Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The government opposes this amendment. The principles of this bill and the motivation behind it are related neither to the monetary value of arrangements such as this nor to the potential impact of the arrangements. It is our view that including a monetary value to limit application of the scheme could potentially allow circumvention of the scheme by breaking projects down into smaller amounts for precisely that reason—to avoid its application—and by masking arrangements with monetary value in subsidiary arrangements, which are not within the scheme unless head arrangements are caught. I also think, from an administrative perspective, it may on occasion be difficult to ascertain the value of certain arrangements, creating uncertainty in the bill's application. I don't think this amendment would go any way to assisting the implementation of the bill at all.