Senator ALSTON (Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) (11:49 AM) —I want to make sure we are not at cross-purposes here. My point was not whether we always accept the ACCC's advice, because, as you would understand better than most, that is a separate judgment call that the government makes—it can accept or reject advice it gets on a daily basis from a wide range of quarters. The issue is whether the ACCC itself, which is an independent body, thinks there is a need to change the law. We might reject that and you might properly say to me, `You are dead wrong. You're just ignoring high-quality advice you're getting.' If we had a situation where the ACCC itself was saying, `Current arrangements aren't good enough; you need boundary lines drawn,' then I could understand your concern.

But when the ACCC itself does not say that and basically says: `Leave it to us to be the arbiters of the national interest. We will reflect whatever is occurring out there. We will look after the national interest and if we thought we did not have sufficient power we would tell you'—and they would. They have not done it, and that is my point. It is not whether we accept or reject it; it is that they have not come forward in the first instance and identified a problem. If there is not a problem then normally it is not a good idea to try and solve it. We did, of course, have a fair degree of informal awareness of what they were likely to come up with in respect of two of a number of recommendations the other day, so we were not quite as quick off the mark as reading it one minute and bagging it the next.

Do you want to clarify the situation, Senator Harris?