I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given to questions without notice asked by Senator Cash and Senator Hume today.

During question time today, we saw again reasons why the Australian people cannot trust or believe a thing that this government says. They're unwilling to admit the mistakes that they made with respect to the changes to credit card fees and the complete shambles of a process in relation to the Australian Taxation Office and its attitude towards the prohibition of using credit cards in this country.

It was more than an organised, structured or consulting based process, all of which were thrown up as smokescreens by the government. It was more like an episode of Laurel and Hardywhat another fine mess you've gotten us into. First we'll consult; next it's an independent decision by the ATO, and we can't direct. And then, of course, we tell the ATO to delay the decision by 12 months or until 1 July next year and put another $200 million on the Australian taxpayer's credit card. That's what's happened over recent times with respect to this ridiculous decision of the government to see the payment options for Australian business to the tax office limited. Small businesses around this country understandably continue to lose confidence in the government. You've got an increase in the number of small businesses losing their position in the market because of increased costs, and the small business that I talk to say this is the last straw. 'What else can the government do to us? You've attacked us with relation to our business structures through the attack on trusts. You've increased our taxes through trusts as well. And now you're reducing our payment options—our capacity to manage our cashflow—to the tax office.' What else could you dream up? What else could this government dream up?

The problem is that, with the way this government is running both the parliament and the nation, we will continue to see these unintended consequences crop up from all of these measures that aren't properly tested by the parliament. We saw it with the widow's tax. We've seen it with a number of other measures where the parliament has to come back and clean up the mess that's been created by this government. As I said, it's out of the Laurel and Hardy playbook. What a fine mess you've gotten us into again. The government needs to take decisive action with respect to the tax office accepting credit cards. They've talked about a delay. They've put another couple of hundreds of millions of dollars on the national credit card. But what they really need to do is sort this out. Scrap it. Scrap the prohibition on businesses using credit cards to pay the tax office. Why should Australian business lose one of its payment options to manage its cashflow, just because the government can't go through the appropriate process to put legislation through this parliament? Why should small business pay the cost? Why should industry pay the cost of the government's complete failures with respect to structuring some of the measures that they're putting through this parliament?