Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

It does not worry me when the answers are provided, but one of the problems with the committee stage and with this whole process is you are given an answer that you then have to take at face value before moving on to a vote. That is why I am trying to explore this a bit earlier—to see what the responses are.

In relation to IPART, Senator Xenophon is right and I should have chosen my words more carefully. But there is no doubt it was an IPART report that was given to the state Labor government. Surprise, surprise—this secret report has found its way into the media. We have a choice: IPART leaked it or the New South Wales state government leaked it. That is basically the choice, and do you know who I am putting my money on? The state Labor government, because they are concerned about the higher prices, and that is why I made the reference that I did to the state Labor government. But technically Senator Xenophon is right. IPART commissioned it but it was then passed to state Labor and—surprise, surprise!—in that process somehow it got leaked. I do not know how that would have occurred, but I am going to give the benefit of the doubt to IPART that they did not. But now that it is out in the public arena, I would have thought the federal government would say: ‘This is a matter of interest. This is coming to a different conclusion to our original modelling’—