Page 4037 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 16 December 1992
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AMBULANCE SERVICE LEVY (AMENDMENT) BILL 1992
Debate resumed from 10 December 1992, on motion by Ms Follett:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MRS CARNELL (6.04): Madam Speaker, this Bill comes in two parts. The first part, as the Chief Minister adequately indicated in her speech, basically tidies up some administrative titles and makes some very sensible changes. The second part adopts a new formula for calculating the ambulance levy to bring it in line with New South Wales. That is an appropriate decision and one that is obviously necessary to raise the appropriate amount of revenue. On the Chief Minister's figures, it will raise $60,000 in this financial year and $360,000 in a full financial year.
The Liberal Party has absolutely no problems with the Bill up until clause 6. Clause 6 is the validation of a previously gazetted notice. This clause involves financial retrospectivity. This is something that the Liberal Party cannot and will not support. It is important to bring to the Assembly's notice a comment that was very appropriately made by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee. It was brought to our attention that in report No. 1 of 1992 the committee told the Assembly in respect of determination No. 14, which is the one referred to in section 6 of this Bill:
... the Determination is made by the "Chief Minister and Treasurer", whereas section 8(4) and 8(6) of the Ambulance Service Levy Act 1990 require the "Minister for Finance and Urban Services" to be the person involved. Perhaps a check should be made to ensure the determination is valid.
It would appear that that determination was not valid when it was made and will be valid only if clause 6 of this Bill is passed now, in December. Remember that we are talking about a comment made by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee right back at the beginning of this sitting period. I think that is an inordinately long time to try to solve what is obviously an important problem. The Liberal Party will not be supporting clause 6 of this Bill, because it involves financial retrospectivity and we do not believe that that is appropriate. We also believe that, as the matter was brought to the Minister's notice very early this year, the Government could have been substantially quicker in taking the necessary action.
MS SZUTY (6.07): I will be supporting the Government's Ambulance Service Levy (Amendment) Bill. However, like Mrs Carnell, I have reservations about clause 6 of the Bill as it stands because of its retrospective nature. As pointed out by Mrs Carnell, the Scrutiny of Bills Committee drew attention to this matter in April of this year, and it seems quite extraordinary to me that it has taken until December of this year for the validation of determination No. 14 to come before this Assembly. I raise the question: Would people actually be prejudiced by the retrospectivity of this legislation? The answer to that is yes. On that basis and on a matter of principle, I will not be supporting clause 6 of this amendment Bill.
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