Page 1811 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 19 August 1992
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The Bill also seeks to amend section 22E of the principal Act to provide for pro rata payments of this tax. The provision in this section of the Bill seeks to make pro rata payment of land tax consistent with that for rates. What is happening is that people who are not occupying their houses on 1 July get hit with a year's bill. They may move back into the house on 2 July, 1 September or 1 October; but they are subjected to the full year's impact of the tax, no matter what their circumstances. I believe that that is an unfair and inconsistent application of the tax. We will seek to make provision for pro rata payments.
An amendment to section 22E also provides for the refund of excess tax payments. It flows from the first. If you paid your tax on 1 July, and you then moved back into your house, you have paid excess tax, in my view, and you should be able to seek a refund of that money. It extends the general facility for the discount for early payment of rates to the land tax context. I would make the point, however, that it only extends the facility. It does not obligate the Government to allow a discount, but it does provide that if a government sees in the future the necessity or the desirability of granting some sort of discount for an up-front payment of land tax, given that we will be moving for pro rata and instalment payments, they will have the facility, under this amendment, to do so. They do not have to go and seek to amend the Act in order to do it.
Madam Speaker, I am sure that the Government will argue, when this is debated in September, that these amendments will carry a revenue penalty. So they do; and so it should be. Any tax that places a financial obligation on people who should not, under any reasonable definition, bear that obligation is a bad tax. This tax is a bad tax and the inequities in the law must be removed. If, in the doing, the Government loses a little bit of its revenue, so be it. I think that no member - government or otherwise - can argue that a bad tax ought to continue to be levied or that people who should not be susceptible to this tax should continue to pay it just so that the Territory's revenues can be boosted. That is unfair and unreasonable, and it does not reflect the responsibility of a government to look after its constituents.
Madam Speaker, the Bill has been widely circulated already for comment. The proposed amendments have been welcomed both by members of the community seeking relief and by many others. I am sure that, when the Government analyses it, it will see the good sense of the amendments that we are seeking to make. Madam Speaker, I commend the Bill to the Assembly.
Debate (on motion by Ms Follett) adjourned.
MEDIA DEPICTION OF CANBERRA
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (11.06): I move:
That the Assembly:
(1) notes with concern a headline in The Age on Thursday, 25 June 1992: Rally Rebukes Canberra for Centre Closure;
(2) notes that this article refers to a story about Federal Government policy;
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