Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

We are going to oppose these amendments, for the perfectly obvious reason that this is just part of a fix from the government to try and keep a surplus promise that is going to be broken at any rate. We know that the fix is on, because this bill was introduced in a slovenly manner in the last sitting week, and the government, after initially refusing to send it to a committee, then sent it to a committee when they were forced into it. After they sent it to the committee, the committee then recommended to support the bill. The government majority recommended to support the bill. The government majority recognised that this is going to cause untold procedural damage to the financial services community, but still the Labor Party majority on the committee recommended to proceed with the bill in its form. Then what did we get yesterday? We got a press release from the government saying, 'We don't really care what our own committee recommended; we're going to come up with a whole lot of new amendments that no-one has previously seen and that have never been to a committee—

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