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

When I was first looking at this bill, I thought that it was the appropriate thing to do to index the threshold at CPI rather than CPIMV immediately. I did speak to the Treasurer’s office about this, and their advice was that it would cost in the region of $400 million over the forward estimates, which seemed to be an extraordinary figure to me. I am grateful to the Treasurer’s office for giving me further information on this. My position, in a nutshell, is that there ought to be indexation at some point in the future to draw a line in the sand, but to do so at this stage would blow a $400 million hole in this measure, and I want—