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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (28 February) . . Page.. 406 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

corporate Australia, to business Australia. As I said in answer to the earlier question, has the restructuring gone ahead in any State that has not given the exemption? The answer is no. Where has it gone ahead? In the States where the exemption has been given.

CRA said quite categorically, in writing, in their submission to us, that the ACT plays a fairly small part in the whole of CRA's operations in Australia and, if the stamp duty exemption was not granted in the ACT, then they would go on regardless; they would continue to operate their operations nationally. But I can tell you that next time they are registering a company it will not be in the ACT. Next time any of those entities Australia-wide want to register a company, do you think it will be here? Do you think it will be the ACT that gets all of the charges, the stamp duties, and so on with regard to other share transfers?

Mr Moore: We got more than the alternative.

MRS CARNELL: The reality is that Ms Follett got a big fat zero by saying no to CRA. What we have is a substantially better corporate image. What we have is substantially more confidence in the ACT as somewhere where you can incorporate your company, you can pay taxes and charges normally - a totally appropriate approach.

Both New South Wales and Victoria have granted the same exemption. That is where the vast percentage of CRA's operations are. Why did they do that? Why did they give up that sort of money, if the other side is right? Because the money was not going to be forthcoming. The money was never going to be forthcoming unless there was an exemption in place. The reality is that this is an internal restructuring - something that does not have to go ahead; something that does improve, to some extent, the efficiency of a company. But as CRA rightly say in writing, if we did not grant it, as Ms Follett did not, they would not go ahead, as they did not under Ms Follett. So, what did she get? Zero.

MR WOOD: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. The Chief Minister offers rhetoric about proposed benefits, but she is not going to quantify them. Nevertheless, I return to my original question: Chief Minister, is there any basis on which you would refuse a waiver?

MRS CARNELL: I certainly believe that waivers of revenue that is payable to the ACT are something that we do under very few circumstances. That is money that is real and that we are likely to get. As you would know from the documents that you got yesterday, there are a number of waivers. The vast percentage of them were to do with stuff-ups by the ACT Government where we believed that, when we had not paid our bills on time or when we had not returned money on time as a result of AAT decisions, we should have paid the interest to the people involved. In fact, the lists in that document are predominantly due to our view that this Government has exactly the same requirements to pay our bills as anybody in the private sector does.

There is one waiver in there to do with CRA. They also applied to the previous Government. The previous Government said no. How much revenue was forthcoming? Zero; not one dollar.

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