Mr KELVIN THOMSON (5:26 PM) —The Minister for Financial Services and Regulation rises to his feet because he is embarrassed about the point we have made about the government mucking up the GST mail-out and being forced to admit today in this place that their proposals were illegal and that, as a result of these privacy breaches, the Prime Minister's letter will be pulped. We believe that the Liberal Party ought to pay for the pulping and printing of this letter. This is an important privacy issue, and it puts paid to the Prime Minister's assertion in the House of Representatives on 30 May. He said:

Senators Ray and Faulkner have belled the cat in relation to that issue, and we now have the government admitting that their proposal breached the Commonwealth Electoral Act. It would have been quite inappropriate to direct mail—

Mr KELVIN THOMSON —I will tell the parliamentary secretary about what has gone on here.

Mr SPEAKER —I agree that the member for Fisher should not have acted as he did. The member for Wills has the call and will address his remarks through the chair.

Mr KELVIN THOMSON —Thank you, Mr Speaker, I intend to. The government has been well and truly caught out on this issue, and it has had a bad week in relation to privacy issues. Notwithstanding the fact that this amendment is going to be passed with our support, we are concerned that it does not provide for an appropriate guarantee that the savings arising from the Fuel Sales Grants Scheme will in fact be passed on. In the Senate estimates, Allan Asher from the ACCC admitted that he could not guarantee that the fuel sales grants would be passed on. So, for all the money being spent as a result of this legislation and notwithstanding this amendment giving the ACCC the power to access that information, the facts are that there is no guarantee that motorists will receive the benefits from this proposal and that we will not see the city-country price differential rising as a result of the government's GST. This is simply one further way in which this government has botched the implementation of the GST.

Mr KELVIN THOMSON —Mr Speaker, we agreed that I would have 10 minutes—

Mr SPEAKER —Chief Government Whip, the member for Wills has time to address this matter, he has the call and he will be heard. He will not be interrupted by the Chief Government Whip or the member for Denison.

Mr KELVIN THOMSON —I indicated to government representatives that I intended to speak for 10 minutes. My 10 minutes has not elapsed. The Democrats said today, with these amendments becoming law, that they hoped the tax office could quickly—

Consideration interrupted; adjournment proposed and negatived.

Mr KELVIN THOMSON —The Democrats today said that they hoped the tax office could quickly address the 20,000 outstanding private rulings on the GST and give business some degree of certainty as soon as possible. Words fail me. These are the people who gave us world's worst practice in relation to the GST, and now they come in here and say, `We want the government to address the 20,000 outstanding private rulings on the GST.' Indeed, we can all worry about that. With only a few weeks to go before the GST comes into effect, it is simply not good enough. This amendment, this bill and other bills we have been debating on the GST show to the parliament and to the electorate just how comprehensively this government has botched the implementation of the GST. (Time expired)

Question resolved in the affirmative.