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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1525 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Mr Speaker, I was delighted that Mrs Carnell came to some compromise over those proposed amendments. I see further amendments put up by the Greens. The reality is that I have my hands tied, in the same way as I had my hands tied in dealing with the Labor Government. When it comes to matters of taxation, when it comes to matters of budget Bills, even where I think that there is a much fairer system than that proposed by the Government, I am tied to allowing the Government to govern.

It seems to me, Mr Speaker, that sometimes I can put some pressure on governments for change. Indeed, that is what I did by going to Mrs Carnell and asking her not only to look much more carefully and much more seriously at the amendments that Mr Whitecross had put up but also to say what is the principle behind those amendments; what is it that he is trying to achieve. The answer to that is fairly simple. What he is trying to achieve is a fairer outcome for poorer people. That compromise was reached with the effort of Mr Whitecross and Ms Tucker in a quite long round table discussion and with a series of negotiations on this issue that have been going on for some weeks between all members.

That having been said, Mr Speaker, I feel that I am left in the position that I have no choice but to support the Government's legislation. It is part of the problem, as I see it, of being on the crossbenches with a minority government when it comes to budget Bills. I am very pleased that some compromise was reached and the matters were extended by Mrs Carnell. I do not know what the outcome of the vote today is going to be; but, much as I would like to see further changes made to this legislation, I feel that, if we are going to have here a system where a government can govern and we still allow the primacy of parliament, we have to have enough people who form a majority who are going to say - whether Labor is in or whether the Liberals are in - "You are the Government. You have your budget Bills", and that is the final crunch.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (4.41): Mr Speaker, the amendments to this Bill that Mr Whitecross has put forward really do come at a considerable revenue loss to the ACT and would add significantly to the costs of administering the legislation. Further, the confusion caused by the broad definition of disadvantaged persons would render decision-making less certain and would increase compliance complexity for the taxpayers and for the industry. The Government's Bill provides a debits tax rebate scheme for a well-defined group of beneficiaries.

As Mr Moore said, in our round table discussion, as I think is appropriate, the Government was willing to give a bit; that is, we have expanded the classes of people who would get concessions to include the long-term unemployed. They are people who have been unemployed for longer than 12 months. The Government amendments will extend the rebate to long-term unemployed persons in the ACT, because both classes of beneficiaries that we are talking about, pensioners and long-term unemployed people - we hope that all the long-term unemployed people will get back to work, of course - will not tend to move in and out of the system regularly, as many other people would. That means that we have a system that we are able to administer under the sort of administrative expenditure that we have in the Act.

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