Senator FIELDING (Leader of the Family First Party) (1:05 PM) —by leave—I move amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 6128:

As I was outlining before in my speech in the second reading debate on the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2010-2011 and related bills, the Labor government has set aside in these bills $30.61 million for communicating the resources super profits tax. I will read out a part of the requests for amendment. It says:

So the heart of these requests for amendments is to make sure we hold the Labor government to account and to their word. The Prime Minister has come out today and said that they would stop spending recklessly on advertising for the resource super profits tax. It is nice to have that commitment, but this just puts it in writing to make sure that taxpayers’ money is not being used to advertise Labor Party policy—this tax is not even into law yet—and that taxpayers’ money is not part of their re-election campaign. Why should mums and dads foot the bill? This is a way of holding the government and the new Prime Minister to account to make sure that they cannot slip out of having said one day that they will stop it and then all of a sudden, in desperation, in a few weeks time start to draw on the money again to start spinning the resource super profits tax.

I listened carefully to the opposition’s argument, and Senator Joyce may want to stay and listen to this. He was saying that he basically supports the intent of what we are doing here. He may like to know that in the middle of the Keating years the opposition had a lot more guts and was able to stand up and pass a request for amendment to the appropriation bills regarding Carmen Lawrence’s legal fees, reducing the appropriations by that amount. So you can do this. It has been done. The opposition has been part of moving such a request for amendment to appropriations bills, and if the opposition were fair dinkum then they would also pass this request in this chamber today rather than stand there and say, ‘Look, we agree with the intent but technically we can’t really do it.’ It has been done before, in the middle of the Keating years. You cannot argue that it cannot be done; it can be done and it should be done. You say you think the Rudd government—or now the Gillard government—should not be spending taxpayers’ money on advertising the mining super profits tax, but you do not want to see it written into the appropriations bills that the $38 million cannot be spent.

I think we are all happy to acknowledge that the Prime Minister has made a commitment not to spend the money on the mining super profits tax advertising, but this is a way of making sure it cannot be spent. So I urge senators to support this request for amendments.

The TEMPORARY CHAIRMAN (Senator Barnett)—The question is that the requests moved by Senator Fielding be agreed to.

Question negatived.

Bill agreed to.

Bill reported without amendments or requests; report adopted.