Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1532 ..

MR SPEAKER: Mr Whitecross, are you addressing me?

MR WHITECROSS: Yes, I am, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: You might like to face me.

MR WHITECROSS: Mr Speaker, if you listen carefully, you will hear what I am saying. If the mood takes Mrs Carnell, she can find $300,000 for a futsal slab on the lakeshore; so, I am sure that she can find $280,000 to assist the most disadvantaged people in our community, if she wants to. Mr Speaker, I would not be surprised, quite frankly, if there is $280,000 loose just in this debits tax alone; but we will have to wait and see. Mr Speaker, quite simply, the approach of extending the rebate to disadvantaged persons - as proposed by Labor and as picked up by the Greens - I think is a good approach. I commend Ms Tucker for adopting it in relation to the rebate scheme. There is no reason for us not to do it. The administration of it is quite manageable.

Mrs Carnell said in her speech that the fact that people would move in and out of eligibility would create administrative worries for the Revenue Office in administering this. Indeed, there are additional administrative things associated with that. But, Mr Speaker, what Mrs Carnell did not say was that it is a self-assessment system. What Mrs Carnell did not say was that she is going to accept a statutory declaration from people, basically saying, "This is my liability", and they are going to say, "Fair enough. Here is the cheque", and then they are going to check every 10, every 50 or every 100 to see whether people told the truth. That is how they plan to administer the system. Mr Speaker, what that means is that it is the disadvantaged person applying who is going to have to do the work to establish their eligibility and how much bank accounts debits tax they have paid, not the Government and not the officials. They will have to do it for a small proportion of people that they choose to audit.

Mr Speaker, I think it is a perfectly reasonable approach that Ms Tucker has proposed. It is consistent with the objectives that Labor was trying to achieve. I think the hoary old chestnuts, about administrative difficulties and where the money is going to come from, that Mrs Carnell is continuing to run simply do not stand up in this case. It is a small amount of money involved. The administrative difficulties are far from insurmountable. Mr Speaker, I think that it would be more appropriate for her to show her willingness to concede the disadvantage that these people experience, by extending the concessions to the full range of disadvantaged people. Otherwise, what she is going to find is that she is creating anomalies; that there are some disadvantaged people, like students, who will miss out on the concession, while other disadvantaged people, like the long-term unemployed, will get it; that some people, like special beneficiaries or people who have been in and out of employment but are not long-term unemployed or people on sickness allowance who are also disadvantaged, will not get this benefit, while one particular disadvantaged group, which she has plucked out of the air, will get it.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .