Page 2135 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994

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Mr Connolly: I think you were entertaining supporting retrospective legislation if it had been a large sum.

MR HUMPHRIES: We were prepared to consider it because, as I said, we are not taking an absolutist position. Indeed, later on tonight there will be a further Bill before the Assembly again requiring us to accept retrospective legislation, greatly limiting the potential rights of many people to make claims under the law as it stands today in this Territory. Even principles have a price. It is like the old story about Lord Byron when riding in the coach. He said to the lady in the coach, "Would you sleep with me if I gave you a million pounds?". The lady said, "Yes, I would, Your Lordship". He said, "Would you sleep with me if I gave you five pounds?". She said, "What do you think I am?". He said, "We have established what you are; we are merely haggling over the price". In a sense, that is what is happening here; we are haggling over the price. What is the point at which we draw the line?

Frankly, Madam Speaker, this is the third time, to my knowledge, that we have been asked to retrospectively fix up a problem of this Government's doing. I think, frankly, that this is a place where it is appropriate to draw that line. There is a fundamental principle at stake which goes back all the way to Magna Carta, and that is the principle that parliament, alone, makes laws which raise taxes or which make charges on citizens of a community. That law might be made directly by parliament or by a delegate of parliament, such as a Minister. But in each case the person must be taxed or charged according to the terms of the law which has duly passed through the proper process, not by the terms of a press release, or the terms of an ad in the paper, or a directive from the tax office, or a circular from a tax department; not by those things, but by the law as framed and as properly passed through due process.

It has been suggested that this is a technical flaw which people should not be able to rely upon. Madam Speaker, every day of the week in this country, indeed, all round the world, people emerge from courts having won either a particular civil action or their liberty, in many cases, by virtue of what might be described by some as technical flaws in the law, because the principle we operate on is that people are entitled to rely not on a general understanding of what a law says but on what words are there in black and white on a piece of paper. The words on this piece of paper which made this law did not allow the collection of this money from people who had accounts with banks, building societies, and so on. It was improperly collected, illegally collected. The fact of the matter is that, even if we pass the legislation today, we are changing what was previously illegal into a legal situation. We are allowing money which was taken wrongfully from people to be kept by the Government that took it.

As I have said, we do not take an absolutist position. There are times to draw the line and times when you simply cannot afford to do that. But I think, frankly, that if we do not reject this legislation tonight we are sending the signal to, particularly, the public servants who administer the tax laws in this place that if they make mistakes you can always fix it up by coming back to parliament; that parliament will fix up the problem retrospectively because we do not want to lose any money. We have to send a signal that that is not acceptable. We have to avoid, at every cost, mistakes of this kind, and passing this legislation tonight sends the wrong signal entirely.


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