Senator BOB COLLINS(11.44 a.m.) —We will not be supporting this particular provision. I say, just briefly, that I actually understand fully the reasons why Senator Kernot and Senator Margetts are supporting this proposition. It is just that I have an heretical view, I guess, in terms of an across-the-board position: I probably have as little confidence in the Senate being as rational a director of ATSIC as I have in the minister being a rational director of ATSIC. I think it is probably in line—

Senator Margetts interjecting—

Senator BOB COLLINS —It would give us all a say. But in general terms—and I would `fess up immediately that the difference in approach is caused by the fact that I, having been in government and having been a minister for seven years, think ministers should be properly accountable—knowing the processes of the Senate and knowing the extraordinary reasons why these directions should be issued in the first place, we are not minded to support this particular amendment although we have great sympathy with it.

The reason that we have great sympathy with it—this is a matter of public record, but it should be put down again on the public record—is that I profoundly and strongly believe the ministerial direction which was issued for the first time earlier this year was iniquitous, was absolutely without justification. I also believe, rightly or wrongly, that the minister was nothing but a pawn in this arrangement.

I believe that he himself did not take to cabinet such a proposition, in terms of freezing the entire disbursements of ATSIC causing the most horrendous repercussions in Aboriginal communities. He then had the ignominious task—it was ignominious; and, having sat over there, I know just exactly how ignominious it must have been—to be forced to come into the Senate and reissue an amended direction effectively negating the effect of his first direction because of the mess that that had caused.

Senator Margetts, the reason I raise that point is that without the direction—this is why we will not be supporting it—being made a disallowable instrument, I thought the Senate on that occasion, and the opportunities it gave us to raise the problems caused by minister's directions, did make him properly accountable at the end of the day and it did it in a fairly expeditious manner. The evidence is all there in the Senate Hansard. The minister was forced at the end of the day to reissue his direction.

In conclusion, I want to make a point about this matter that I will make again in this debate, without apology, before we leave here today—that is, why this action was outrageous. I am not letting the minister off the hook. He is here to represent the government and he acknowledges that. It was a government action that was taken. I know who beat him up in cabinet and who took it. It is the government that I have a problem with. I know that he was simply a pawn, but it was swept aside in this particular matter.

This document, which I am holding, is the Australian National Audit Office report on the diesel fuel rebate scheme. This is a very fresh document. See the nice shiny cover!

Senator Kernot —A very good comparison.

Senator BOB COLLINS —It is the appropriate comparison, I think, Senator Kernot, because the amounts of public money involved are very similar. This report was tabled in the parliament only a very short time ago. It makes very interesting reading. As the former primary industries minister, it was a scheme that I had some passing interest in although it was administered by the Customs Service. This Audit Office report reveals that this scheme—as supportable, in my opinion, as it is—is losing, conservatively, something like $40 million a year in rip-offs and rorts. The report itself makes the point that this is a conservative figure.

The government itself has placed a far higher figure on it. They expect to get savings—as they are referred to—of $400 million from this scheme over the next four years in fixing the rorts. That is in the budget papers. The government clearly agrees with the audit office that the $30 million to $40 million figure is indeed a conservative figure.

We had a ministerial direction issued to ATSIC freezing all of its disbursements—all of them. Every single organisation in Australia funded by ATSIC was considered guilty until proven innocent on the basis—Senator Kernot would recall it only too well—and on the minister's own admissions to a Senate committee, that the government had got spooked by some nasty publicity on television and by the statements made in public by people like Pauline Hanson. Have a look at the Hansard of the committee in Queensland.

Senator Kernot —Have a look at her maiden speech.

Senator BOB COLLINS —Senator Brown, I commended you yesterday on the speech you delivered. I did not agree with all of it; I did not agree with lots of it, but I agreed with a great deal of it. I made the point to you yesterday that the reason I did not immediately come into the chamber to listen to your first speech was not through any lack of courtesy; it was because I was fascinated by what was happening in the other chamber as well. While you were delivering your first speech, Pauline Hanson was delivering hers in the Reps and I was channel hopping in my office, and I freely confess it. It was an extraordinary comparison. There is room for all of us in here. There are racists, rednecks and people who hate Asians and blacks in Australia and I suppose they deserve to be represented in parliament, and they are.

Senator Kernot —They don't all live in Oxley, though.

Senator BOB COLLINS —No, they don't. Unfortunately, they do not. I was amazed to hear a member of this parliament advocating that we go back to the White Australia policy—which is what she said—and nominating the countries from whom we do not want people in Australia today, but it is all in the Hansard .

The minister admitted to a Senate committee that part of the reason for the issuing of that direction—freezing ATSIC's funds—was because of statements made by people like Pauline Hanson and the publicity on the Sunday program about the Redfern Legal Aid Service, which I can tell you I will be happy to come down on like a tonne of bricks at the appropriate opportunity in the Senate as much as anyone will be. That was the basis for freezing the entire funds of ATSIC, an Aboriginal organisation. This audit report identifies $40 million in rorts from the scheme. The government itself has put the figure in the budget papers at $100 million that they expect to get back in eliminating those rorts.

Would anyone have seriously suggested, on the basis of this report which was tabled in the Senate recently, that the minister responsible for customs would have issued a direction to the administrators of this scheme freezing every single disbursement to every Australian farmer and miner—the recipients of this benefit—as a result of these rorts which far outweigh anything that ATSIC, on its worst day, has ever been accused of doing? Of course, they did not. As I said publicly at the time, it would have been absurd of anyone to have suggested that they should have done so.

In cabinet that day—and I have no doubt that it was not in the submission which the minister took to cabinet—the government took this outrageous decision which caused the most horrendous dislocation to employment programs, to the provision of water supplies and sewage services in tiny Aboriginal communities all across Australia with horrendous health problems and forced the minister, at the end of the day, into the ignominious position in the Senate of rescinding his original direction and issuing a new one which completely negated the first.

You may object, Minister, but I do not think it is an invalid comparison to make in the chamber, and I might give it a passing reference again in the appropriate amendment that is to be moved by me shortly. The way in which miners and primary producers were treated by this government, and the way in which the Aboriginal people of Australia were treated by this government on exactly the same grounds, stands in stark contrast.