Mr. Derek Moran:

Or not. I will come to that in due course. It is great to hear that the output of the Tax Strategy Group is still of value. It has been doing its work fairly unanimously for a very long time. I spent nearly a decade as head of tax. The group goes back to the fundamentals and looks at each tax head annually and sometimes poses fairly fundamental questions for the purpose of discussion and framing debate. I do not believe one could say anything in the analyses is a specific policy proposal but it poses the questions as to what happens if one equalises diesel and petrol, what it looks like and what it means? The group surfaces those issues and will continue to do that. Since it has a more strategic focus, it allows one to bring forward issues that may not be topical in the public policy debate. It allows them to be tabled in a manner such that people can develop their thoughts on them over a period of time. It serves a very good purpose.

I anticipate the papers will be of an equal standard. We have been publishing these since the late 1990s but they have got very little attention-----