Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Senate. I will give an instance of why it is difficult to support the preamble. It begins with ‘that the Senate notes that the executive director of the Revenue Group had not assessed where certain revenue would come from’. Straight after that it says, ‘despite repeated requests since, the government has refused to provide that information’. On the one hand ‘it has not been assessed’, and on the other hand the government is being asked to provide it. It is not good drafting, it is inherently nonsense, and a much shorter preamble would do. Again, we support the active component, but it is not clear what the preamble means. It is not logical and it ought to have been put more clearly.