Senator MURRAY(5.58 p.m.) —Minister Kemp, I cannot recall all the figures, but let me try to give some particularity to your examples. Let me use syndication as an example: you will recall that your government did make the decision; you will recall that the Senate reviewed the matter and that, as a consequence of that review, it was debated and the government bill was passed.

You may also recall that at no time was syndication ever regarded as illegal. Syndication was always legal and the allegation of rorting in the illegal sense of it was never proven; it was very difficult to substantiate. You were given, as they would say in law, the benefit of the doubt. That is why your bill passed, because we thought you had made a good enough case that the potential was there to threaten the integrity of the system and we were not getting the benefits out of it. I do not want to recap that, but let us assume that this reporting process had been in place prior to that. Let us assume that the report had said, `Look, parliament and people, we have here a situation where $600 million of taxable income is at risk. We believe that the way in which the system is running is not producing benefits that warrant the cost to the tax system and, accordingly, the government intends to consider closing down the system.' So what? What would have happened?

When you are dealing with gigantic sums of money which involve careful integration of very complex schemes, regardless of how clever and capable the industry is that deals with these things, they cannot rush off and, in a few weeks or months, turn the entire system upside down. The syndication example would be very true of that. Those were complex, long-term and very difficult financial systems to structure and put together. They could not be put together very simply and very quickly because they had to relate to practical business events.

Using your own example, whilst I think I understand where you are coming from I cannot see, in the particularity of the example you give, that we arrive in a situation where the government would have been disadvantaged or have been put at any great risk if, at election time, you said, `We do not like the syndicate system and we are going to close it down.' I really cannot see that the result would have been major damage to the exchequer or anything else. In fact, it would have made for a very enjoyable debate during the election period. So whilst I understand the points you are making, Minister, I am not persuaded by them and I will support Labor's amendment.

   Question put:

   That the amendment (Senator Cook's ) be agreed to.