Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Hansard source

I understand—and I am happy to be corrected on the facts because I was not in this place then; I think you might have been, Senator Collins—that, unlike in 1999, due to the fact that these arrangements were dealt with after the form of the proposal was presented in parliament, we do not have the section 128 bill before the House or the Senate yet. But there was also an explicit arrangement beforehand. I agree that the yes and no cases were clearer, but it was not based on proportionality in parliament and it was not based on the media. There was a simple fifty-fifty divide between the appointed 'yes' campaign and the appointed 'no' campaign.

You are not doing that. There are no criteria that have been determined for the government to be measured against. It will be a ministerial decision. Australia is a sporting nation, Minister, and I do not think that trying to tilt the playing field is a good start in dealing with a referendum, as, historically, getting the Australian people to sign off on referenda in my view has been more difficult than most of the proponents ever realised.