Senator COOK (4:48 PM) —I asked a series of questions earlier and I did not obtain an answer to them. To go back, we carried the GST legislation about two or three months ago. Now we have a A New Tax System (Commonwealth-State Financial Arrangements) Bill 1999 to amend it. My first question is: does anything in this bill require the publicity campaign, costing Australian taxpayers $10 million, to be altered? My second question is: given that it is a so-called educative campaign, and the government is not able, or should not be able, to use taxpayers' funds for propaganda purposes to proselytise its political views—we would rather they spent it on educating people as to their rights and entitlements—why are the words `goods and services tax' not included in this campaign? Thirdly—a question through you, Madam Chairman, directly to the minister, Senator Kemp—this question arose from an interjection: are you the minister who authorises the content of that publicity?

A fourth question has arisen from the examination of you by my colleagues interested in local government: Minister, what educative publicity, under the heading of this campaign, is provided to local government to answer the obvious queries that they have? They are my questions. Let me conclude, however, by saying that in some of the remarks you made earlier, you were inclined—

The CHAIRMAN —Senator Cook, I keep asking people to address the chair. Every time you use the word `you', it refers to me.

Senator COOK —You are quite right, Madam Chairman. I stand rebuked and I apologise to you for that. Madam Chairman, Senator Kemp earlier started to warm to his subject and talked about the so-called advantages of a GST on exports. He never quite developed his argument, but let me kill this furphy before it gets any further. Exports are zero rated. The government aggregates the so-called taxes that would be saved to Australian exporters and argues that this is somehow a windfall gain to Australian exporters. The government has not told us—under probing by the Senate committee we extracted this from the Department of the Treasury—that the impact of those changes will force up the exchange rate by between three and four points. Therefore, those exporters who are in markets that are overhung by supply—where they are price takers, not price setters; that is, classically, the entire minerals market as well as the entire agricultural export market—will be worse off because they will have higher prices, and they will not have the competitive advantage delivered to them as well.

I note that the adviser is leaning over to advise the minister on the arguments he should use about this. But I remind the minister that the evidence of the Treasury said that this is the knock-on effect. As a consequence, while there will be savings, the knock-on effect will mean that there will be higher costs; in the case of our most vulnerable exporters, costs that will make them less, not more, competitive. Every time the government tells only half the story, I think the opposition should finish the argument so the full story is before Australian taxpayers. With those remarks, I return to my questions and I look forward to an answer.