Sessional Order (9) Consideration of Committee Reports pursuant to Sessional Order (10) Further consideration of Government Business Thursday: (1) Petitions (2) Notices of Motion (3) Formal Motions-Discovery of Formal Business (4) Postponement and re-arrangement of Business (5) Government Business (6) At 12.45 p.m., Matters of Public Interest (7) At 2 p.m., Questions (8) Any proposal pursuant to Standing Order 64 (9) Consideration of Government Papers pursuant to Sessional Order (10) General Business (11) Further consideration of Government Business 4 Proposals pursuant to Standing Order 64 That, unless otherwise ordered and notwithstanding anything contained in the Standing Orders: (1) On Fridays in week 1 and Thursdays in week 2 the discussion of any proposal submitted to the Senate pursuant to Standing Order 64 not exceed one hour. (2) The written statement of the proposed matter of public importance or urgency be handed to the President not later than 12.30 p.m. on each sitting day. 5 Government and General Business-Precedence That, unless otherwise ordered, on all sitting days of the Senate Government Business take precedence of General Business, except that General Business take precedence of Government Business on Thursdays after Questions, any proposal pursuant to Standing Order 64 and consideration of Government Papers pursuant to Sessional Order, for a period not exceeding two and one-half hours; and that, unless otherwise ordered, General Business, Orders of the Day take precedence of General Business Notice of Motion on alternate Thursdays. 6 Petitions-Procedure for Presentation That, notwithstanding anything contained in the Standing Orders, the procedure for the presentation of petitions be as follows: (1) A Senator wishing to present a petition shall lodge it with the Clerk. (2) The Clerk shall make an announcement of petitions so lodged, indicating in respect of each petition the Senator who presents it, the number of signatures, and the subject matter of the petition. (3) Every petition so presented shall be deemed to have been received by the Senate unless a motion, moved forthwith, that a petition be not received, be agreed to. (4) The terms of the petitions presented shall be printed in Hansard. 7 Legislative and General Purpose Standing Committees-Reference of Annual Reports (1) That all annual reports of Government departments and authorities, including statutory corporations, laid on the Table of the Senate, stand referred, without any question being put, for consideration and, if necessary, for report thereon, to the Legislative and General Purpose Standing Committees. (2) That the President transmit a copy of each report so tabled to the Committee which the President deems appropriate. (3) That the Legislative and General Purpose Standing Committees may inquire into reports so received. 8 Legislative and General Purpose Standing Committees-Reference of Bills That, after the Second Reading of a Bill (other than an Appropriation Bill, Supply Bill, or Bill imposing taxation), and notwithstanding anything contained in the Standing Orders and without limiting the operation of Standing Orders 36aa and 196a, the following procedure apply: (1) A motion (of which notice need not be given) may be moved to refer the Bill to a Legislative and General Purpose Standing Committee. (2) Upon a motion to refer a Bill to a Legislative and General Purpose Standing Committee, debate shall not exceed one hour, and a Senator shall not speak for more than 10 minutes. If the debate be not sooner concluded, at the expiration of that time the President shall put any question on the motion and any amendment before the Chair. (3) On reference of a Bill to a Legislative and General Purpose Standing Committee, a day shall be fixed for report by the Committee, by which day the final report of the Committee shall be brought up. (4) Upon a Bill being committed to a Legislative and General Purpose Standing Committee pursuant to this Order, it shall be set down on the Notice Paper as an Order of the Day for further consideration following report from the Committee. (5) The procedure adopted by a Legislative and General Purpose Standing Committee when considering a Bill under this order shall, as far as possible, be the same as that in Committee of the Whole: Provided that a Committee may ask for explanations from the Minister in charge of a Bill, or officers, relating to the clauses of the Bill. (6) A Legislative and General Purpose Standing Committee shall have no power to make amendments to a Bill, but may recommend amendments or requests for amendments. No amendment or request for amendment may be proposed which would not be in order if proposed in a Committee of the Whole. (7) A report from a Legislative and General Purpose Standing Committee relating to a Bill shall be received by the Senate without debate and its consideration deferred until the reading of the Order of the Day for the further consideration of the Bill, when the procedure shall be as follows: (a) motion may be proposed that the report be adopted, and such motion shall be open to debate; (b) on the motion for the adoption of the report, amendments may be proposed; (c) in these proceedings, the same right of speech and time limits shall apply as in debate in Committee of the Whole; (d) if amendments or requests for amendments be made, additional to any recommended by the report of a Standing Committee, the Chair shall propose a question-That the Bill as reported (with or without amendments or requests for amendments), and as further amended, be agreed to; (e) a motion may be moved by any Senator-That the Bill as reported from a Standing Committee be recommitted, in whole or in part, to the Standing Committee, or that the Bill as reported be committed, in whole or in part, to a Committee of the Whole; and (f) when the report from the Committee, or from a Committee of the Whole, is finally adopted, the Bill may be proceeded with in accordance with the procedures of the Senate. 9 Consideration of Government Papers That, unless otherwise ordered and notwithstanding anything contained in the Standing and Sessional Orders: (1) On all sitting days of the Senate, after Notices, papers may be presented by a Minister; such papers be considered pursuant to this Sessional Order after Questions and any proposal pursuant to Standing Order 64. (2) When papers are called on by the President, pursuant to this Sessional Order, a motion may be moved, without notice, that the Senate take note of one, or several, of the papers. (3) The debate on any motion moved pursuant to this Sessional Order be conducted as follows: (a) No Senator shall speak for more than 5 minutes; (b) If debate pursuant to this Sessional Order is not concluded it shall be interrupted after 30 minutes, and the Senate shall proceed to the consideration of the business of the Day; (c) if the debate is adjourned or interrupted by Sessional Order, a motion may be moved for the resumption of the debate either for the Thursday of that week at the time for the consideration of General Business, or for the next day of sitting; and (d) on Thursdays, at the commencement of General Business, when an Order of the Day is called on under this Sessional Order Senators who have previously spoken to that Order of the Day may speak again for not more than 5 minutes, and debate under this Sessional Order at that time shall not exceed one hour. (4) Where a paper is presented but is not called on under paragraph (1) because of the limitation of time provided by paragraph (3), the consideration of that paper be made an Order of the Day for the next day on which General Business is considered at the commencement of General Business, without any question being put, and where that Order of the Day is called on at that time a motion may be moved without notice to take note of that paper. (5) Where consideration of a paper is an Order of the Day in accordance with paragraph (4), it remains an Order of the Day for each succeeding day on which General Business is considered at the commencement of General Business till: (a) the Order of the Day is called on and no motion to take note of the paper is moved; (b) a motion to take note of the paper is determined; or (c) the Order of the Day is discharged from the Notice Paper, whichever first occurs. (6) Where debates on motions moved under the provisions of this Sessional Order are adjourned until the next day of sitting and are called on in the normal course of business, Senators who have spoken to the motions under the provisions of this Sessional Order may speak again for the time allowed under Standing Order 407a. 10 Consideration of Committee Reports That, unless otherwise ordered and notwithstanding anything contained in the Standing Orders, where in any week there are Orders of the Day for the resumption of debate on motions for the consideration or adoption of reports of committees: (a) on Wednesdays after Questions, any proposal pursuant to Standing Order 64 and consideration of Government Papers pursuant to Sessional Order, Orders of the Day relating to reports of committees presented to the Senate during that week be severally called on, in the order in which the respective reports were presented; (b) if there were no committee reports presented during that week, or if debate on motions relating to such reports concludes before the expiration of one hour, Orders of the Day relating to committee reports presented prior to that week then be severally called on in an order which is the reverse of the order in which the respective reports were presented; (c) in any debate on such motions so called on, each Senator may speak for not more than 10 minutes; and (d) any debate pursuant to this Sessional Order be interrupted after the expiration of one hour: Provided that, where debate on any motion debated under the provisions of this Sessional Order is adjourned or is interrupted under the provisions of this Sessional Order, Senators who have spoken to such motion under the provisions of this Sessional Order may speak again to the motion for the time allowed under Standing Order 407a when the debate on the motion is again called on in the normal course of business. 11 Time Limits to Speeches That, notwithstanding anything contained in the Standing Orders: (1) No Senator speak for more than 30 minutes in any debate in the Senate. Any Senator may move that the time limit of 30 minutes be extended for 15 minutes; such motion forthwith be put without debate: Provided that where a right of reply is allowed in any debate a Senator speaking in reply speak for not more than 30 minutes; Provided further that, in debate on the First Reading of a Bill which the Senate may not amend, no Senator speak for more than 15 minutes. (2) In Committee no Senator speak for more than 15 minutes at any one time on any one question: Provided that where the speech of a Senator is interrupted by this provision, and no other Senator rises to speak, the Senator so interrupted may continue to speak for a further 15 minutes but no longer continuously on any one question. 12 Putting of Amendments That the Standing Orders have effect as if Standing Orders 141, 142, 143, 144, 145 and 149 were deleted and the following Standing Orders inserted: 140. In respect of every amendment the President shall put a question-That the amendment be agreed to. 141. An amendment to a motion may not be moved if it is the same in substance as an amendment already determined to the same motion, or would have the effect only of reversing an amendment already made. [NOTE: These Standing Orders are expressed to apply to amendments to motions, but by virtue of Standing Order 201 apply also to amendments moved to Bills in Committee of the Whole.] 13 Proceedings on Bills That, notwithstanding anything contained in the Standing Orders, the following procedures apply in respect of Bills: (1) A Senator may present a Bill or two or more Bills after the Senate has agreed to a motion upon notice, setting out the long title of the Bill or Bills-That the Bill or Bills be introduced. (2) After the presentation of a Bill or Bills, or after the receipt of a Message or Messages from the House of Representatives forwarding a Bill or Bills for concurrence, a motion may be moved without notice containing any of the following provisions: (a) That the Bill or Bills may proceed without formalities (this shall have the effect of suspending any requirements for stages of the passage of the Bill or Bills to take place on different days, for notice of motions for such stages, and for the printing and certification of the Bill or Bills during passage); (b) In respect of two or more Bills-That the Bills may be taken together (this shall have the effect of allowing the questions for the several stages of the passage of the Bills (or any of them) being put in one motion at each stage, the consideration of the Bills (or any of them) together in Committee of the Whole, and the reading of the short titles only on every order for the reading of the Bills, the words in parentheses being applicable where there are more than two Bills); (c) That the Bill, or, where the provision referred to in subparagraph (2) (b) is agreed to, the Bills, be now read a first time. (3) Where a motion is moved containing two or more of the provisions set out in paragraph (2), at the request of any Senator the motion be divided and the provisions put as separate motions. 14 Adjournment of Debates That, notwithstanding anything contained in the Standing Orders, when debate on motion is adjourned, by motion or by the granting of leave for a Senator to continue the Senator's speech, the resumption of the debate be made an Order of the Day for the next day of sitting without any question being put, unless a motion is agreed to fixing another time for the resumption of the debate. 15 Matters of Public Interest That, unless otherwise ordered and notwithstanding anything contained in the Standing and Sessional Orders, on Thursdays at 12.45 p.m. till 2 p.m. matters of public interest may be discussed by Senators: Provided that no Senator shall speak for more than 15 minutes and provided further that, should a division be called for, such division shall be forthwith postponed till a later hour of the day, not being earlier than 2 p.m. Days and Hours of Meeting (1) That, unless otherwise ordered and notwithstanding anything contained in the Sessional Orders, the days of meeting of the Senate for the period October to December 1987 be as follows: Tuesday, 6 October to Friday, 9 October; Tuesday, 20 October to Friday, 23 October; Monday, 26 October to Thursday, 29 October; Monday, 2 November to Thursday, 5 November; Tuesday, 17 November to Friday, 20 November; Monday, 23 November to Thursday, 26 November; Monday, 7 December to Thursday, 10 December; and Monday, 14 December to Friday, 18 December. (2) That, unless otherwise ordered- (a) for the weeks commencing Tuesday, 6 and 20 October and 17 November 1987, and on Friday, 18 December 1987, the Sessional Orders relating to the Hours of Meeting and the Routine of Business for Week 1 apply; and (b) for the weeks commencing Monday, 26 October, 2 and 23 November, 7 December and 14 December 1987, the Hours of Meeting and Routine of Business for Week 2 apply. Suspension of Standing Order 14 That Standing Order 14 be suspended to enable the Senate to consider business beyond what is of a formal character before the Address-in-Reply to the Governor-General's Opening Speech has been adopted. Senator CHANEY(Western Australia-Leader of the Opposition)(5.33) —The Government, because of the late commencement of the sittings-which in turn was occasioned by the mid-year election, which is an unusual time to have an election and which was of the Government's making of course, and not of the Opposition's-has set a series of sitting dates for the Parliament which are extremely intensive. I wish to record at this stage the Opposition's concern about the length of sittings which are being imposed. Under this Government the Parliament moved some time ago to a two weeks on, two weeks off, back-to-back sitting pattern, which was in part brought in to assist people such as Senator Collins, and honourable senators from Western Australia and Queensland, who have long distances to travel. I think that was entered into in very good faith by the Parliament as an attempt to find a more satisfactory pattern of sittings. Whilst the two weeks on, two weeks off is the theory, we are sitting for three weeks at a time with one week up. The Government is proposing to have sittings of Estimates committees in one of those weeks when the Parliament is not sitting. I think that the pressure not only on the Opposition but also on the Ministers and on the members of parliament generally is very unreasonable. It is likely to lead not only to bad behaviour in this place but also to the deterioration of senators' and members' health. I do no more than express my concern about that. The Opposition has for the last 4 1/2 years accepted the obligation to sit when the Government has requested that we should do so, but I believe that the sitting pattern which has been adopted is most unwise, and I ask the Government, in looking at the sitting pattern next year-bearing in mind no doubt that it will be arranging considerable festivities during that year-to try to arrange a more manageable sitting pattern for the sake of everybody who serves in this Parliament. I give the Government notice that the Opposition will be seeking a variation in the proposal for the sitting of Estimates committees because it does not believe that it is reasonable that in the very brief periods we are not sitting we are required to come back to do Estimates committees. I am pleased to see an indication of approval from the Australian Democrats for that point of view. I am mentioning it now-and I have mentioned it privately to the Manager of Government Business-to ensure that the Government is not caught short in its own arrangements on that matter. The sitting pattern is not one which we are seeking to oppose; I simply indicate my very considerable concern about what the Government has in place. Questions resolved in the affirmative. Motion (by Senator Button) agreed to: That the following Bills be introduced: a Bill for an Act to amend the Ministers of State Act 1952 and a Bill for an Act to amend the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 and the Public Service Act 1922 in connection with certain administrative arrangements, and for related purposes. Motion (by Senator Button) agreed to: That the Bills may proceed without formalities, may be considered together and be now read a first time. Bills read a first time. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce)(5.35) —I move: That the Bills be now read a second time. I seek leave to have the second reading speeches incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The speeches read as follows- MINISTERS OF STATE AMENDMENT BILL (No. 2) 1987 The Ministers of State Act currently provides that there can be no more than 27 Ministers. As announced by the Prime Minister on 14 July, the Government wishes to have a Ministry of 30, administering 18 Departments in place of the previous 28. The total cost of Ministerial remuneration (salary and expenses of office allowance) in a full year would be $97,752. I commend the Bill to honourable senators and present the explanatory memorandum. ADMINISTRATIVE ARRANGEMENTS BILL 1987 The purpose of this Bill is to amend two Acts: the Acts Interpretation Act 1901, to clarify the scope of existing provisions of that Act in the light of the recent changes to Ministerial and Departmental structures; and the Public Service Act 1922, to abolish the Public Service Board and establish new arrangements in its place. A separate Bill will be introduced to amend the Ministers of State Act 1952, to increase from 27 to 30 the number of Ministers who may be appointed. Administrative Arrangements Legislation As a result of the Prime Minister's announcement of the introduction of revised arrangements for the administration by Ministers of Departments, it is desirable to clarify provisions of the Acts Interpretation Act relating to the meaning of references in legislation to Ministers and Departments. In particular, the amendments deal with situations where a Minister administers two or more Departments or where a single Department is administered by two or more Ministers. While the existing provisions of the Act are capable of application to the new arrangements, it is obviously desirable to put the matter beyond doubt and also to deal with the particular features of the new arrangements. The Treasurer, in the May Economic Statement, announced that the existing structure of the Public Service Board was under review. Since then, the Prime Minister has accepted a recommendation from Mr David Block, in his capacity as head of the Efficiency Scrutiny Unit, that the Public Service Board be abolished. The amendments before the Senate repeal provisions of the Public Service Act establishing the Public Service Board and substitute provisions establishing an office of Public Service Commissioner. Further legislation will be prepared to give full effect to the Government's proposals for the distribution of the Board's powers. In the meantime the Bill provides for the continuation of the existing delegations of the Board's powers and functions to related management agencies, for example, the Department of Industrial Relations, and to Secretaries of departments generally. The Bill also provides for the establishment of an Australian Public Service Management Advisory Board comprising part-time members who will include the Commissioner, the Secretaries of certain departments, a person with a trade union background and a person with private sector experience. The new body's functions will include the provision of advice to the Government on significant issues relating to the management of the Australian Public Service. The Bill includes a number of consequential and transitional provisions. It is estimated that the abolition of the Public Service Board will save approximately $8 million in 1987/88 and $16.5 million in 1988/89. I commend the Bill to honourable senators and present the explanatory memorandum. Debate (on motion by Senator Reid) adjourned. Motion (by Senator Button) agreed to: That the following Bill be introduced: a Bill for an Act to amend the Australian National Railways Commission Act 1983. Motion (by Senator Button) agreed to: That the Bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time. Bill read a first time. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce)(5.36) —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- It is now some three and a half years since the introduction of legislation to provide the Australian National Railways Commission (AN) with a charter which gave AN the task of becoming a commercially oriented business operation. In the previous year, AN had recorded its highest ever loss of $106 million. Since then, AN has made considerable progress. This progress reflects this Government's approach of creating an environment in which its business authorities can get on with the job of improving their performance. In real terms AN's call on the Federal Budget has been reduced by over 60% during this period. It is a record in which everyone associated with AN, the Chairman, Commissioners, AN management, Unions and AN workforce can take pride. But we cannot stop there. Accordingly this Government is continuing to work with AN, and its staff to maintain that momentum which will lead AN to become a genuinely commercially viable Government railway. As part of this continuing drive for improved efficiency, on 1 October 1986 the former Minister for Transport the Hon Peter Morris, MP, announced a package of further initiatives including a new approach to AN's passenger services. The fact is that like virtually every railway in the world AN's passenger services are not currently commercially viable. However, with operational and marketing initiatives, their future prospects are improved. While AN's performance is better than many of the other Australian rail systems, particularly for its long distance services, there is room to achieve greater efficiency. The Government and AN are embarking upon the demanding approach of upgrading these services rather than allowing them to drift into a state where they are beyond redemption. We have agreed with AN a set of increasing cost recovery targets to be achieved in respect of these passenger services. From a level of around 45% in 1984-85 AN now has the task of improving its passenger cost recovery level to a 60% target by 1988-89. AN has already launched a number of major initiatives to provide better, more efficient services to its customers. These include upgrading the Mount Gambier service with improved transit times and on-board service which has resulted in a 15% increase in patronage the Launching in 1986 of a new Adelaide-Whyalla Budd car service which replaced the Adelaide-Port Pirie service. This service, known as the Iron Triangle Limited, is currently running at almost full capacity diversion of the Indian Pacific into Adelaide in 1986 without adding to the total journey time the launching of a new service, known as the Silver City Limited between Adelaide and Broken Hill in December 1986 launching of a conference car on the Ghan to cater for business functions. AN considers that it should further extend the facilities it provides to its passengers to make train travel a far more enjoyable experience in itself. Accordingly it has refurbished rollingstock to provide a special entertainment car, offering facilities such as video and sound booths video games for children tables for cards and chess a souvenir shop a hair salon a limited number of poker machines. To provide a clear legislative base for these activities it is necessary for the amendments contained in section 3 of this Bill to be enacted. AN has consulted both the South Australian and Northern Territory governments on the proposal and both Governments have raised no objections. The second amendment incorporated in the Bill will preserve the existing workers compensation entitlements for AN employees who were transferred from the South Australian Railways in 1978. A condition of the transfer was that these employees would have the option of claiming compensation benefits under either the South Australian or Federal provisions. This was embodied in Section 47 of the ANRC Act 1983. However, the existing South Australian Act is to be repealed on 1 October 1987. This means those employees would lose their right to claim compensation under South Australian law. In view of the Government's commitments at the time of transfer, it is only proper that the Government should continue to honour those commitments. This amendment will ensure that the right to choose between the current SA provisions and Federal provisions is maintained. The third provision of the Bill will amend Section 70 of the Act to expand the powers under which Boards of Inquiry undertake investigations into the causes of accidents involving AN. Two Boards of Inquiry have been established under the Act. They have proven to be extremely valuable in having an independent body examine major accidents. It is considered that future inquiries would benefit by having wider powers to allow them to consider the broader causes of accidents. The proposed powers are similar to provisions governing accident enquiries under the Air Navigation Regulations. I present the explanatory memorandum to this Bill. Debate (on motion by Senator Reid) adjourned. Motion (by Senator Button) agreed to: That the following Bill be introduced: a Bill for an Act to amend the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977, and for related purposes. Motion (by Senator Button) agreed to: That the Bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time. Bill read a first time. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce)(5.37) —I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The speech read as follows- This Bill is unchanged from the form in which it was passed by the House of Representatives on 26 February 1987, and the form in which it was introduced into this House on 17 March 1987. The Bill makes some fine-tuning amendments to the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977. As many honourable members will no doubt know, this Act, which came into operation on 1 October 1980, codified and modernised the ancient prerogative writ remedies under which the lawfulness of government decision making could be challenged. The Act streamlined the procedures under which citizens could challenge, on legal grounds, administrative decisions and it did away with technicalities that applied under the old remedies. This innovative legislation has thus been in operation for some seven years and it is now an appropriate time to be examining the Act to see where improvements can be made. A particular concern has been the use made of the Act in the course of administrative proceedings before some other tribunal in circumstances where the particular decision can be challenged at the conclusion of those administrative proceedings. Recourse to the Federal Court under the Act in the course of the administrative proceeding, rather than assisting in the dispatch of business of that tribunal, can have quite the opposite effect. It can frustrate and delay the proper decision making processes of the tribunal. We are all aware of the events which surrounded the hearings of the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal into the granting of a third commercial television licence for Perth in which, in the course of these proceedings, 16 cases were decided by the Federal Court under the Act. The effect of all this litigation was to delay the decision of the Tribunal on the third licence for some 12 months. The Bill will facilitate the efficient operation of administrative tribunals, authorities and persons by minimising the disruption caused by the making of applications under the Act in the course of proceedings. Clause 2 of the Bill provides that where an application for review is lodged in relation to a decision made by a tribunal, authority or persons during those proceedings and a review of that decision is available at the conclusion of those proceedings, and it is desirable to avoid interference with those proceedings, the Court shall refuse to grant the application unless the Court is satisfied that it is in the interests of justice for the application to be granted. Another area of concern is where overlapping remedies are available. For example, in Public Service discipline matters, a person is able to appeal to a Public Service disciplinary appeal body, which can review the whole case. The person can also test the lawfulness but not the merits of the decision under the Act. The Act at present gives the Court a general discretion to refuse an application where there is another remedy available. The Government considers that some strengthening of this provision is desirable. The Bill does not remove any existing rights of review, but seeks to rationalise those instances where there exist overlapping remedies by encouraging applicants, where review is provided for under some other law, to avail themselves of that alternative review before seeking review under the Act. Review by means other than by recourse to the Act is often a more cost and time effective means of obtaining proper review of an administrative decision. Clause 2 of the Bill therefore amends section 10 of the Act by inserting a new paragraph 10 (2) (c). That paragraph provides that where an application for review is lodged with the Federal Court under the Act, and provision is made by any law other than the Act under which the applicant is entitled to seek a review of that decision otherwise than by a court-the Court shall refuse to grant the application unless it is satisfied that it is in the interests of justice for the Court to grant the application. This latter qualification recognises that there may be cases where the Court should hear the application, notwithstanding the existence of an alternative remedy. The Bill also makes express provision for the Court to refuse to grant an application for review, or to stay an application where it considers it inappropriate to grant the application or continue the proceedings. This gives statutory expression to the Court's present wide discretion to refuse relief and in addition makes it clear that this discretion extends to enabling the Court to stay proceedings in appropriate cases. The Bill is intended to ensure these powers conferred on the Court are exercised in such a way that costs and delays are kept to a minimum and to this end the Bill provides that these powers be exercised at the earliest appropriate stage in the course of proceedings. Whilst the revenue implications of these proposals are not quantifiable, the measure should result in fewer hearings under the Act, and thus will have an impact on the Court's workload. By minimising the disruption to hearings it should also aid the efficiency of Tribunals. This will result in revenue savings. I commend the Bill to the Senate. Debate (on motion by Senator Reid) adjourned. Motion (by Senator Button) agreed to: That the following Bill be introduced: a Bill for an Act relating to bankruptcy. Motion (by Senator Button) agreed to: That the Bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time. Bill read a first time. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce)(5.38) —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 Bankruptcy Amendment Bill 1987 marks a major turning point in the administration of bankruptcy law in this country. The amendments proposed by the Bill have been developed in response to: The Costigan Royal Commission finding that bankruptcy laws were being abused by fraudulently motivated insolvency claims; The Government's commitment to sensible and considered law reform; and The need for modern bankruptcy law to attack insolvency fraud while also providing appropriate protection for those whose bankruptcy is caused through misfortune. Honourable senators will recall that the Statute Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act (No. 2) 1986 amended the Bankruptcy Act in a number of ways, including significant changes to the administrative powers and functions of the official trustee. This Bill takes that process one step further by implementing Mr Costigan's recommendation that the trustee in bankruptcy should be equipped with wider powers of investigation in order to combat insolvency fraud. The Bill amends the Act in three significant areas by: extending the investigative powers of the trustee; reforming Part X of the Act and introducing a prebankruptcy moratorium period; and modernizing the Act in relation to spouses' claims and the retention of personal transport. INSOLVENCY FRAUD It has been recognized for many years that the duty of the trustee in bankruptcy is twofold: to realise the debtor's property and distribute the proceeds amongst creditors and also to protect the public interest by investigating a bankrupt's conduct with a view to upholding standards of commercial morality. The powers which the Bankruptcy Act presently gives the trustee to facilitate the discharge of this duty have not kept pace with the wider use of modern commercial structures of companies and trusts. The trustee's ability to investigate companies and trusts associated with the bankrupt is severely circumscribed. For example, a bankrupt who is being examined on oath cannot be asked questions as to any actions he took in his capacity as managing director of a number of companies. Such limits on the trustee's powers have opened the way for unscrupulous debtors to defeat the aims of the bankruptcy law. By using a plethora of family trusts and companies, debtors have been able to organize their affairs so that they are apparently without any assets, while they continue to enjoy the use of property and assets which have the guise of being owned by a company or trust. Practices such as ``remuneration skimming'', which put assets of companies or trusts associated with a debtor beyond the trustee or creditors, fall into this category. As well, provisions which presently limit which property of a bankrupt may be realized by the trustees exacerbate the problems. In broad terms, only that property in which the bankrupt had a beneficial interest at the date of the bankruptcy is available to the creditors. These provisions are ineffective to deal with ``remuneration skimming''. This Bill proposes to deal with these problems by extending the trustee's powers to investigate the bankrupt's affairs and by enabling the trustee to recoup from companies, partnerships, trusts and other persons, assets which have been acquired by the personal efforts of the bankrupt. The Bill will introduce related concepts of ``associated entities'' and ``examinable affairs'' and a proposed division 4A of part VI which will enable a court to make orders in relation to the property of entities controlled by a bankrupt. An associated entity will be one which the bankrupt is able to influence by virtue of close business or family relationships or which is under the control of the bankrupt. The examinable affairs of the bankrupt which the trustee will be able to investigate will be included to include the power to investigate the financial affairs of an entity associated with the bankrupt insofar as those financial affairs are relevant to the bankrupt's financial affairs. This will be in addition to the existing powers of a trustee to investigate the conduct, dealings and transactions of the bankrupt himself. Associated entities will be placed under an obligation to cooperate with the trustee by making books of account and financial records available where this will assist in shedding light on the bankrupt's financial affairs. The extension of the powers of the trustee to investigate all the circumstances surrounding a bankruptcy is of itself not enough if at the end of the day no real benefit will flow through to the creditors. Accordingly the court is to be empowered, on application of the trustee, to transfer specified property of an entity to the trustee, or to order the payment to the trustee of a sum of money representing the amount by which the net value of the entity has been enhanced, where the trustee establishes: that the entity acquired the property or the entity's asset position was enhanced during the ``examinable period''; during the examinable period, the bankrupt supplied personal services to the entity in accordance with the bankrupt's direction, wishes or instructions; and the entity made property available or would in the future, make property available for the use and enjoyment of the bankrupt in accordance with his or her wishes or instructions, as if the property actually belonged to the bankrupt. There are a number of provisions requiring the court to take account of the interests of third parties who have an interest in property of the entity, and creditors of the entity. The Government is confident that the new division 4A of part VI will be an effective weapon in stamping out insolvency fraud. PREBANKRUPTCY MORATORIUM The Government recognizes that bankruptcy is and must be a remedy of last resort. While an insolvent person must be able to obtain relief from his or her creditors, people should be encouraged to explore the alternatives to bankruptcy which are available. Those alternatives include the three forms of voluntary arrangement available under part X-a Deed of Arrangement, a Deed of Assignment, or a composition-or by an informal repayment scheme. These alternatives all involve consultation between a debtor and creditors and accordingly they usually proceed in a more co-operative fashion than bankruptcy. The introduction of a prebankruptcy moratorium period will allow a debtor to consider the alternatives to bankruptcy. Under a new division 2A of part IV, a debtor will be able to present to the registrar in bankruptcy a declaration of intention to present a debtor's petition. Once this declaration is accepted by the registrar, the debtor will be able to invoke a limited stay upon certain debt recovery processes for a maximum period of 7 days. The registrar will be obliged to direct the debtor's attention to the sources of advice and guidance with respect to the debtor's financial affairs, and to the procedures under the Bankruptcy Act for dealing with insolvency. REFORM OF PART X At the same time the Government is aware that there are flaws in Part X which have been exploited by a small number of unscrupulous trustees and solicitors in order to defraud the creditors. The Government has therefore moved quickly to include a group of amendments to Part X to minimise the facility for abuse of its procedures. The Government has identified three particular problems with the procedures set out in Part X. First, creditors do not receive sufficient information about a debtors affairs before they accept arrangements under Part X. Secondly there are no provisions in the Act which ensure that previous dealings between a debtor, a particular creditor or creditors and the trustee are disclosed. Thirdly there is no effective supervision of Part X arrangements. This Bill addresses the first of these three problems by requiring a debtor to submit a statement of affairs at the commencement of the process, rather than at the first meeting of creditors. At present, under Part X a debtor may execute an authority to authorise a registered trustee to take control of their property or a solicitor to call a meeting of their creditors. This Bill will require this authority to be supported by a recently prepared statement of affairs which has been given to the trustee or solicitor. The trustee will be required to prepare a report on the debtors affairs and indicate in that report which of the alternative modes of administration-Deed of Assignment, Deed of Arrangement or Composition would be in the best interests of creditors. The trustee will also be required to indicate whether or not the creditors should accept a Part X arrangement or require the debtor to present a bankruptcy petition. A registered trustee or solicitor will also be required to prepare a statement setting out the alternative special resolutions that may be passed by a meeting of creditors namely, that the debtor execute a deed of assignment or a deed of arrangement, that the creditors accept a composition or that the debtor present a debtor's petition within 7 days of the day on which the resolution is passed. The report by the controlling trustee and the statement outlining the alternative special resolutions which creditors may pass at the meeting are required to be circulated, with notice of the meeting by the controlling trustee or solicitor. These measures are completed by changes to the proxy provisions relating to voting at meetings under Part X. In relation to the second problem of ensuring that prior dealings between debtors, creditors and trustees are fully disclosed, a new provision is to be inserted into the Act so that a resolution purporting to nominate or appoint a registered trustee to a particular trusteeship will be deemed not to have been duly passed unless the registered trustee has consented to the nomination and has made a declaration concerning his or her professional, business or personal relationship or connexion, if any, with the debtor or the creditor who proposed the resolution. To overcome the third problem-the inadequacy of the supervisory power in relation to Part X arrangements-the Inspector-General in Bankruptcy is to be given the right to apply to the court for orders setting aside deeds and compositions. The Inspector-General will also be empowered to apply to the court for an order that a trustee make good any loss that is caused by a breach of duty by the trustee, and for orders cancelling or suspending the registration of the person as a trustee. Where the court makes an order cancelling the registration of the person as trustee, the bond into which the person entered as a condition of becoming registered will be able to be called in. In another significant change in this area, examinations of registered trustees will now be conducted before a registrar, rather than before a court. These changes will continue the reforms of administration of the Bankruptcy Act which are designed to free up judicial resources to enable them to be used in the resolution of more important disputes. MODERNIZING THE ACT Numerous other important reforms to modernize the Bankruptcy Act are introduced by this Bill. Section 111-`postponement of spouse's claims'-is to be repealed. In addition, the provision whereby certain property of the non-bankrupt spouse which had been `made available to or lent to' the now bankrupt spouse was expropriated and made available to the creditors will be repealed. Subsection 116 (2) will be amended by including in the category of property not available to the trustee, a motor vehicle or other form of personal transport to the modest value of $2500. Typically, creditors get little or no benefit from the sale of motor vehicles and this action places considerable hardship on the bankrupt and his family. SUMMARY The Bankruptcy Amendment Bill will introduce significant changes to the Bankruptcy Legislation which will greatly improve the administration of insolvencies in the future. The amendments will, on the one hand, ensure that trustees in bankruptcy can investigate sophisticated commercial arrangements which have used the bankruptcy laws to defraud creditors. On the other hand, in recognition that bankruptcy is not the most appropriate solution in all circumstances, the Bill also introduces procedures to encourage debtors to consider possible alternatives to bankruptcy in appropriate circumstances and introduces reforms to Part X to ensure that these alternative procedures can be of real benefit to both debtors and creditors. FINANCIAL IMPACT STATEMENT The amendments proposed by the Bill will not involve any additional financial impact upon Government expenditure. Following the restructuring of the official trustee to which I referred earlier, the resources necessary to discharge the wider investigatory powers conferred by these amendments will be available within the official Trustee Corporation. I commend the Bill to the Senate. I present the Explanatory Memorandum to this Bill. Debate (on motion by Senator Reid) adjourned. Motion (by Senator Button) agreed to: That the following Bill be introduced: a Bill for an Act to establish a Defence Housing Authority. Motion (by Senator Button) agreed to: That the Bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time. Bill read a first time. Senator BUTTON(Victoria-Minister for Industry, Technology and Commerce)(5.39) —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 the Bill is to establish the Defence Housing Authority. This Bill is substantially the same as the Bill that was received from the House of Representatives and introduced into the Senate by the then Minister representing the Minister for Defence, Senator Evans, on 30 April 1987. The earlier Bill lapsed with the dissolution of the last parliament. In his second reading speech, Senator Evans made it clear that the proposed legislation is the cornerstone of the government's strategy to provide adequate accommodation for members of the defence force. In view of the pressure of parliamentary time during this period of sittings, I do not propose to repeat the previous speech. However, in commending it to honourable members, I would like to emphasise the following points: The Defence Housing Authority will implement the Government's obligation to ensure that members of the Defence Force are ad- equately housed; The Authority will operate with commercial freedom consistent with meeting the housing needs of the Defence Force; The Authority, in charging the Department of Defence full commercial rents, will have a guaranteed level of income; The level of rent paid by individual service tenants will, however, continue to be determined by the government as a condition of service; Within overall Budget priorities, it is the Government's intention to have $750m committed to Defence Housing capital outlays over the next decade. To the extent that its income is insufficient, the Defence Housing Authority will be able to seek supplementary funding to achieve this objective; There is a justifiable expectation in the Defence Community that the Authority will remedy long standing deficiencies in defence housing. The financial impact of the Bill is set out in the accompanying explanatory memorandum. In summary, there will be an additional recurrent budget outlay of $39m-the difference between the $126m that the authority will charge the Commonwealth for rent and the $87m in present outlays that the authority will pay instead of the Commonwealth. In addition, the authority will retain revenue from the disposal of surplus housing. In 1986/87 this was about $5m. The authority will use its profits for capital acquisition and improvements so demands for capital from the Budget ($65.8m in 1986/87) will be reduced. However, there will be supplementation from annual budgets to meet the government commitment of $750m. Over the next decade to upgrade the defence housing stock. As the purpose of this Bill is to overcome one of the more serious difficulties facing members of the Defence Force and their families, I am confident that it will have support from both sides of the Senate. I commend the Bill to the Senate. I present the explanatory memorandum to this Bill. Debate (on motion by Senator Reid) adjourned. Motion (by Senator Puplick for Senator Chaney) agreed to: That the following Bill be introduced: a Bill for an Act relating to the submission to the electors of a question in relation to the introduction of the Australia Card. Motion (by Senator Puplick) agreed to: That the Bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time. Bill read a first time. Senator PUPLICK(New South Wales)(5.41) —I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The speech read as follows- I present the second reading on my private members Bill titled the ``Australia Card Referendum Act 1987'' designed to submit the ultimate decision on the Australia Card to the people of Australia. Currently there is an Act in existence to regulate referenda on proposed amendments of the Constitution. This is the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act 1984. I have followed the procedure laid down in this Act, and indeed incorporates that Act, with modifications, and applies it to the proposed Referendum. I have provided for the Referendum to be decided by a majority of votes cast. I have not followed the special provision for amending the constitution where majorities in a Majority of States are also required. This is because the legislation concerned is fundamentally a Commonwealth law which does not effect any changes to the Constitution or to the consequent legal rights or position of the States in our Federation. As a purely Commonwealth law it should be put to and decided upon by all the people in their capacity as Commonwealth electors, on a truely national basis. I now turn to the reasons why I have presented this Bill. Why the people must decide on the so-called Australia Card legislation, which could so gravely impact on their lives and liberties. INVASION OF PRIVACY Today, personal and confidential information is listed under many numbers-Credit Cards, Medicare Cards, Tax File and Social Security number. This multiplicity of unlinked and unmatched numbers is a protection which will be removed by the ID Card. After the Card is introduced one single number will be the key to all personal and confidential information. Furthermore, it will be obligatory for all individuals to provide this number to banks, employers, real estate agents, stock and station agents, produce merchants, share brokers and Medicare, Social Security and the Tax Office. Quite clearly, persons with illegal intent will have little difficulty obtaining other peoples numbers and, as the newspapers record every week, getting inside a computer, however sophisticated, is not difficult, all that is needed is the number. No one can guarantee the security of computer records. You must give a prospective employer the same number which can access your medical records-a matter of great interest to employers in these days of workers compensation abuse. Your bank accounts will bear the same number as your accounts at the real estate agent or stock firm-and so on-and whilst I do not suggest that every employer or banker would choose to cross reference such vital information, it is certain that the opportunity to do so is greatly improved by this single numbering process. The Government claims that the only information that is accessed by the card is the details of your birth, address and such. The legislation refers specifically to this ``register'' but by requiring production of the card to all the other instrumentalities I have mentioned it guarantees that your card number is the common factor in linking of this information for government purposes and their computers will be linked by telecom line; government departments are notorious for their leaks. People may have nothing to hide but may have legitimate secrets they are entitled to keep. The card will deny you any privacy. INCONVENIENCE If you have done nothing wrong and probably pay your tax through P.A.Y.E., why should you suffer the following inconvenience? 1. Queuing to be numbered and photographed. $500 fines if you then lose the card in certain circumstances. 2. Attending personally at the bank to validate your bank accounts with your ID number. The account will be frozen if not so validated by a certain date. There are 64 million accounts to be revalidated. 3. Sporting, social and service clubs will also be required to have a card number and the incumbent secretary or treasurer must carry the card in their name, meaning more queuing and paperwork every time you change office bearers. 4. You must appear personally at the real estate agent and registrar of titles with the card to effect a sale of your home. So must the purchaser. 5. Father and son, or other individuals must exchange card numbers to conclude a family loan and report the transaction to the tax man. 6. Farmers and/or people dealing in shares will not buy and sell through agents without producing their card. Mr Keating, however, will not need one to buy or sell antiques. You will not initiate most new business without presenting the card personally. This is an anti-business measure so it is no wonder that the Government is suppressing the business regulation review report on the legislation. THE CONSCRIPTION OF BUSINESS AND THE COMMUNITY AS THE ENFORCERS Employers, (this includes you employing a babysitter) face fines of $20,000 for simply failing to ask an employee for their ID card and/or reporting the number and wages to the tax commissioner. Banks, real estate agents, stock brokers, stock and station agents, produce merchants, all other financial institutions, even people loaning money in the family, face similar fines for failing to record their client's card number and business transactions for transmission to the tax office-all these fines are multiplied by five if you are a company, this could be the local ``Golf Club Inc''. Yet by comparison, the fine for giving false information to get a card is only $5,000, and the penalties for improper disclosure are derisory. THE COST IS HUGE Even by the Government's estimates, (proved to be low in the past), the cost to achieve an up and running system is approximately $800 million. Two thousand public servants are required for general administration. No one has estimated the additional police, judges and gaol warders needed to enforce the penalties. Two billion dollars of tax payers' money is a more likely guess. The basic rule in such matters is that if Government spends one dollar, the community cost is three dollars. The Government has received advice on this matter from its specially convened committee, the business review unit. The Government refuses to release this report. Clearly its findings regarding the community cost is embarrassing to Mr Hawke. The banking industry alone says the cost to validate bank accounts will exceed $60m, Westpac estimates of cost per account could mean a cost closer to $300m, and this cost will be passed on. Retailers will go through a period when it will be necessary to phone the bank each time a cheque is presented to them to ensure the account is operable and has been validated with an ID number. Much business will be lost as people delay or discontinue transactions because its gets too complicated. IT WILL NOT WORK The Government's stated claim is that the card will wipe out tax evasion and welfare fraud. International experience is that the very reverse will apply. The more the card is accepted as a universal identifier, the easier it will be for criminals to use it as evidence of false identity. The private sector in particular will have no means of checking that a person is the rightful holder of a particular card. Photographs, even fingerprints can be of the forger, whilst other card details are of some other person. The Department of Social Security has already said it will not accept the card as sole evidence of identity and they will have computerised access to additional back-up evidence including a digitised photo recorded on computer. Dr Blewett says forged cards may be hard to detect. So what hope has a bank of identifying a false card used to open a bank account in your name by some criminal, who later closes the account and leaves you to explain the interest earned and the source of the original funds to the tax man. No wonder Costigan, the Australian Federal Police and Inspector Merv Beck call on us not to proceed with the card. Forging credit cards is a highly sophisticated, world wide industry and recent court cases in Western Australia show how students managed to forge cards suitable to withdraw money from other people's accounts through automatic bank tellers. Please remember, getting your number is as simple as asking for it, or if not, by requesting it of an employee of your employer, bank, real estate agent and so forth. The Government further believes for instance, that genuine cheats will be so naive as to leave their false bank accounts in place once a card is necessary. Obviously, when confronted with legalising their accounts, they will withdraw the money and close the account. The card has no control over cash transactions unless of course the government requires the production of a card on every occasion of a cash purchase and if it is reasonable to accept the card for the reasons already stated, when is it reasonable to demand it be used for everything? Mr Hawke cannot commit future governments and his own promises have not been worth much in the past. The Treasurer's own written explanation (notes on Clauses 32 to 51) on clause 49 says although employers must demand to see the card, failure to produce it should not `prohibit' one getting a job. This is an open invitation to those, particularly in seasonal employment, to work under assumed names whilst retaining the dole under their correct identity. The only penalty will be a high tax rate which will be a cheap price to pay for keeping full-time social security benefits. It all adds to tough times for honest Australians and easy street for the cheats in our society. This is directly opposite to what the Government pretends. It is obscene to use the word `Australia' to give credibility to this national compulsory identity system; it is ridiculous to claim the Government has a mandate for the Card when a majority of electors in the last election voted for Parties clearly opposed to the Card. I now challenge them to let the people of Australia decide the issue I commend the Bill to the Senate. Debate (on motion by Senator Button) adjourned. Motion (by Senator Haines) agreed to: That the following Bill be introduced: a Bill for an Act to ensure that the Australia Card Act 1987 does not come into operation unless the national identification system proposed to be established by the Act has been first approved by a majority of Australian electors, voting at a referendum. Motion (by Senator Haines) agreed to: That the Bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time. Bill read a first time. Senator HAINES(South Australia-Leader of the Australian Democrats)(5.43) —I move: That the Bill be now read a second time. I seek leave to have my second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The speech read as follows- The Federal Government's proposed national identification system, to be implemented via the Australia Card Bill, is one of the most far-reaching and significant proposals ever to come before this Parliament. At the time the Government first mooted the ID card proposal at the Tax Summit in 1985, the Australian Democrats warned that the suggestion involved very serious civil liberties aspects and that the efficacy of the proposal would need to be carefully examined. So concerned were we, in fact, that later that year I negotiated with the Health Minister and the Opposition spokesperson to establish a joint Parliamentary Committee to enquire into the proposals and its alternatives. In the event, a majority of the Committee, of which I was one and which included representatives of all political parties, recommended against the ID card and suggested the use of a high integrity tax-file number to address the undoubtedly serious problem of tax cheats and social security fraud. Since then, the Government has arrogantly ignored not only the Committee's findings, but also the opinions of a wide range of experts who have expressed strong opposition to the card and the system. These opponents of the card include crime and tax evasion experts like Frank Costigan QC, computer experts, legal bodies including the Law Council of Australia, Councils for Civil Liberties throughout the country and both employer and union bodies. Deaf to this comprehensive body of opinion, the Government proceeded to introduce its deceptively-named Australia Card Bill into the Parliament where it has been defeated twice and then called a double dissolution using the Bill as a trigger. Since the election, community concern about the implications of the ID card has mounted as more and more people have become aware of the contents of the Bill. I do not intend to detail here the very real dangers and immense cost of this proposal because that will be done later this week in this Chamber. Suffice to say that the scheme is unworkable, expensive and dangerous and it distracts attention from the task of finding real solutions to tax and social security fraud. We have now reached the point where, after the Government has presented the Bill again and it is defeated in the Senate, a joint Sitting can be called. Since the Government's new majority exceeds the numbers against it in the Senate, it will be able to push the Bill through unamended. Certainly the opponents of the Bill in this Chamber will combine to ensure that the Bill is properly examined by a Committee, but the Government's actions so far suggest that they would ignore any argument or finding, no matter how compelling. There is one opinion, however, that the Government cannot ignore-the voice of the Australian people. The Government has claimed, of course, that it has a mandate to proceed with the ID card by virtue of the Australia Card Bill being the trigger for the double dissolution. Any objective examination of the issues which featured in the election campaign would expose this claim as nonsense. To suggest that the election result can be interpreted as support for the identification system and card is absurd. However, if the Government is so confident that it has the support of the Australian people on the ID card issue, it will have no difficulty in supporting this Bill. On a matter as important as a national identification system, far more important than many other matters that have gone to referenda, a referendum is the only answer. The Australian people are entitled to express their view about this proposal and its implications for the future. Consistent with their general support for citizens' initiative referenda, the Australian Democrats want this matter to be decided by those who will be most affected by its implementation-Australian citizens. It is difficult to see how any party could argue with that approach and I am confident this Chamber will support the Bill. I commend the Bill to the Senate. Debate (on motion by Senator Button) adjourned. Senator REID(Australian Capital Territory) —by leave-I move: That the Senate take note of the paper. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. Motion (by Senator Button) proposed: That, in pursuance of section 13 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth, the Senators chosen for each State be divided into two classes as follows: (1) The name of the Senator first elected shall be placed first on the Senators' Roll for each State and the name of the Senator next elected shall be placed next, and so on in rotation. (2) The Senators whose names are placed first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth on the Roll shall be Senators of the second class, that is, the long-term Senators, and the Senators whose names are placed seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth on the Roll shall be Senators of the first class, that is, the short-term Senators. Senator SHORT(Victoria)(5.47) —The Opposition sees no reason either in logic or in ethics to accept the Government's motion. The only reason that the Government has moved this motion is one of cynical political gain. That is the reason why yesterday, on behalf of the Opposition, I gave notice of a motion which runs in effect totally counter to the Government's motion, to enable the system of election, in order, of senators that was agreed to by the Senate in 1983 to come into effect at the first opportunity that it could be put to the test, that is, today. As my motion will not be debated because of Senate procedures, I move the following amendment to the Government's motion to bring to the Senate's attention the motion of which I gave notice yesterday: Leave out paragraph (2), insert the following paragraph: ``(2) The six Senators for each State whose order of election was determined in a re-count of ballot papers pursuant to section 282 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 and certified by the Australian Electoral Officer for that State shall be Senators of the second class, that is, the long-term Senators, and the remaining six Senators for that State shall be Senators of the first class, that is, the short-term Senators.''. Section 13 of the Constitution provides that we senators shall decide who will serve in the long term and who will serve in the short term Senate positions in the event of a double dissolution. Until now the practice for deciding who will be long or short terms senators has been the one that the Government now proposes; that is, that the method of counting the votes at a Federal election when there is a double dissolution should determine the order of classification into long and short term senators. That system came into operation many years ago and it had its first use in the days of block voting for the Senate. When the Senate moved to proportional representation in 1949, that had the effect of changing the importance of the votes cast for the first elected for each party. The absurd situation which the old practice throws up is one to which the Senate's mind was addressed in 1983 after very lengthy, serious and important deliberation by the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Reform. One of the things that that Committee threw up was the absurdity of the situation where simply the election of senators, after a double dissolution, on the basis of the order determined on the smaller quota for senators which double dissolutions provide, can lead to the situation where, for example, a minority party senator with less than 8 per cent of the vote-in fact with 7.8 per cent of the vote-could get a long term, a six year term, whereas a major party that may have polled 45 per cent of the vote would still end up with only two long term senators. That is a situation that all parties in this chamber-certainly all major parties and I think the minor parties as well-agree was absurd. When the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Reform looked at the matter it agreed that the old practice resulted in confusion, that it was the subject of political manoeuvrings and that it did in fact encourage the promotion of double dissolutions. The Joint Select Committee therefore recommended that the past practice be changed by the insertion in the Commonwealth Electoral Act of a new clause which would enable senators to be ordered in terms or short and long term on the basis of the election having been a half Senate election rather than a double dissolution election. The implication, of course, is the very significant effect that that has on the quota required for any senator to be elected. The Select Committee made two recommendations. It recommended first of all that following a double dissolution election the Australian Electoral Commission conduct, as I said, a second count of Senate votes using the half Senate quota in order to establish the order of election to the Senate and therefore, very importantly, the terms of election. The Committee also recommended that the practice of ranking senators in accordance with their relative success at an election be submitted to electors at a referendum for incorporation in the Constitution by way of amendment so that the issue is placed beyond doubt and removed from the political arena. It is very important to note that those two recommendations were not dependent upon one another. They are two separate recommendations. The first of those recommendations was enshrined in the Commonwealth Electoral Act in November-December 1983. The second recommendation, concerning an amendment to the Constitution, has not yet been adopted. However, that in no way alters or lessens the significance of the recommendation which flowed through and is now law in the Commonwealth Electoral Act. This is the first occasion on which the amendment made in 1983 to the Commonwealth Electoral Act has been put to the test. This is the first time since 1983 that there has been a double dissolution election. I believe that what we are looking at today is a very important issue because we as a Senate are being asked to put to the test, to adopt or not to adopt in usage, the unanimous recommendation of a joint select committee of this Parliament which was agreed to by this Senate less than four years ago without any amendment or dissension. It was a very sensible and desirable amendment. As I said, all parties agreed to the amendment. So, the first question that the Government needs to answer in relation to this motion is why is it going back on the decision that this Senate made in 1983. I repeat, no party formally disagreed with the amendment in 1983. There was no vote on it. As I understand it, there was no reservation by any member of the Joint Select Committee to the proposal concerning the new method of determining ordering in Senate elections. Senator Macklin, the Democrat senator on that Committee, made no dissenting report and, indeed, when the matter came up for debate in the Committee of the Whole, Senator Macklin went to great pains to make the clause, which is now section 282 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act, more clear, precise and accurate than the Government had proposed in its amendment to the Bill. Indeed, Senator Macklin's amendment was accepted by the Committee of the Whole. The Government's motion is a cynical and unprincipled one. The Senate agreed to use this new system-- Senator Robert Ray —It did not. It never agreed. Senator SHORT —I will come to Senator Ray's words in a moment. It is obvious that the effect of the Government's motion is to give two additional long term Senate positions to the Democrats and two less long term positions to the National Party of Australia. Therefore, what this does is enshrine and give great advantage to a minority party in the form of the Democrats. There is no doubt at all that a deal has been done here between the Government-- Senator Robert Ray —A pack of lies. Senator SHORT —The honourable senator will get his chance to answer in a moment. It is quite obvious that a deal has been done between the Government and the Democrats, a party which once originally prided itself on keeping the bastards honest. I am afraid that this time the Government has colluded with that Party. That is an absolutely-- Senator Robert Ray —Not true. Senator SHORT —That is an absolutely ludicrous situation. Senator Robert Ray —That is not true and you know it. Senator SHORT —If it is not true we will look forward to hearing Senator Ray's explanation, which has not been given up to date, as to why the Government has moved this motion. It is unusual for me ever to quote Senator Vigor, who was in this chamber until recently and who I noticed came back yesterday. It was a great pleasure to see him in the gallery yesterday. Just prior to his leaving the Senate, Senator Vigor made a very important contribution by telling the people of Australia a little bit about the change that has taken place over recent years in the situation of the Australian Democrats. On 4 June, in what was almost his final speech in this place, Senator Vigor drew attention to the early days of the Australian Democrats and their present position. He said: When the Australian Democrats were founded the Party was based on democratic principles of openness and fair dealing, with honesty, tolerance and compassion as guiding principles. Senator Parer —That was a long time ago. Senator SHORT —It certainly was. I think he was wrong there, anyway. But even accepting that there is a little bit of correctness in what he said, he certainly put us straight as to the present situation. He then went on to say: The honesty, tolerance and compassion have been replaced with introverted suspicions of anybody who falls mildly outside the expected dedication to a number of fairly narrow views. This was a very honest, open statement by Senator Vigor who was absolutely massacred by his Party in its refusal to allow him to stand in a winning position for a Senate seat. I have to say that on occasions Senator Vigor spoke with a lot of common sense and honesty, and that was certainly one of those occasions. Senator Ray played a very important and very welcome role-one that was highly applauded by all parties in the Senate-in the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Reform. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. Sitting suspended from 6 to 7.30 p.m. Senator WALSH(Western Australia-Minister for Finance) —by leave-I table the following papers: Budget Documents 1. Budget Statements 1987-88 2. The Commonwealth Public Account 1987-88 3. Portfolio Program Estimates 1987-88 4. Commonwealth Financial Relations with other levels of Government 1987-88 Particulars of Proposed Expenditure for the Service of the year ending on 30 June 1988 Particulars of Certain Proposed Expenditure in respect of the year ending on 30 June 1988 Particulars of Proposed Expenditure in respect of the year ending on 30 June 1988 in relation to the Parliamentary Departments Budget Related Documents Government Securities on issue at 30 June 1987 National Income and Expenditure 1986-87 Income Tax Statistics I seek leave to make a statement outlining the Government's budgetary proposals for the financial year 1987-88. Leave granted. Senator WALSH —Tonight the Treasurer is delivering in another place his Budget Speech for 1987-88. It is my privilege to outline to the Senate the budget proposals of the Government. Mr President, the Budget for 1987-88 is in balance. The deficit has been cut to just on zero, a mere $27 million. This Government, having inherited a prospective budget deficit of almost $10,000 million, the largest in the Nation's history, has in the space of just 5 budgets wiped that dismal legacy out. What is more, this monumental achievement has been accomplished while keeping to our election commitments not to increase taxes and not to make major additional spending cuts. Relative to the size of the economy, tax revenue is down on last year. On the same basis, government spending is down two percentage points compared with the level confronting us in 1983. This Budget incorporates nonetheless significant new initiatives. We have provided $250 million to meet our election commitment to a Family Allowance Supplement for low income families. We have financed the massive $4,500 million cost of the personal income tax cuts introduced in December last year and July this year. We have introduced a new company tax system which eliminates the double taxation of dividends. These achievements have been made possible while simultaneously balancing the Budget by the most wide ranging and detailed review of government spending ever carried out. This Budget incorporates a 2.4 per cent real reduction in Commonwealth spending, the biggest cut in the 35 years for which comparable records are available. This Budget also lays the foundations for sound budgets over the life of this Parliament. The decisions which have cut outlays by $3,500 million this year will produce the same reductions next year. In other words, the savings are on-going. THE GOVERNMENT'S ECONOMIC STRATEGY Mr President, this fundamental shift down in the Commonwealth budget is making a crucial contribution to the process of adjustment that Australia has been undergoing since the collapse in our export prices in 1985-86. Unlike almost any other economy in similar circumstances, the Australian economy has not been driven into recession. The Government's policy response has been innovative, strong, and most of all, right. Notwithstanding the enormity of the trade difficulties we have faced, our economic strategy is now bearing fruit. Australians have responded earnestly by lifting the national export effort and successfully seeking out new markets. No less than half of Australia's export growth last year came from the sale of manufactured goods-a remarkable achievement given the parlous state of manufacturing only 4 years ago. We are also developing services such as tourism into major earners of foreign exchange. At the same time we have cut imports by making locally more of the goods we used to buy from overseas. Taken together, increased exports and reduced imports accounted for all of Australia's economic growth last year. One hundred and forty thousand new jobs were created. Our trading bill was cut by $1,000 million from 6 per cent of Gross Domestic Product to 5 per cent. In this coming year we forecast that it will decline further to 4 per cent. These achievements are extremely gratifying. They have exceeded the expectations of almost everybody. Mr President, as successful as we have been, the magnitude of our trading problem is such that we still have a long way to go. The big trade deficits since the early 1980s have built up a substantial foreign debt burden. Our external deficit, although falling, remains too high. To reduce permanently our debt burden we must go further in reducing our dependence on overseas savings by lifting the level of Australian savings. This is why we have acted to cut the demands of all levels of government on savings, releasing them for private investment to enhance our trade performance. But that is only part of the story. If Australia is to sell more abroad-and if our manufacturers are to win a greater share of the domestic market-we must ensure that the goods we produce are priced competitively. In particular, we must make sure that labour costs in Australia are competitive with those of our trading partners. The Australian community has shown enormous maturity and commonsense in responding to the trade crisis by exercising wage restraint. This has helped sustain the new-found competitiveness of Australian industry. Most importantly it has ensured that the difficult international trading conditions have not led to a surge in unemployment. This is being reinforced by the two tier wage system which for the first time in our history is requiring efficiency and productivity improvements at an industry and enterprise level as offsets for wage increases. In the public sector the Commonwealth is insisting that any second tier wage increase granted to its own employees be offset by genuine productivity and efficiency gains. EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION AND TRAINING Mr President, if Australia is to compete successfully in the international market place we must also raise our educational standards. We are now redirecting our spending so that it better conforms with Australia's economic priorities. In May I announced a major restructuring of unemployment benefits and study allowances which greatly increases the incentives for our young people to stay in the education and training system rather than moving onto welfare. The centrepiece of those reforms was the abolition of unemployment benefits for 16 and 17 year olds and the substitution of a modest job search allowance. This restructuring of study allowances has been carried further in the Budget by changes to the student assistance schemes for Aboriginal children, isolated children and the children of veterans, bringing them more into line with mainstream income support programs. The Government also recognises that if we are to encourage young people to stay in the education system, we must provide more student places. Consequently we have approved an extra 5,800 higher education places for young school leavers in 1988. Our reforms in education and training have also been geared to getting better value for money. From 1988 funds for new TAFE capital works will be allocated on the basis of competitive bidding by States and individual colleges, with priority being given to projects in economically important areas, such as computing studies and hospitality, and areas which involve joint funding with industry. Funding for the Australian Traineeship System-which provides young people entering the workforce with a mixture of on-the-job and formal training-is to increase from $14 million to $45 million. This will provide places for 13,000 new trainees. At a cost of $31 million, a new program to provide short-term vocational training opportunities for unemployed young people will be introduced. My colleague, the Minister for Employment, Education and Training, Mr Dawkins, will issue tonight a comprehensive paper explaining the Government's skills formation strategy. Among other measures, $15 million will be provided in 1987-88 and $28 million in a full year to implement a National Policy on Languages. Funding for the Aboriginal Employment Development Policy will be increased by $26 million in 1987-88 and by $49 million in 1988-89. FAMILY ASSISTANCE PACKAGE Mr President, the Hawke Government has always believed that only those in genuine need should be entitled to social security payments. We have systematically implemented measures to exclude welfare cheats from the system. In the May Statement I described a range of further initiatives to crack down on fraud and abuse. Already these are proving very successful. As a result of these measures we will save more than $100 million in unemployment benefit payments in 1987-88. We have consistently held that people who can readily support themselves should do so, rather than putting their hand out to the taxpayer. But we have not shirked the Australian Labor Party's historical commitment to assist the most needy in our community. This Budget further strengthens that commitment by implementing a landmark social reform in the shape of the Family Assistance Package. From Christmas this year this package will provide help to more than half a million families in need. More than one million children will benefit. Subject to an income test, the new scheme will provide a Family Allowance Supplement of $22 per week per child. Recognising the higher costs associated with teenage children, the payment for each child aged 13, 14, or 15 will be $28 per week. In addition, we will provide low income families renting privately with an extra allowance of up to $15 a week. This means, for example, that families with income up to $324 per week who rent privately and have three children, two aged under 13 and one 14, will receive a supplement of $87 per week free of tax. That is an increase of up to $69 per week on what they would have received under the old Family Income Supplement. The most any of these families would have received under the discredited election tax policy of the Liberal and National Parties would have been $20.46. This new Family Allowance Supplement is additional to the existing Family Allowance and will be paid directly to the primary carer of the children, generally the mother. It is structured so that it will increase the incentive for unemployed people to find work and will provide a positive inducement to avoid welfare dependency. In terms of assisting low income families in genuine need, this new Family Allowance Supplement ranks with any initiative introduced by any Australian government in any period. As I said earlier, this is a landmark change in social policy and a source of much pride to the Government. HEALTH As promised in the election campaign, the Government will provide $25 million to the States this year and next to reduce waiting lists in public hospitals. Expenditure of $20 million will be provided for prevention and education measures to combat the spread of AIDS. Following a review of requirements, repatriation hospital staff numbers are to be increased by 337. STAFF AND ADMINISTRATION The Prime Minister recently announced a major restructuring of Commonwealth departments. These changes are estimated to produce savings of $107 million in a full year and to cut 3,100 off staffing levels by 1988-89 ASSET SALES In May the Government announced a program of asset sales estimated to yield about $1,000 million in 1987-88. In order to maintain maximum flexibility in aviation policy, and in the light of our election commitment to deregulate the industry, the Government has decided not to proceed with the sale of its international airport terminals. Notwithstanding this change, however, we still expect the other elements of the program of asset sales announced in May to raise at least $1,000 million in 1987-88. In the 1988-89 financial year we will be selling the loans portfolio of the Defence Service Homes Corporation and other defence assets, producing savings of around another $1,000 million. As well as generating important efficiency gains, this will add a recurrent quality to the budgetary numbers as far as the disposal program is concerned. REVENUE Turning to the revenue side, I repeat that we have adhered to our election commitment not to increase taxes or introduce new taxes. We have been able to cut spending and taxes at the same time partly because we are now reaping the benefits of earlier actions to restore integrity to the tax system and to upgrade its administration. The capital gains tax, the fringe benefits tax and related measures like many things that are new, were controversial at inception, but are now fulfilling their proper structural function by massively broadening the tax base. It is largely because of these measures that despite legislated lower tax rates and subdued economic growth, 1986-87 tax collections came in $1 billion above budget-time estimates. Not only are they yielding the revenue but they have made the system much fairer than it has ever been. The Government is firmly committed to continuing its efforts to make the tax and welfare systems decent and secure, and consequently we will proceed with vigour to implement the Australia Card national identification system. This system will return up to $1,000 million a year in revenue that is presently being evaded or defrauded. Opposition senators interjecting- Senator WALSH —And it will be done, despite the efforts of that unholy coalition of the ratbag right and the ratbag left. To further reinforce our anti-avoidance measures, this Budget will fund the Tax Office to establish special audit teams of highly qualified and experienced officers to mount more effective and detailed scrutinies of potential tax avoidance activities, particularly in the corporate sector. As most Australians are aware, some people in this country have accumulated substantial wealth because of booming stock-market and property values. Under the old tax system much of those profits would have gone tax-free-and I interpolate that under the tax system proposed by the Opposition two months ago, they would also have gone tax-free. That is no longer the case. We have made the system fairer and those who have previously benefited from tax-free capital profits are now making a substantial contribution towards the costs of government services like schools, roads, social security, and so on. The impact of this new, fair tax has been a fundamental factor in the Government's review of tax deductions for investors in rental property. Since we have restored the integrity of the tax system by subjecting capital gains to tax, we are now in a position to permit the restoration of deductions against taxable income without exposing the revenue to the threat which existed before July 1985. The full interest costs of owning and maintaining rental property will now be deductible against income from any source. In the recent past the Government has canvassed in detail the principle of allowing tax deductions for interest costs in the case of both rural investments and equity investments. In both cases we decided in favour of allowing offsetting deductions. Tonight's decision restores the symmetry between investment in property and other assets such as shares or farms. It will enhance the attractiveness of in- vestment in both commercial and residential rental property and have a beneficial effect on the supply of residential accommodation in particular. In the light of this decision the 4 per cent depreciation allowance for both residential and non-residential construction is to be reduced to 2 1/2 per cent for new properties. This will moderate the cost of these concessions, which has been growing at an annual rate of $55 million, while still representing a substantial concession to construction activity. NEW POLICY DIRECTIONS Following introduction of the Government's revolutionary full imputation system for company tax-to remove the double tax on dividends-the Government has now instituted a complementary review within the Treasury of the remaining structure of the business taxation system. The overriding objective of this review is to identify options for financing reductions in the company tax rate through sensible broadening of the company income tax base. This is in line with similar recent reforms in a number of major Western economies, including the United States and Britain. The outcome of that review will be announced either in or before the next Budget. In the coming term the Government will be concentrating its energies on the quest for efficiency throughout the economy. We have already foreshadowed the removal of outdated regulatory arrangements in the crude oil industry and the aviation sector. More reforms of this nature will follow as we review and remove impediments to doing things better in different sectors of the economy. FUTURE PROSPECTS Australia's economic performance will continue to be constrained until we overcome the fundamental problem of our trade imbalance. Even so, in the coming year Australia's economic growth rate is estimated to increase modestly from 2 per cent last financial year to 2 3/4 per cent. This should generate over 100,000 new jobs-meaning that by the end of our Bicentennial year one million new jobs will have been created since the Hawke Government first won office. Continued buoyancy of employment, and the tax cuts, will lift household purchasing power from last year's low. But the cuts we have made to government spending will restrain total domestic demand and avoid any spillover into unsustainable import pressures. Now that we have eliminated the budget deficit we will be repaying $1,000 million of Commonwealth overseas debt this year and the same amount of domestic bonds. No other Commonwealth government in more than 50 years has made repayments of both external and domestic debt in the same year. This year we have seen significant falls in interest rates, both for businesses and for home buyers. The withdrawal of the Commonwealth Government as a net borrower this year will further reduce pressures on financial markets and help to sustain those lower interest rates. While fiscal policy is now carrying more of the burden of policy, monetary policy will continue to play its proper role in containing domestic demand and cost and price pressures. Lower interest rates and an improving economic climate should contribute to a lift in business investment of at least 4 per cent in real terms and much more than that in the areas taking advantage of new export and import competing opportunities. We therefore expect that Australia will make further substantial progress in reducing the current account deficit in 1987-88. It should fall to around $11 1/2 billion, 4 percent of Gross Domestic Product. With the worst of the inflationary impact of the depreciation of the dollar behind us, and wage restraint under the Accord, inflation is expected to fall from over 9 per cent last year to around 6 per cent by the middle of 1988. CONCLUSION Finally, Mr President, I have described tonight how Australia is successfully responding to the most adverse external economic difficulty we have faced since the Great Depression nearly 60 years ago. We could have reacted to this trade deterioration by pushing all the economic policy levers into reverse. That has been tried in the past, both here and in other countries. And where it has been tried it has not produced the quick results hoped for and it has resulted in sharply higher long-term levels of unemployment, declining living standards and destructive social conflicts. We have rejected that path and the events of the last 18 months have shown that we were right. We have turned the corner and the big gaps in the trade accounts have begun to close. Essential to our success to date has been cutting the size of government and pulling down the Budget deficit from the near $10,000 million that we inherited from Mr Fraser and Mr Howard to just on zero. Opposition senators-Lies! Senator WALSH —That was not what Sen- ator Stone's minute said. This is an achievement of historic proportions. It is one of which the Government is justly proud. We have done it the right way-by better targeting government spending and by repairing and reforming the tax system. The needy have been protected and assisted; the cheats have been caught and made to pay their way. This is responsible government, the Labor way. Governing with compassion and authority, good sense and confidence. I seek leave to move a motion in connection with this statement. Leave granted. Senator WALSH —I move: That the Senate take note of the statement and papers. Debate (on motion by Senator Chaney) adjourned. The PRESIDENT —I draw the attention of the Senate to the presence in the gallery on my right this evening of a parliamentary delegation from the United Kingdom. On behalf of all senators I extend a warm welcome to the delegation and wish them a successful visit to Australia. Honourable senators-Hear, hear! Senator RYAN(Australian Capital Territory-Special Minister of State and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women) —I table the Women's Budget Statement 1987-88 which is budget-related-Paper No. 6-and seek leave to move a motion related thereto. Leave granted. Senator RYAN —I move: That the Senate take note of the paper. Debate (on motion by Senator Chaney) adjourned. Senate adjourned at 7.53 p.m. The following Papers were tabled: Australian Bureau of Statistics Act-Australian Bureau of Statistics-Proposal 1987 No. 5-Surveys of Labour Costs. Bounty (Books) Act-Declaration of recognised educational institutions, pursuant to subsection 4(1), dated 5 August 1987. Broadcasting Act- Australian Broadcasting Tribunal-Orders pursuant to section 92v-Nos 1-12, dated 6 August 1987. Companies Act-Regulations-Statutory Rules 1987 No. 172. Customs Act-Regulation-Statutory Rules 1987 No. 176. Defence Act-Regulation-Statutory Rules 1987 No. 177. Disability Services Act- Approval of Services-Schedule, dated 3 June 1987 Determinations of Rates- Training Allowances and Living away from Home Allowance, dated 31 May 1987 Principles and Objectives-Schedule, dated 3 June 1987. Export Control Act-Export Control (Orders) Regulations-Orders No. 12-Export Control (Dried Fruits) Orders. Family Law Act-Regulations-Statutory Rules 1987 No. 175. Federal Court of Australia Act- Regulations-Statutory Rules 1987 No. 171. Rules of Court-Statutory Regulation 1987 No. 174. High Court of Australia Act-Rule of Court, dated 17 August 1987. Judiciary Act-High Court Rules-Statutory Rules 1987 No. 179. Securities Industry Act-Regulations-Statutory Rules 1987 No. 173. States Grants (Petroleum Products) Act-Amendment to the Schedule to the Schemes in relation to the States, dated 8 September 1987. Superannuation Act-Regulations-Statutory Rules 1987 No. 170. Veterans' Entitlements Act-Regulation-Statutory Rules 1987 No. 178.