Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

You mean like if Gina Rinehart completely funds an organisation that is against the mining tax or climate change? Or flies people around in her plane and then declares that? There is a whole range of different perceptions of conflict of interest, Senator Xenophon, you are correct.

I do not have the exact details. I have had a bit of a conversation already today about the policies that the committee is engaged in. I am happy to see if we can get a little bit more information; they may have something published which states what the policy is. But they have to be quite clearly identified. They are in the minutes, although I think that Senator Waters was concerned that all of the details within the minutes had not been published. I said that we were looking into that. We found one set of minutes which clearly identified that, and those minutes are on the website.

So I am happy to see if we can chase up the policy of how you deal with those conflicts for you. But there is a process. To go to your point: yes, there is a process. People may not agree with it, but there is a clearly identified process.

The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN: Senator Waters, are we moving to the next amendment?