Page 2739 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 21 November 1989
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It is not about legitimising the X-rated video industry either. That industry has been legitimised by the Federal Government, and any pressure that has been brought to bear on members of the Assembly is sorely misplaced. We have no power to guarantee or change the existence of the industry and we certainly have no power to begin talking about banning it. The industry is a fact of life in Canberra, and the Government's Bill recognises that fact. It is a money Bill; nothing more.
Of course, it is easy for people to think that money, inanimate though it is, acquires the moral standing of the activity it comes from. But if we wish to impose values and judgments on public revenue according to the moral status of its source we are, all of us, already the pimps that some people have suggested we will become if this Bill is passed. We are already living on immoral earnings. We are living on the fruits of distasteful or illegal business.
The Federal Government has no scruples about this; nor do the States, even though on the subject of X-rated videos they would like to appear "cleaner than thou" by banning them while their residents go on using Canberra as a mail order source. The fact is that Federal and State courts have the power to confiscate the profits of illegal activities. Indeed, New South Wales has recently announced that it will be beefing up its confiscation laws.
I wonder what people imagine happens to that money? It is not like radioactive material. It cannot be locked away in a lead box and left until it becomes clean enough to use. It does not have a moral half-life. All that money which comes out of illegal dealings goes straight into public revenue. The commissioner of taxation does not ask about the moral condition of a potential taxpayer either. He does not forgo sources of revenue which he can identify in the hands of prostitutes, SP bookies, drug dealers and other criminals. If he can catch them earning income, however they earn it, he is prepared to collect tax from them.
It is not always easy. While some prostitutes are apparently happy to conduct their business on a financially accountable basis, nowadays with bankcard facilities and all the other trappings of modern commerce, much of the tainted money out there is often untraceable. Usually the Taxation Office can only estimate someone's financial dealings on the basis of whatever details might happen to come up after an arrest and trial. The point is that taxes can still be raised, even if the tax system does no more than scratch the surface of all the income generated on the fringes of, or outside, the law. It does not change the moral status of the money which is added to public revenue. It is, if we want to be squeamish, "dirty money".
Taxes on ill-gotten gains, like taxes on everything else, help pay for our hospitals; they contribute to our social
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