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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (23 May) . . Page.. 1561 ..
MR STANHOPE (continuing):
principle of parliamentary democracy and responsible government. To authorise the levying of a tax by way of subordinate law will be a significant diminution of the role of the Assembly.
This bill should be opposed because of its attacks on the way in which we have traditionally considered taxation legislation, and it should be opposed because of the extent to which it disempowers this Assembly and the basic role or right of members of this Assembly to determine the taxes and the imposts which a government will place on its citizens.
MR KAINE (11.21): I too have difficulty with the principle underlying this bill. As a member of the scrutiny of bills committee, I agree 100 per cent with the issues that were raised in the scrutiny of bills committee's report No 5. Our report and members speaking have outlined the historical background to the concern about executives raising taxes without review by the legislature. That is not all ancient history. As our report points out, a comment was made on that as recently as 1997 by the Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills. It is referred to in our committee's report. The Senate committee said:
... the vice to be avoided is taxation by non-primary legislation
What makes this executive so superior in intellect that it can go ahead and do what places such as the Senate of Australia advise us against doing? I have not seen any exhibition of such superior intellect that would set us above other institutions that have determined that this is an inappropriate way to go. The point has been well made by our standing committee and the government seems to be prepared to set those arguments aside without any consideration whatsoever.
To quote from our report, and I am referring here to a point made by the minister in tabling his bill:
The Committee does not consider that there is a 'gap' in the law of the Territory that needs to be filled by a new section of the Interpretation Act 1967 Rather, the point is that the Legislative Assembly should not, as a general matter, authorise a subordinate legislative authority to levy a tax.
That is the point at issue here, and that is what the Interpretation Amendment Bill would do. That is a principle that we should stand by. Our job is to hold the government accountable for the expenditure of public money. If we allow this bill to go through, we will establish a new principle in the territory that governments can levy taxes by subordinate legislation, much of which is not even subject to review by this place because it is not a disallowable instrument. That is the principle that I will not support and will oppose.
The explanatory memorandum argues that reversal of the principle is necessary in order to cope with the introduction of the GST. I repeat what the committee said:
The Committee is unable to evaluate this argument.
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