The Australian
23apr99
Harradine courtship is given top priority
By GEORGE MEGALOGENIS and SID MARRIS
THE Howard Government yesterday accelerated its tax and Telstra courtship of
balance-of-power senator Brian Harradine by making its crackdown on Internet
pornography a higher priority for Senate debate than the Kosovo refugees
and the
Budget supply Bills.
The Government spent most of the day considering options to boost compensation
for the goods and services tax in response to concerns the Tasmanian
Independent
outlined in his first Senate speech on the tax package on Wednesday.
It is understood the Government is crunching numbers to see how much more
it can
afford to offer families, pensioners and self-funded retirees, in return for
Senator Harradine passing the GST on food.
But the Government is reluctant to extend any compensation deal to those groups
who are not already covered in the tax package.
The extent to which the business of government is being dictated by the need to
keep Senator Harradine happy was underlined yesterday when the Government
released the list of legislation it wants debated by June 30.
As expected, the GST was ranked first and the sale of Telstra second.
The third matter to be stamped "high priority" was the Government's push to
regulate offensive material on the Internet. This piece of legislation arose
following critical comments by Senator Harradine less than two months ago.
The crackdown was placed ahead of legislation to allow Kosovo refugees to stay
in Australia on a temporary basis, the Budget appropriation Bills and the sale
of the wool stockpile.
The Government is still eager to pass the Migration (temporary safe havens)
Bill, despite the UN placing a freeze on the plan, and might yet have the
legislation passed before the Internet changes.
But the Opposition and Greens senator Bob Brown said the list showed the
Government was hostage to the views of Senator Harradine, whose term as the
pivotal player in the upper house expires on June 30.
The list also showed the Government had effectively given up its campaign to
abolish compulsory student unionism, by relegating the legislation to
third-last
on the "time permitting" list.
The National Farmers Federation yesterday urged Senator Harradine to focus on
better compensation, not the construction of the GST, if he believed the tax
package was unfair. NFF president Ian Donges rejected his claims farmers would
be "shafted" by the GST and said he was missing the "big picture" benefits to
the sector.
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