Page 3751 - Week 12 - Thursday, 21 October 1993
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nature of someone towing a trailer with a backhoe in it pulling up at a bowser, filling up the backhoe with diesel fuel and then taking the backhoe away and using it at various sites - say, earthmoving sites - around the region. Of course, in those circumstances it is quite impossible to determine what percentage of the diesel fuel is being used in New South Wales and what percentage is being used in the ACT. The question has to be asked: How much use in the ACT, under a New South Wales permit, would warrant the commissioner cancelling somebody's permit - 5 per cent, 10 per cent, 15 per cent? How much? This is impossible to define. At the end of the day, Madam Speaker, this whole scheme is totally unenforceable; it is totally unworkable.
I draw members' attention to the fact that these amendments were generated in the first place by the fact that there was some defalcation going on under the present diesel fuel scheme. People were cheating the scheme. That is why we are making these amendments. If this is not an invitation to cheat the scheme, what would be? How are we going to trace the use of a good in the ACT after it has been purchased in New South Wales? Take the example of home heating. I front up to the New South Wales commissioner and I say, "I want to buy some diesel fuel for home heating". I have to fill in my address on the application form. I put down an address in the ACT. Apparently the commissioner will say, "You cannot use your diesel fuel for home heating in the ACT". I can say, "No. This drum here is going to be used entirely in my holiday home at Batemans Bay. I am not going to use it for heating my home in the ACT; it will be for my home at Batemans Bay".
At the present time the commissioner has no power to inquire beyond the address to find out whether or not this is in fact going to be the use to which this diesel fuel is put. There is no capacity for the commissioner to say, "Give me the address of the house and I will send someone down to make sure that it actually has a diesel fuel heating system. We will even watch the diesel being poured into the tank and put a seal on the tank so that you cannot take any out and take it to your house in the ACT". They cannot do that. Even if they did change the procedures, of course they would have to do so across the whole of New South Wales, not just in the region abutting the ACT. Madam Speaker, how on earth is this going to be enforced? I concede that if there is a willingness on the part of the commissioner to prevent cross-border trade he will be able to stop some of it, but there is no way in the world he will be able to stop all of it.
An amount of $1m is expected to come the ACT's way as a result of these changes. I say that it is impossible for the ACT Government to achieve that target. I confidently predict that the Government will have to come back at some stage and admit that it has not been able to collect anything like $1m by way of this new scheme operating - that is, from people who were previously not paying a diesel fuel franchise fee and who now have to do so.
There is another question which has to be asked. It is the question of exactly how the New South Wales commissioner would target people who propose to use their fuel in the ACT. I have read the New South Wales Act quite carefully. The New South Wales Act says that the commissioner may provide a permit to a person who uses the fuel for specified purposes. If the diesel fuel is to be used for off-road purposes, that is a specified purpose. How is the commissioner going to say, "I am going to impose an additional residency requirement or an additional use requirement on the use of that diesel fuel."?
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