Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Joyce, you might like to question the evidence of the committee, and obviously you have had some other advice. This is evidence that industry gave the committee, and it is the basis of the calculation that has been done. You might have had some other advice that you might prefer to follow, but the committee has accepted the advice that has been put before it. That is the basis on which the calculation has been done.

In respect of your further comments, I think we agree that we are in different planes on this issue. You obviously have a perspective; the government view does not concur with that, and I expect it will be the subject of some further conversations. We certainly reject the premise that it was an incentive or anything of that nature. Those mechanisms are delivered through other processes, and I have already described them several times. This is about the taxation treatment of fuel—diesel and biodiesel—and the incentive mechanisms that the government might want to put in place are dealt with through other processes, such as the cleaner fuels grants scheme, the energy grants and so forth. There are very clear distinctions, given that none of those mechanisms are impacted on at all by this legislation.