Page 1216 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 24 April 1990
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Mr Speaker, the Bill we are debating concurrently, the Taxation (Administration) (Amendment) Bill (No. 2) 1990, concentrates in a single Act matters of administration in relation to ACT taxation legislation, including lodgment and assessment of instruments, returns and licence applications; payment and recovery of duty, taxes and levies; inspection of records and inquiring into facts; imposition of penalties; objection and appeal provisions.
The proposed amendment will include the Ambulance Service Levy Act as a tax Act, joining such other legislation as the Stamp Duties and Taxes Act, the Payroll Tax Act, the Financial Institutions Duty Act, and the business franchise schemes for tobacco and petroleum products. This will enable the detailed administrative provisions outlined in the summary above to apply to the Ambulance Service Levy Act and obviate the need to duplicate these provisions in the ACT Act.
Other obvious advantages for taxpayers and their advisers is the consistency of administrative provisions for all taxes and less work in keeping legislation current when administration charges are made - that is, when only one Act is amended and not each Act. I commend this Bill also to members.
MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (4.55): We are debating the Ambulance Service Levy Bill, which seeks to establish a levy on health funds operating in the Territory. Mr Duby, my colleague and Minister for Finance, has indicated that the proposed levy arrangements on health funds will broaden the revenue base of the ACT Ambulance Service through the larger number of subscribers to these funds. He has pointed out, as has Mr Collaery, that the scheme proposed in this case is similar to that of New South Wales which has been in operation for some time.
There is value in that, Mr Speaker. It is not always appropriate to echo New South Wales, but where an arrangement of this kind is in place in New South Wales and where all the funds that operate in New South Wales also operate in the ACT, as I am advised, there is some value in having a consistency between the approach adopted in New South Wales and that of the ACT. For example, this will allow ambulance funds to provide for similar or identical contribution rates in both New South Wales and the ACT.
It is worth repeating the point that under current arrangements the ACT Ambulance Service simply does not pay for itself. It is presently funded half through appropriations and half through its own revenue-raising measures. I understand that the scheme costs about $2.5m a year, of which some $930,000 only is met through the ambulance subscription scheme, about $420,000 by people who are directly billed and the rest through consolidated revenue. That is quite a shortfall. Contrast that with the new arrangements where we will be raising something
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