Senator COOK(5.43 p.m.) —The minister has not actually answered my question—he has given me some assumptions upon which the calculation was made. But the figure which was provided to us was $63 million. We are now told extemporaneously—as far as I am concerned, anyway—at the end of the second reading speech that it is $100 million. You have announced some nebulous reasons, some nebulous assumptions, about this. You are quoting from a document. It would help this debate if the calculations that you have made could be tabled and subject to some scrutiny.

This is quite a dramatic change. You have not said where you got it wrong to begin with; why you now believe you are right; and why, if you conduct further scrutiny, you will not correct yourself again. I might say in passing, with some degree of bitter cynicism, I have never yet encountered a situation in which, when the government is under pressure and produces a new figure for what the lost revenue will be, the lost revenue is less. That has never happened. The lost revenue is always more. It is always dramatically more, as if the lost revenue can be waved around as an asserted figure and as the clincher to all argument.

The government has to do better than this. If it is trying to threaten people by saying, `You are damaging revenue to this amount,' well, prove it. I am asking you, Minister, to therefore table the document from which you have been quoting so that we can have a look and satisfy ourselves that what you are saying is right.

There is a need for the government to correct its reputation here. We have just had the honest and forthright report to this chamber from Senator Murray about what happened last time. Now, I was an actor in what happened last time and I have a very clear recollection of what happened last time. Senator Murray had an amendment circulated in the chamber which we thought was the amendment he would move but, at the very last minute, he moved a slightly different amendment. It has always confused me as to why that was the case.

We have now been told the reason was that he has had discussions with the Treasurer and he and the government agreed. The amendment that Senator Murray moved then was carried and is now the law, but that is now what the government is wanting to change. This is not a very good track record for the government: it sorted out the amendment that is now the law and that it now wants to change. Why could the government not draft its own amendment at the time accurately? The law as it now stands, the amendment that it proposed to Senator Murray, is unworkable.

So not only can you get your arithmetic wrong as to the damage that there might be to revenue—this is the amount of money the government is seeking to unfairly retrospectively recover—but you cannot even draft your own legislation when you broker a deal to get a majority of votes in this chamber. So you do not have a great basis of credibility, with the greatest of respect to you, Minister—because I am not sure if you were the minister at the table at the time—in coming into this chamber and making assertions unsupported by any other detail. In fact, on the record, you are not to be trusted at all by any assertions that you make because, first, you cannot calculate the figure and, second, you cannot draft a change to the legislation. I ask you, Minister: will you now make all your calculations available to the chamber?