Independent senator Nick Xenophon has vowed to oppose the controversial FuelWatch scheme, but says he won't be horse trading or siding with one political side against another to get his agenda through the Senate.
The Rudd government will be looking to Senator Xenophon, Family First senator Steve Fielding and five Greens senators, to get key legislation passed through the Senate, when parliament sits again in just over a week's time.
Senator Xenophon says he will vote with the opposition to block the government's FuelWatch scheme, effectively blocking it in the upper house.
But despite having his own list of issues he'd like to pursue in parliament, which includes poker machines and the Murray-Darling water situation, Senator Xenophon says he'll be taking an "evidence-based approach" before voting on bills.
"The problem with horse trading, what horse trading implies is that you'll support something you don't believe in in order to get something else through," Senator Xenophon told the Nine Network.
"The problem with horse trading is sometimes you'll end up with a donkey, or even worse a trojan horse, so I need to decide things on their merit, and ... to use the phrase of the Rudd government, `an evidence-based approach' and issues have to be taken on their merits.
"I can't, in good conscience, support a law that I just don't agree with," Senator Xenophon said.
