COMMITTEES

Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Minister for Finance, Minister for the Public Service, Minister for Women, Minister for Government Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (16:19): I seek leave to make a short statement. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute. Senator GALLAGHER: The government was happy to support this motion with two amendments.

One was to remove the part on breaches of the code of conduct for ministers, because it's not up to committees to determine whether a code of conduct has been breached, and the other was to have inserted into the motion advice from previous Auditor-General's reports which specifically goes to the issue of how to handle the delivery of election commitments. We had agreement with the Greens around that amendment until, unfortunately, Senator Hodgins-May determined that she would rather reach agreement with the Liberals on this and refused to withdraw the code-of-conduct part.

So I just want to make it clear that the government was keen to support this motion until we were unable to get those minor amendments—minor but important amendments—to this committee referral. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: The question is that business of the Senate motion No. 4 moved by Senator Hodgins-May, as amended, be agreed to.