Senator HARRADINE(8.56 p.m.) —I just want to ask the minister: prior to the last election when you were in opposition, you had policies on the environment and you had a policy which sought to reduce debt; they were two of your policies. You had decided on the means to go some way in achieving those objectives, including the finding of money to do so. Therefore, you proposed a one-third sale of Telstra.

I would be interested to know how the then opposition went about arriving at a figure of $8 billion, of which it said $7 billion would be used to redeem debt and $1 billion would be used to establish a Natural Heritage Trust Fund. I would like to know how you developed that figure.

Just arguing, for example, Senator Cook's viewpoint, would it not have been desirable at that time to be able to seek the advice of Treasury and Finance on what would be the possible outcome of a one-third sale of Telstra? This whole type of question might be one that the current opposition may at some stage wish to canvass. On the face of it, that may not be a bad idea from the public's point of view—and I am not interested in whether it would be a good idea from the government's point of view. Indeed, your party may have had this policy to sell one-third of Telstra in any event; I do not know.

The Labor Party has its policies decided by federal conference, federal executive, and so on, and they are publicly known policies. But just to use the argument of Senator Cook: what is wrong with those policies, which are already publicly known, being referred by the Labor Party, the now opposition, to Treasury and Finance for advice on costing?