Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

It is becoming very clear that we are not going to get any agreement on this particular set of amendments, but I think we agree that the Greens, the government and the opposition want to undertake a comprehensive review of taxation matters as they apply specifically to this sector of the community. I know the government has the Henry review and the opposition has the Ergas review. We support the reference of these issues to the economics committee so that we can have a full examination of them. The opposition welcomes Senator Stephens’ comments and commends the use of the Productivity Commission in reviewing this area. It just begs the question: why is the Productivity Commission sidelined in other important reviews, such as the motor vehicle manufacturing industry review? That is a subject for another time.

Senator Siewert, we all want to see a result here. We want to see that people will not be substantially disadvantaged by, as you mentioned, unintended consequences. That is what we have tried to address, and we made those amendments last night. In the absence of financial modelling that is agreed to across the parties—and we have had two very different figures quoted; I understand where you are getting your information from, Senator Siewert, and I understand where Senator Stephens is getting her information from—the fact is we should work collaboratively on getting the best result here and make it happen as expediently as possible. I am very happy to work with you in that regard and to try and bring something back into this chamber later in the year, so that people are not disadvantaged. I mean that quite genuinely and I am sure the government would as well. I think we need to address these issues as comprehensively as we possibly can, and I would like to think that we can do that by working together, but not on these amendments, because we do not have all the information we need.