Page 2051 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 25 October 1989
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rectify it, and he will simply eliminate the fringe; he will pay the full salary. As a result of that, I think we are on a winner here. We are taking money off the Commonwealth and giving it to ourselves. The employer will still wind up paying approximately the same amount of money; it just means that our revenue base is not going to be eroded.
The second type of problem that Mr Kaine is alluding to, I assume, is the situation where people in various types of employment and industries can set up company A, which, for want of a better number, has an employee payroll of around $400,000. It is subsequently not required to pay payroll tax because it is nowhere near the limit. As the business expands, the employer realises that he is going to be up for payroll tax as his payroll gets larger. So what does he do? He sets up a dummy company, company B, to employ part of his employees and contracts out. There is a sham contracting out of services by company B to company A so that both companies remain with a payroll of less than the cut-off. That to me is clearly avoidance. There is nothing smart about that. They are simply not paying their fair dues.
We know that the vast majority of firms do not employ such dubious schemes as the ones I have outlined, but there is always the quasi-criminal fringe who wish to indulge in little scams like this. I think it is about time they were made to pay their fair share and the law-abiding, regular members of the community should not have to support them like leeches on their backs. Once again, that is not all that complicated. I cannot see anything really difficult with that, Mr Kaine; it is commonsense to me. It does not require great mental gymnastics to be able to understand what it is doing.
MR SPEAKER: Order! There is somebody who is not a member of the Assembly in the chamber. Please return to your seat.
MR DUBY: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I hope that does not happen again. The other issue that Mr Kaine has raised in relation to this amendment to the payroll tax legislation is the supposed lack of consultation - that various groups were not informed about this, that they did not know about it. Mr Kaine in his speech said that this Bill was presented on 28 September. That is practically a month ago, and yet from his own lips Mr Kaine says, "I brought it to their attention in the last few days". For goodness sake, what has he been doing for the last 28 days? Why were these organisations not aware of this?
Mr Kaine: Ask the Government.
MR DUBY: I am asking you, Mr Kaine. You said, "I brought it to their attention in the last few days". I suppose we are lucky that he told them about it at all because the implication is that, if he had not advised them, then they
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