Senator O'BRIEN (12:43 PM) —I want to make some brief comments after having restrained myself considerably in the committee stage of this bill. In summary, when I spoke on the second reading I said that this bill was hastily cobbled together as part of the deal between this government and Patrick's to rid the waterfront of the MUA. Having been through the second reading stage and the committee stage of this bill, I can now say that the amendments such as they are to this bill have not sufficiently changed my view of the outcome of so far as this bill is concerned—that is, it is basically a package cobbled together to assist Patrick's to get their hand into their competitors' pockets to get some money for their reform exercise.

As I said during the second reading debate, when you look at what Mr Corrigan said last night and, as I said in the committee stage, when you look at what is reported in the Financial Review today, the outcome of this process will not be as the National Farmers Federation has suggested—some magnificent saving to the users of the waterfront by halving, for example, the cost of container handling. What will happen is that a significant amount of any saving, such as it might be, will be placed in the coffers of the Lang Corporation and perhaps later P&O.

If there is a claim that this process has been successful, then the only people who may make that claim will be Patrick's because they may get a financial windfall out of it by being able to use the millions of dollars that this government has put into this exercise, and I am not talking about under this bill but in terms of consultancies, legal advice and the time of the department that has been put into this exercise. We now have a measure which will be put in place which will allow Patrick's to put their hand into the pocket of their competitors to fund this exercise. At the end of the day, they can pay the cost of this exercise, which of course the government would want them to do being co-conspirators, and they can boost their profitability.

We know that that money will go into the pockets of the shareholders of Lang Corporation and not to the farmers, the manufacturers and the importers of this country who were alleged to have been the potential beneficiaries of this process. This is a rather tawdry exercise. If the irony is, as I expect it will be when the election is called, that the Labor Party is elected, the Labor Party will be looking again at this legislation and this whole package. There is inherent unfairness in the whole package because of the requirement that Sea-Land and any new competitors which enter the industry will have to make payments to fund this exercise.

In relation to the Democrats position on this matter, I understand that difficult decisions have to be made. They have made decisions on this matter which have surprised many of us, not least me. I was not aware until very late in the piece that they had taken the attitude that they have. I only hope that, at some stage, if this matter does come back to bite us all, someone within the Democrats is not scapegoated for a decision of their party room on the matter.