Page 3769 - Week 12 - Thursday, 21 October 1993
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It seems an exceedingly inappropriate way to go. I know that Mr Kaine, shortly, will bring forward an amendment that I believe, and certainly the Liberal Party believes, will overcome that problem while leaving intact the Government's intent in this area. As I understand it, the Government's intent is to stop the on-selling of these sorts of developments in an attempt to avoid stamp duty. I do not believe that the Government ever intended to stop development, or to impact upon a normal investor's capacity to buy. In terms of the intent, I think our amendment will achieve that end.
The other issue that I would like to talk about is the minimum duty one. A $20 minimum stamp duty, as the Chief Minister discussed, at first look would appear all right, but once you start looking at what the Chief Minister is really talking about, as Mr Kaine said, it is a fee. If it had been presented that way, possibly the Liberal Party could have looked at it in that light. But it has been presented as a minimum stamp duty. We now know that that also will be payable on exempt transactions. If a transaction is exempt, that is exactly what it should be, Madam Speaker. Under the Act there is a huge number of categories of exempt transactions, and all are exempt for very good reasons. If the Government wants to stop those items being exempt, there are ways of doing it by amending the regulations to the Act. But the Government has not done that. They have just superimposed this $20 fee.
The sorts of things that we are talking about are certain transactions carried out by charitable organisations. I do not think it was the Government's intention to tax charities, certainly not from the Chief Minister's speech. It certainly now will hit quite a number of transactions with regard to wills. Again, I do not think that is something that the Government intended to do. It will even hit things like discharging a mortgage. We all know that the banks hit you for enough charges when you do that. It does not seem terribly appropriate for the Government to be in there for their chop as well; but again, as I say, I do not believe that the Government meant to do that at all. I think the Government was looking at a way of overcoming some of its administrative charges, not by sleight of hand and amending the number of items that are exempt. Mr Kaine will bring forward an amendment that I believe will overcome that problem as well and still keep intact the Government's intent in this area.
The other area, one that Mr Kaine covered, was the area of 15-year leases. The Law Society, I think, put forward a fairly reasonable argument to suggest that 15 years just is not long enough, particularly in the area of, say, shopping centres and so on, in the area of commercial tenancies. Fifteen years is not very long to recoup what can be a substantial amount of money. We certainly do not argue at all with the intent of this amendment, and Mr Kaine will be putting forward an amendment to the amendment to suggest that that should be 30 years, which would give major tenants a capacity to recoup the very large amounts of money that they often put in.
Mr Kaine: Madam Speaker, I seek your guidance. Are we dealing with this clause by clause, or how are we approaching it?
MADAM SPEAKER: Yes, we will be, Mr Kaine.
Mr Kaine: I assumed that we were debating clause 1 then. I have no amendments to clause 1.
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