Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

And it is certainly of concern to Senator Adams as well, as it would be. The committee and coalition members have argued that we should be going west and that we should hear from the people of Western Australia who have such concern about this carbon tax. But, no, that idea has been blocked—the committee will not be going to Western Australia; it will not take evidence in my home state of South Australia either, or the Northern Territory or Tasmania. We are not quite sure yet whether the committee will even get to Queensland and perhaps hear from somebody outside one of the big cities and actually visit one of Australia's regional centres, particularly those regional centres hit so hard by the carbon tax proposal. No, the government, because of the time line it has imposed, because of the ridiculously tight time line for this committee to report, has instead put in place an arrangement where the committee will hear some evidence in Canberra and hear some evidence in Melbourne, and we are still arguing for one extra sitting day for this committee to take evidence into the carbon tax proposal out into the region somewhere, out into a regional area where we can hear from those interests across the agricultural sectors, the mining sectors, the exporting industries, the manufacturing industries, the tourism industries—so many of the sectors that will be directly affected by this carbon tax legislation and have been given such minimal time and opportunity to comment on it.

Even today we saw the ultimate in farce—this committee met for the first time for a public hearing and heard from government officials including officials from the Treasury. You would have thought that, in this process, the committee would have the opportunity to question officials from the Treasury about the latest Treasury modelling into the carbon tax. But, no, the government in its wisdom, despite having finished the modelling last week, despite the Treasurer drip feeding selected parts of it out on the weekend, decided not to release this modelling until the final few minutes before the hearing commenced this morning, thereby making it nigh on impossible for the committee to properly scrutinise the Treasury information upon which this legislation rests.

I welcome this report from the Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills. I am pleased that it has been at least able to fulfil its usual task in this legislative process. It is perhaps the only parliamentary committee that has been able to fulfil the normal process of legislation and consider the legislation—all others appear to have been stifled when it comes to scrutiny of these bills. I commend the report, as Senator Fifield did, to the chamber.

Question agreed to.