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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4291 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Northern Territory, South Australia and, I think, New South Wales there are similar systems. However, it is still, as far as I am concerned, an objectionable way of raising revenue. The tax is flat in its nature, and, whenever we have a tax that is flat in its nature, we should look at it very carefully because, by its nature, it is regressive; whereas I believe that there should be at least some progressiveness in recognising capacity to pay. That becomes particularly interesting when you look at the socioeconomic status of the majority of people who appear before our courts and wind up paying fines - and will wind up paying this fine. Invariably, this tax will be paid by those of lower socioeconomic status in our community, and we have to ask ourselves: Is this fair? I think the answer of any reasonable person looking at it is no, it is not fair.

I think it behoves Mr Humphries in particular to justify this. It is a surprise to me that somebody of Mr Humphries's capacity, who usually brings forth very thoughtful legislation, has been prepared to bring this particular piece of legislation before us. I think it would have been far better, if you were determined to go down this path because of the rising costs of criminal injuries compensation, to have a more transparent system that would allow the judiciary to take into account the issues you have raised and to give a range of fines. If you are going to use this system, at least have a range of fines, as opposed to the $30 flat fine, which is simple to administer and has that convenience. However, we are not here to serve administrators. We are here to deliver what is in the best interests of the people of the ACT, and that is all the people of the ACT. So I have real difficulties with this.

There is one further difficulty I want to draw to the attention of members of the Assembly, and that is that the fee, once introduced, is ripe for increase by future assemblies in an effort to balance budgets. We have another new fee and, once introduced, these issues of principle are no longer really able to be debated. It will be said, "We already have a $30 fee, and criminal injuries are costing us $10m now, instead of $5m, and we are getting only $300,000." - I think the projection is $330,000 per year from this fee - "These are out of balance; we should balance it up, so let us change it to $100 or $150".

What we are dealing with here is a significant issue of principle. It is a piece of legislation that was introduced on only 21 November, yet we are dealing with it now. To be fair to Mr Humphries, although it was introduced on only 21 November, the concept this is implementing was introduced through the budget, so most of us have been thinking about it for some time, and it was considered by the Estimates Committee. Indeed, the Estimates Committee suggested that there should be much wider consultation on it. Yet, when I read through Mr Humphries's speech, I do not see evidence of widespread consultation on these fundamental issues. I should draw to Mr Humphries's attention that, when we work within the Estimates Committee, members are working as hard as they can to get a coordinated consensus approach to the way we report; therefore sometimes our recommendations are softer than some of us would have made them, because they are a compromise. I would have thought he could have seen through that and realised that there are fundamental issues about the way we tax, about the socioeconomic status, about social justice, that come before us with this legislation. Indeed, Ms Follett on a number of occasions raised some of these issues publicly, yet I see that you are still proceeding with it.

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