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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1521 ..

Page 4 (continuing):

Mr Speaker, these are the first of the provisions in my package of amendments, and they will allow us to test the will of the chamber in relation to my amendments. My amendment No. 3 is the action amendment, which inserts into the list of accounts which are excluded accounts for the purposes of the debits tax accounts kept with a financial institution where the account holder is a pensioner or a disadvantaged person or, if there are two or more account holders, where all the account holders are pensioners or disadvantaged persons.

Mr Speaker, I am moving these amendments today in response to my concerns about the Government's original proposal. It should be noted at the beginning that the Government's original proposal, announced in last year's budget, did not contain any rebates for anybody. The package of amendments involved a reduction in financial institutions duty which involved a concession for deposits of social security and other income support payments in relation to financial institutions duty. In shifting the balance of the taxing regime by reducing financial institutions duty and inserting a debits tax - - -

Mrs Carnell: In line with New South Wales.

MR WHITECROSS: Mr Speaker, it will assist the house if Mrs Carnell does not interrupt every five minutes.

MR SPEAKER: Continue, Mr Whitecross.

MR WHITECROSS: Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your courageous defence of the right of members of the house to speak. Mr Speaker, the Debits Tax Bill introduces a new tax and, as originally proposed, without any recognition of the fact that this imposes a new tax burden on pensioners and other disadvantaged people in our community. In the version that Mrs Carnell presented in the last sittings, she introduced a rebate system for pensioners in recognition of that effect.

Mr Speaker, our concerns with the scheme proposed by the Government relate to three different areas. The first is that it is restricted to pensioners and does not apply to other income support recipients and other disadvantaged people in our community, who, I think, have a right to expect that their needs would be taken into account just as the needs of pensioners were taken into account. Mr Speaker, the second concern is that the concession is paid in arrears. So, the recognition of the disadvantage of these people and the potential financial hardship caused by having to pay this additional tax is somewhat muted by the fact that they are expected to pay this tax and they do not get a rebate of the tax for up to 15 months after they paid the tax in the first place. Thirdly, Mr Speaker, the scheme, as proposed, is not administratively very effective. The scheme will risk a very low rate of take-up by pensioners, because they simply will not know that the scheme is available; they will not get their act together in the three-month window that the Government proposes; and they will not necessarily have suitable records to enable them to make their claims under the scheme. In our opinion, the scheme proposed by the Government fails on all three counts.

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