Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Temporary Chairman, the running sheet shows that Family First will be moving the first amendment. But Senator Fielding has just left the chamber to get some notes so, while he is doing that, can I briefly explain where the opposition is at. We are delighted that the government has seen the sense of the amendments which both the opposition and Family First, in different ways, have proposed. We were very concerned with the bill, as it came to us, about the indexation of the fuel tax. Senators will remember that Prime Minister Keating introduced a provision for the automatic indexation of fuel tax. Fuel tax used to go up every half-year and it was a great impost on Australians. The Howard government, to its great credit, got rid of that indexation. We wanted to make sure that the Labor Party did not reintroduce it, by stealth, in the bill before the chamber. As I said, both the opposition and Family First have proposed amendments in relation to indexation and in relation to it being a disallowable instrument. We wanted to make sure that, if the road user charge were to be increased in the years ahead, it would have to come before this parliament and would be subject to disallowance. It was not in the original bill but, again, the government has picked up the amendments of both the opposition and Family First and has made it a ministerial determination—and the ministerial determination is said to be a disallowable instrument.

I have just distributed a revised amendment sheet on behalf of the opposition. This follows some discussion between me and Family First and government officials. In this second set of amendments we have simply taken our amendments that will not be required off the piece of paper because we are going to be agreeing, first of all, with Senator Fielding’s first amendment and then with all of the government amendments, which pick up the issue of indexation by ensuring it is not indexed and the other issue of a disallowable instrument. The new opposition amendments are simply the old ones put differently.

For explanation, particularly for Family First and Senator Xenophon, we are proceeding with our amendment which on the original sheet was shown as opposition amendment (2) but on the new sheet is shown as opposition amendment (4). We have removed amendments (1), (2) and (3) and now only have opposition amendment (4). We have done that in the hope that either the government or the crossbenchers will agree with us on one or all of those provisions, whereas they may not agree on other positions. I see that Senator Fielding is now here and I assume the Senate will be happy if we now move according to the running sheet.