Page 4608 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 6 December 1994
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The Gold Coast casino pays 21 per cent on junket business. Compare that with the rate here once the supertax disappears from the tax that we are currently asking the casino to pay. Bear in mind that the supertax was an alternative to putting on an additional premium up front. It is not something that we are getting for nothing. We gave up a part of a premium up front in exchange for a supertax of 7 per cent, reducing to 6 per cent, to 5 per cent and so on over the first few years of operation in the Territory. We can assume that the flat rate, once the supertax is out of the way, will be 20 per cent. By comparison, the casino on the Gold Coast pays 21 per cent on the junket trade. They get no concession at all and, in fact, pay one per cent more in tax on that turnover than we extract for the regular turnover in the normal course of events.
The tax rate that applies to the casino in Adelaide is 13.75 per cent. In Melbourne it will be 21 per cent. In Hobart it is 15 per cent. On Christmas Island, where in fact the whole of the business is junket business, the flat rate tax is 9 per cent. But that is a special case because they are just down the road from Singapore. You can fly out of Singapore and be at Christmas Island in an hour and a half or two hours. The casino there has no local trade at all. If the Gold Coast and Brisbane are going to want 21 per cent, if Melbourne is going to want 21 per cent and if even Hobart wants 15 per cent, you have to ask why we are being asked to allow the casino a 10 per cent tax rate.
There appears to me to be more behind this than the ACT Government and the submission made by Casino Canberra reveal. The ACT Government may well have fallen for something which they might have looked into more closely. However, I have said that we are prepared to give them a run, but we are going to give them a run on the basis that there is a sunset clause. The Chief Minister, in her speech, said:
... Casino Canberra has agreed that the tax rate on junket profits will be reviewed prior to 31 December 1995 when the current supertax arrangements on general casino profits come to an end.
I must say that that is very generous of the Canberra casino. They are saying that they want only a 10 per cent concessional tax rate now, but they want it reviewed in 12 months' time. They do not say whether they want it reviewed to go up, although I doubt it; but they want it reviewed. Madam Speaker, we in the Opposition want something more positive than that, and that is why I have tabled amendments that will put a sunset clause on this concessional rate. We have not set a sunset of December 1995; we have set a sunset of December 1996, in effect, because we believe that it will take pretty close to a year for the casino to build up its junket business and you will not be able to assess the result of it in less than two years. We intend to have the concessional rate reviewed, and we want it built into the legislation that it will be reviewed. A simple assurance from the Government and from Casino Canberra that they will review the rate at the end of 1995 is, in my view, not good enough and it needs something more positive.
In summary, Madam Speaker, it is odd legislation. I would like to be assured that the Government has given it very careful consideration in the light of all the information that is available; but we are prepared to let it run and see what the consequences for ACT revenues are over a two-year period, at the end of which time - by legislation - we will require that the rate be reviewed.
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