Page 2125 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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As is said here, in real terms it is about half a Big Mac or a thickshake at McDonald's. The point is that, as I understand it, it was not intended that there be a further advantage or a further concession; it was merely to restore to those people who had had a concession before a concession of somewhat the same value. That sum seems to indicate that it has been pretty well achieved. Again, I believe that to be a reasonable thing to do. It maintains equity for those people, and the Liberal Party supports it.
In examining the matters contained in this Bill, however, I did seek some input from a couple of community groups. One of those was the Council of Social Service, who made an interesting comment. They said that, while they supported what the Bill was doing, there were many other classes of people whose income was no greater than the classes of people who were given concessions under this Act. The people who are entitled to concessions are only those who have certain cards issued to them either by the Social Security Department or by the Veterans' Affairs Department, but there are many people who are not entitled to either of those cards but whose income is no greater than that of those people who are entitled to concessions. They argued, with some logic, that those people ought to be as entitled to a concession as the ones who currently have the entitlement under the Act.
I spoke to them only yesterday, so I have not had time to think their proposition through; but it is pretty obvious to me that, if you were to attempt to extend it to those other people, first of all there is a problem of definition. How do you define the classes of people who would be entitled to the concession? How could you identify them and what sort of system would you have to set up to determine eligibility under a means test for those who do not carry the cards that are currently available to some people? If they do not have a card, how do you establish what their entitlement and eligibility would be? So there is a problem with that.
The second problem that struck me was that, without knowing the number of people that might be encompassed by a broadening of the definition, you could possibly be multiplying the number of people involved by perhaps 10. According to the Chief Minister, there are only 3,300 people in the ACT who are affected by these changes. If you assume that extending the definition could multiply that number by 10, you are talking about 30,000 people. This Bill has been assessed as incurring a loss of revenue of $160,000, I think it is; so you would multiply that figure by 10 if you were to move to the extent the Council of Social Service is suggesting. Those are only estimates and they may be totally wrong, but there are some problems.
While what the Council of Social Service says does suggest a problem of equity, the other side of the coin is that in trying to eliminate the inequity you have to be careful that you do not put yourself into a big deep hole in terms of the effect on revenue and, secondly, the necessity to set up a fairly comprehensive system to identify and check people's entitlements. So there are problems associated with it, but it is something we should be looking at in the longer term. The three elements of this amending Bill, as I see them, are all supported by the Liberal Party, and we support the Bill.
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