Alex White (Labour)

Innocent children are being lied to. There must be some level of judgment that a government can exercise or is required to exercise when it is told something by a financial institution rather than simply accepting it.

Senator Ross made another point. Even if we were to go along with the notion that the Government and we were lied to, how could it ever speak to those people again, if I could maintain the schoolyard approach to it? If people lied to it on such a spectacular basis and it was misled, how could it have any business dealing with any of them at any stage ever again, given that the implications of the lies are significant? It is beyond belief that a Government would consider maintaining a relationship with any of those individuals. What precise lies were told and have those people been asked about where they got the information about their institutions and why they believed imparting such spectacularly false information regarding their capital situation could be so easy?

I do not have much time. The proposal before the House is a net one. It does not re-open the scheme for debate, although it gives us an opportunity to touch on all of the issues relating to the guarantee and, when they have the time, Senators will grasp the opportunity to have that debate. It is about the extension of the time period. There are some other changes, but the only one of substance relates to the time period. I am right in that. If so, and I ask the Minister of State to address this issue if he has a chance, it is remarkable that nowhere in his speech from what I can see, with the possible exception of one reference, or in the speech of the Minister for Finance in the Lower House was a rationale given for the net issue of the three-month extension. Why is it three months and not two or four months? What is the necessity for the extension? I am not asking about the necessity for the guarantee, since I know the answer and we have had that debate. Somewhere in his speech, the Minister of State referred to the need for flexibility, but nowhere in it-----