Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Xenophon for that and I wish him well in his reliance on the word of a government that, as we all know, promised us just before the last election that there would be ‘no carbon tax under a government I lead’, and of course that will be the next major debate here.

With not a great deal of hope of getting any answer from this government, because it is a government that is unaccountable and does not believe that it has to answer to parliament for its legislation, I ask if the minister could identify something for me that I think he made mention of in his first answer: where is the minister going to specify—and I assume he has not done it yet because this legislation is not yet passed—a class of individuals for the purposes of the proposed subsection 2 of section 4-10 in the amendment bill? Where is he going to specify that he is satisfied that that class was affected by a natural disaster that happened in Australia between the nominated dates?