Page 1426 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 11 August 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
The final thing we intend to rectify is this notion, expressed by the Chief Minister, that, if a person leaves the Territory for work-related reasons, he or she must go involuntarily before he or she is able to have the tax waived. The tax Act does not say that. The Act refers explicitly to leaving the Territory for work-related reasons. The Revenue Commissioner has been saying, "If you go out of Canberra for work-related reasons, other than because your employer requires you to go, you are not entitled under the Act to a waiver of the tax". That is not the context of the Act, it was never intended by the Act, and I think the Act needs to be amended to make sure that that does not occur in the future. When a woman leaves her children in her house in the ACT and goes to Adelaide because that is the only place she can get a job, this Government takes $800 a year from her in tax. That is social justice? I do not believe so. There are some real anomalies in this Act.
The Government should have moved to amend the Act. It has merely said, "We are going to give an amnesty for three months and we are going to allow people an extra 28 days to pay". Why did they say that? Why did they allow people 28 days to pay? If it was perfectly good last year to make people pay by 15 August, why have they allowed a 28-day deferment of payment this year? It is because they know that the Act is anomalous. But the solution to that is to amend the Act, not to make some administrative decision. The Government has not acted responsibly; it has not acted in accordance with its own concept of social justice. I must keep repeating that because it simply is true.
There are a couple of other aspects of this matter that I would like to refer to. It demonstrates some sort of woolly thinking, if you like, on the part of the Government. We have just gone through a debate about the payment of tax and the like, and the fact that if you do not pay your land tax on time there is a 20 per cent interest penalty. It is only a matter of weeks ago that we were debating in this place interest rates on credit cards. We were told by the Government that a 19 or 20 per cent interest rate on credit cards was usurious. We cannot have people being charged 19 and 20 per cent on their credit cards, we were told. But the Government does not mind charging 20 per cent to somebody who misses the date for paying his land tax. Where is the social justice in that? Where is the double standard in that?
The Government has cause to rethink its attitude to this tax. Instead of the Opposition putting up amendments, the Government should have done it, and it should have done it a long time ago. To react only in the last few days, as the Chief Minister did, when suddenly it dawned on her that there were some problems with the Act, is too little too late. The Opposition finds the situation unacceptable.
I have literally dozens of letters from people who in every case have a good argument for saying that theirs is not a commercial rental property. It may be a house that was bequeathed to the children by the father, with a proviso that the wife reside in it for the rest of her life. Why should that widow pay land tax? It is absurd. It always has been and always will be, until that woman dies, her family home, her principal residence, despite the fact that some sort of trust arrangement has been set up. It is not a commercial deal.
Mr Connolly: It is getting around tax.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .