Senator CORMANN (9:33 PM) —I seek leave to make a brief statement.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT —Leave is granted.

Senator CORMANN —The coalition are very serious about ensuring increased transparency and appropriate levels of scrutiny and accountability on government expenditure of taxpayers’ dollars. We are of course disappointed that government senators, along with the Greens and Senators Xenophon and Fielding, have voted against the very sensible transparency measure which we recommended to the Senate; however, we are very keen to see this proposal pursued further and, in that spirit, we will be supporting Senator Xenophon’s recommended referral of our proposal for increased transparency and accountability on government expenditure to the Senate Economic References Committee.