Senator O'BRIEN (10:58 AM) —The resolution just carried by the Senate permits the commencement of the debate on the Customs Tariff Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2003 and the Excise Tariff Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2003. It is significant, of course, that that was a result of an agreement between the Democrats and the government about a watering down of the Senate's return to order and the partial compliance with that return to order being accepted by the Democrats as justifying proceeding. I cannot say that I am amazed by that process. What I am surprised at and disappointed about is that Senator Allison personally and Senator Allison's staff undertook to advise my office of the detail of the arrangement but no such advice was received. The first actual knowledge we had of the detail of the arrangement was Senator Allison speaking in the chamber. That is a matter for Senator Allison to reflect upon. I believe that where an undertaking is given it ought be honoured. I am disappointed that in this case it was not.

Our concern about the information base for proceeding with this legislation has been amplified by the evidence of what has been an arrangement put in place in an attempt to deal with freedom of information requests that I made when the government refused to comply with the return to order. The evidence I have uncovered reveals that officers of Mr Macfarlane's department were directed to establish a special interdepartmental committee to coordinate the government's response to my freedom of information applications. In fact, I believe an interdepartmental committee was formed and met on 11 March 2003 in the department's Allara Street offices and that officers from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Treasury, the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade were present. I also understand that Minister Macfarlane's department was advised that the operation of this interdepartmental committee was improper and a clear breach of the Freedom of Information Act. That indicates the seriousness with which the government took the question of whether the information they held might reveal something that would embarrass them and was perhaps improper in their dealing with Manildra, hence their reluctance to provide the information.

Coincidental matters were raised by Mr McMullan in the other place. For example, the Australian Electoral Commission returns reveal that on 17 December 2002—a critical time in the timetable of commitments given to the opposition about complying with the original return to order—the National Party received a donation of $50,000 from Manildra. Our concern has been the intertwining of the interests of Manildra with the interests of the government and the ability to uncover just how much of the government's policy framework was driven by the interests of the ethanol industry in a general sense and how much was driven by the interests of Manildra, in particular the relationship between the government and the company, which has, in part, been revealed—and only revealed—by the freedom of information process that I undertook. Senator Allison might not think that that is important, but I know that the public and certainly the media believe that it is an important matter and it has attracted a great deal of attention. I believe it will attract further attention as these matters are further revealed.

It is a matter of regret that the government has been able to engineer a deal with the Democrats and apparently some others to resume the second reading debate on these bills in these circumstances. The Senate originally took a principled decision on 12 August 2003 that we would not give further consideration to the government's ethanol excise and tariff bills until it complied with the order for the production of documents, revealing the full details of, in my view, the government's dirty deal with Manildra. The bills themselves are simple and Labor have never opposed them, but we have said that, if the government wanted us to consider them, we wanted the government to reveal the details of the deal with Australia's largest ethanol producer—and one of the coalition's largest political donors—which was, in our view, cooked up behind closed doors. Those closed doors are now known to include the Prime Minister's—a matter revealed only through a document provided to me under the freedom of information process, which would never have seen the light of day had the opposition not pursued this matter properly.

Yesterday I outlined the undertakings which were given by Senator Ian Campbell, the Manager of Government Business, on a number of occasions to comply with the order of the Senate. It is a matter upon which we are entitled to remark that, notwithstanding those very clear and unequivocal commitments, the order for the production of documents has not been complied with in any way until today and only then by the production of some of the documents—apparently; I have not seen what has been tabled—which have been produced because of a series of freedom of information requests and a process which has involved pursuing those requests even to the extent of taking matters to the Ombudsman. Frankly, getting this information has been as difficult as pulling teeth.

Senator Allison said a number of things which I referred to in the previous debate on this matter. I am not going to repeat them. I refer to my contribution yesterday which details what the Democrats and Senator Allison were describing as a `get tough with the government' position on returns to order in this place. That get tough position ends today. Not only did Senator Allison talk about getting tough; I also recall the words of Senator Bartlett, now the Leader of the Democrats, on 26 March last year, which further enhance previous contributions by Senator Allison. Senator Bartlett said:

We gave Senator Bartlett and the other Democrats an opportunity to do that in August and they joined with us, but that unity of purpose has ended today. Is that relevant to this debate? Yes. The documents we have been requesting go to the very heart of the policy matter in the legislation before us. We will find it very hard to take the Democrats seriously in this regard in future. The next time the Democrats want to talk about the importance of the Senate or the need for this government to be more accountable, I will be urging senators to remember this cave-in. I am pretty sure that the government will not forget. They have had another victory today, another little win courtesy of the Democrats. I am sure that they will be quite happy and have a little chuckle. We will move on from this matter, having clearly recalled the sorts of comments the Democrats have made about their position in this matter.

As I indicated previously, the bills before the chamber are simple in nature. The Customs Tariff Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2003 contains amendments to the Customs Tariff Act 1995. The amendments impose an additional customs duty of 38.143c per litre on ethanol for use as fuel in an internal combustion engine. The rate of duty on fuel ethanol is the same as the rate currently applying to petrol. The Excise Tariff Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2003 amends the Excise Tariff Act 1921 to validate the changes made by Excise Tariff Proposal No. 4 (2002). This proposal removed the excise exemption from fuel ethanol from 18 September 2002 and imposed an excise duty rate equivalent to that applying to petrol, currently 38.143c per litre.

I do regret that Labor are considering these bills without the provision of the information that we need to fully consider the government's consideration of ethanol policy, but we will not oppose the passage of these bills on that basis. However, we would be happier if we had that information.