Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I will speak to these amendments directly, but I think maybe what some of us need here is a long cold shower, rather than a long hot shower! It might wake us up.

There is my amendment that the Greens and the government say we should not insist upon, and there is an alternative amendment. I am going to be very boring here and just dispassionately go through these amendments very quickly in terms of what the key differences are. The two amendments are quite similar, but my amendment does include a reference to auditing, saying that a general purpose financial report must be prepared and audited, which is broader than the amendment moved by Senator Di Natale. The other key difference is that ASIC is the main reporting agency in respect of this in the Australian Greens amendment. They seem to be the two differences. There are some drafting differences, but those seem to be the substantial differences. If a company turns over $1 billion a year, if it is part of a subsidiary of a global giant, if it is a big pharmaceutical company— where Senator Dastyari had a wonderful expression; what was it, a trestle?