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

This is probably a good time to remind everyone that this is actually not something that has just come out of nowhere. This is something that has been on the books and on the table for a very long time. It is something that we took to the last election. It is something that the Labor Party took to the last election. To be fair to the Labor Party, as I indicated in my summing-up speech, while they reflected the saving against their budget bottom line they had also made a series of other related decisions and had indicated publicly before the election that they would make judgements, should they win government, on how best to give effect to this saving, which is why we have been prepared to work with them constructively on this whole process to get to a commonsense resolution. That has resulted in $800 million worth of funding for ARENA being restored. That is what has been put into this bill in the form of government amendments in the House of Representatives and the Senate of course now has in front of it the amended bill, and that is what we commend to the Senate.