Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I am grateful to Senator Brandis’s explanation of how this operates. This is very complex. It is not a question of criticising one party or the other for being inadvertent. If there were an issue in respect of recoupment, with respect to the market power test—and I think Senator Joyce said that it was dealt with in the context of the explanatory memorandum last year—then I think the government could go down that path. I defer to Senator Brandis’s position on this, but I am more than willing to talk to the government if they say that there is an alternative mechanism for dealing with what, I believe, they are intending to do. But I do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater in terms of the adverse impact it will have on the Birdsville amendment.