Senator WALSH (Minister for Finance) —by leave-I claim to have been misrepresented, firstly, by Senator Harradine. The reason he has given for voting against the Bill continuing proposed section 3 (12) in 1984 might be acceptable if it stood in isolation. However, it ignores the fact that he voted on exactly the same proposition in the opposite way in 1982. He has given a spurious reason for doing as he did in 1984-the same spurious reason that he has given on many previous occasions. I can only assume that he prefers offering a spurious reason to giving us the real reason.

Regarding Senator Stone, there is, as I indicated when he was interjecting during Question Time, some room for interpretation in the article he wrote. Mr President, I nevertheless draw your attention to the fact that the major theme of Senator Stone's article was the need for higher domestic savings-I think that is a reasonable interpretation. He said that a recession would certainly produce `a sharp lift in national savings'. Whether that would happen is, I submit, disputable but he certainly identified that as a cure-maybe not the preferred cure-for what he had identified as a problem. I would like to make two other explanations regarding Senator Stone's explanation. He did not comment on the bucket that he had tipped on Mr Howard's policies in that article or the fact that he endorsed the strategy of the 1982 Budget.