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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1522 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

Mr Speaker, our alternative scheme, we believe, is a much more effective approach. It provides the benefit up front. It provides for the benefit to be available without lots of record-keeping of how much bank account debits tax individuals have paid. Importantly, it extends the range of people to whom the benefit is available from pensioners to all disadvantaged people, including the unemployed, recipients of sickness allowance, special beneficiaries, other disadvantaged persons, and students. I think that all three of those things are important principles and ought to be supported in this place.

Mr Speaker, the Government has mounted several lines of defence against the extension along the lines that we have proposed. The first is the argument that the administrative costs of the scheme we propose would be about twice the administrative costs of the current scheme. I believe that this is an extraordinary claim, and I am disappointed to hear that people like Ms Tucker have been duped into believing the Government's claims in relation to the administrative costs of the scheme I have proposed. The scheme I have proposed should certainly not involve greater administrative costs per person than the scheme that the Government has proposed, because it actually requires a lower level of checking. I simply fail to understand how checking only that a person is in one of the eligible categories can take longer to do than checking that they are a member of the eligible category and checking that they have incurred the debit taxes. But, somehow, the Government has managed to persuade others in this place that that is the case.

Mr Speaker, the exemption scheme that we are proposing also allows for the duration of the certificate to be at the discretion of the Revenue Commissioner. For example, age pensioners could be offered a certificate which is much longer in duration than that for pensioners whose pension status is likely to change or for unemployment beneficiaries whose status is likely to change. That means that the administrative costs for a very large proportion of the people who would be eligible for this scheme might be incurred only once - forever. I cannot see how that can lead to higher administrative costs, as the Government claims. So, Mr Speaker, I do not think that that is a very substantial argument.

The second concern raised by the Government is that the costs associated with this scheme will be higher because of the greater range of people who will be able to avail themselves of the scheme. Mr Speaker, that is certainly the case. There will be more people who are able to avail themselves of the scheme, and they will be disadvantaged people. They will be low-income people, who are entitled to be advantaged by the scheme. I do not apologise at all for the fact that more disadvantaged people will be able to access the scheme under our proposal. A lot of those people are people who were advantaged by the former arrangements involving financial institutions duty, but they are people - unemployed people, students, recipients of sickness allowance - to whom the Government has chosen not to extend the arrangements under the new scheme.

So, Mr Speaker, I do not apologise for the fact that the costs will be higher, because more people will be eligible. Nor do I apologise for the fact that this will apply to people whose bank account debits tax liabilities might be less than $15, who will not be able to apply at all under the Government's scheme. Nor do I apologise for the fact that pensioners and other disadvantaged people who make more than three withdrawals a week will get a higher benefit under this scheme than they would under the Government's scheme. I do not apologise for that either, because they are using their

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