Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

To clarify: the Clerk of the Senate is who would have provided assistance to the Palmer United Party in relation to the drafting of those amendments, as is usual practice, but subject to comment, advice and input by Treasury as appropriate. There is nothing unusual in relation to this to ensure that, as I have indicated before, these amendments are technically accurate.

In relation to the other matter, you would be aware that, in particular at the request of Senator Xenophon, after the Palmer United Party amendments were circulated the government did make Treasury and others available for an extensive briefing session of the Senate Economics Committee. That happened before Christmas. At the time, the indication was that this bill would be dealt with in the last sitting week before Christmas. As it turned out, of course, after the legislation on temporary protection visas we did not end up having enough time to deal with this, so this is a hangover from last year. The appropriate briefings and all of the background have been provided in good faith, and my feedback is that those senators who participated in that briefing—perhaps with the exception of Senator Carr—accepted that that was a very useful explanation of the background.

I think everyone very clearly understands what it is that we are trying to achieve. In effect, we are trying to implement a budget measure of the previous Gillard Labor government and trying to do it in a way that is acceptable to the crossbench so that we preserve the policy intent in a way that is slightly better than the original proposal. This is democracy at work. This is the Senate process at work. The government has engaged in it in good faith and constructively, and so have crossbench senators. Sadly, the Labor opposition has not.