Senator CAMPBELL (Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer)(5.16 p.m.) —I would like to respond to some points that Senator Sherry raised. The government fundamentally disagrees with the concept that we are narrowing the advice. Any assessment of the amount of economic advice that is available now compared with the early 1980s, when I watched EPAC being formed, for example, totally avoids the fact that there has been a significant increase in the number and quality of independent economic advisory organisations and other forms of economic advice to government. That is a fact. I flippantly said—but on a half-serious note—that most of the people who go to these organisations have either come from EPAC, or BIE, or Treasury or other spheres of government or quasi-government organisations, because economic advice has become a most contestable marketplace now.

The point I would seek to make is that the power and authority of a body like the Productivity Commission, or any other organisation in terms of economic advice, will not be created because of its functions or anything else that can be made by the creator of the organisation. It will come down to the quality of its work, the quality of its contribution to the public debate and the effectiveness of its advice. We cannot create an organisation out of this place and give it power and authority. It can only do so in this area by building its own credibility.

Senator Sherry referred to the powers under the existing Industry Commission Act. The point I made—and I did not seek to mislead the Senate; I sought to inform the Senate—was that the Industry Commission undertakes the functions that are described in the functions of the commission section already. The Industry Commission has used a very wide definition of the incidental power in doing its work. The bill seeks to reflect the reality as it stands at the moment.

The other point I would make, if Senator Sherry is to be taken seriously in relation to wanting EPAC to be regarded as an independent, vigorous, strong and powerful voice of economic advice, is that EPAC's role and function ran down under Labor, particularly over the last couple of years. Senator Sherry would have read that article in the Business Review Weekly towards the dying days of the Keating government, where people from EPAC and former people from EPAC said that their role had been virtually gutted in the last couple of years.

Another point is that the BIE never had any sort of statutory base. I want to reinforce the fact that there is plenty of advice out there these days, probably more under this government than there was in the final years of the Keating government. Every time the Keating government needed to get a policy invigoration, it used to have a panic meeting and say, `Let's have a One Nation' or `Let's have a Working Nation'. It would create an enormous flurry of midnight activity to come up with the next policy document, finding ways to spend billions of dollars to churn people through unemployment streams.

In the short time that the coalition has been in government, we have sought advice from quite serious independent inquiries, such as the Wallis financial systems inquiry, to which the government has responded today, the Mortimer inquiry and Professor Goldsworthy's inquiry into information technology. The whole scene of economic advice and industry advice to government has changed significantly since the early 1980s.

We are seeking to reform the current regime by bringing together advice into an efficient and effective modern economic advisory commission for this government in the guise of the Productivity Commission. We think saving $22.5 million in the process is an appropriate way to do it. We do not want to see that commission restricted by limiting its functions in the way that the opposition have proposed.