Page 6265 - Week 19 - Tuesday, 17 December 1991
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Mr Stevenson: You can take some out of the fluoride budget.
MR CONNOLLY: Mr Stevenson says "the fluoride budget", but it is not high enough. The point is, Mr Speaker, that any person who proposes such a fundamental attack on the budget is honour bound, if they are fair dinkum, to say where the money should come from. I have not heard.
What Mr Collaery is doing is creating a charter for avoidance. He is creating a loophole so wide that you could drive a truck through it. At the moment we are talking principally about the building industry, because that is where the complaints have come from; complaints which the Finance Minister in the Alliance Government investigated and said were not substantiated. But that is where the complaints are coming from.
Once this becomes the law, every other industry will take advantage of this. Other people will structure their affairs in order to avoid taxation. There is nothing illegal about that. Mr Collaery is creating an optional tax system. Mr Collaery is creating a system where people in this town, properly advised, can just decide, "Well, we will not pay payroll tax, thank you very much. The Assembly said that we do not have to, thank you very much. Nice people". At least a million dollars, maybe two or three; who can tell? It is a stupid proposal.
Mr Speaker, I will address my remaining questions to the Liberal Party in the hope of a rational response. The Liberal Party has always opposed this legislation. That is an honourable position for them to take. They will argue in the election for the repeal of this legislation. That is an honourable position for them to take. If we were debating the repeal of the legislation, that again could be an honourable position for them to take.
I said "could", because Mr Kaine is committed to the community not to destabilise the budget. He said that it was the Government's budget. He disagreed with it, but he said that we will answer for it to the people on 15 February. We know that the people on 15 February will endorse us; but in essence, Mr Kaine, your commitment not to destabilise the budget does not sit very well with any proposal that wipes at least a million dollars out of that budget. So, I would remind you of your commitment to the people some months ago and see whether, in the dying moments of the Assembly, you honour that commitment or you take some opportunistic stunt along Mr Collaery's lines.
Your other point, Mr Kaine, was that you thought that this legislation, if it was to be there, ought to model New South Wales. You said that you thought, by and large, that it does; but the problem, you said, was the way the rulings are given by the Revenue Commissioner. You take the view, and Mr Collaery urged this, that he is taking a different view from the view that revenue commissioners have given in other States.
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