Page 3577 - Week 12 - Thursday, 19 September 1991
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also pointed out some of the anomalies. We all remember, embarrassingly, how the Chief Minister was caught completely off guard, completely unattuned to the implications of the ideological Left knee jerk of this proposal.
The fact is that if you go out there and talk to agents and individual landlords they will tell you that they are moving, within the confines of current leases, to cover this eventuality. It is too late. The charge is already put upon tenants, and it was hardly an appropriate thing to do when we are in fact providing a scheme of rental relief in the private rental sector. So, there is an unassessed drain - an effect of robbing Peter to pay Paul - in this piece of legislation.
My colleague Mr Jensen referred to the extra discretionary work that the commissioner will have to do, particularly under the provision that requires him to be satisfied that "by reason of the death or illness of any person or on some other compassionate ground; or ... because of the owner's employment or occupation" the owner, in effect, can be exempted from the imposition of this tax.
We all know that there is a large transient population in this city. They are mostly public servants, but there are some in the private sector as well. What this does is to give an ill-defined general discretion to the commissioner and it is left to the commissioner to sort it out. As my colleague Mr Jensen observed, no doubt it will be left to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to finally resolve it. The fact is that whole departments of state may well write to the commissioner and state that they have given compulsory transfers to staff and those staff may use those documents to seek exemption from the impact of this tax.
The Rally quite properly brought to the attention of the Government the fact that there are a number of people in that category who spend a good part of their career abroad. They are usually people in the higher paid levels of government service who are on permanent diplomatic, consular and defence rounds. Questions are raised about the Labor Government's capacity to be attuned to social equity and justice issues when we see it providing an exemption for some people who may not occupy their homes for more than one year in 10. And this is done at a time when their children are in boarding schools at public expense.
Not for a moment do I decry the privations and risks that those people go through in their careers. It has been pointed out to the Government that that is going to create a problem for the commissioner, but the Government has not moved an amendment of its own. The Rally was minded to move an amendment. We fail to see why we should have to tidy up the legislation on behalf of a government that cannot get its act together. I believe that this Bill should sit around the neck of this Government all the way to the next election.
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