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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (23 May) . . Page.. 1563 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

Of course the opposition does not like the GST, but other people do not have the same difficulty as we have. The implications of it are quite serious. Really, what needs to happen is that we need to be given an opportunity to debate in this chamber its implications in law and not have to go searching through the reams of subordinate legislation to try to find out.

Mr Stanhope talked about the difference between a tax and a levy-a levy being a charge which is directly related to the service that we receive and a tax being that there is no relationship. I would argue that the emergency services levy was a tax as $1 million of the $10 million recovered went to emergency services and the other $9 million went to fill the so-called black hole. At least the emergency services levy was debated in this chamber as part of the budget process. It was not hidden away in subordinate legislation and we had to find it if we were good enough. The biggest concern that I have is to ensure that we be notified automatically of it.

Mr Kaine talked about the implications of that sort of approach in national scheme legislation, touching on it very lightly. Mr Speaker, the GST is something which has been signed off across the country. My difficulty-the GST aside-is that if the subordinate laws are the result of something signed off amongst the states and the Commonwealth, either bilaterally or multilaterally, they are required to be subject to the administration of the interstate agreements act and this government has an appalling record of compliance with that.

Mr Humphries: That is not true.

MR HARGREAVES: It is true, Mr Speaker. The minister is saying across the chamber that it is not true. I will acknowledge this much: there are three components of the administration of the interstate agreements act. One is that individual members be given notice of something being signed prior to its signing. I acknowledge that that often happens. I am quite happy to say that it often happens. There is a requirement that the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety be given advice of all of them. That just has not happened.

To say that the act has been complied with is just abject nonsense. The minister can check as much and as often as he likes, but he will find that that is so. Mr Speaker, as you would know, I have sent you a letter on that and I await your reply at your leisure. I have no intention here of asking you to do it more speedily. The relevant standing committees are supposed to be told as well before something is signed off. They have not been, either. I would ask members of, say, the urban services committee to consider the last time they received correspondence from a minister advising that the government intended to sign off on a piece of legislation.

The national scheme legislation most recently talked about was the road rules. We did not have a problem with the bulk of the road rules, but the fact is that the interstate agreements act required the minister to write to the Standing Committee on Planning and Urban Services and tell it that he was going to sign off on them before doing so, but he did not do that. We have here, in my view, a number of question marks hanging over the government's head in terms of its use of subordinate legislation. I do not have the confidence that significant subordinate legislation would surface within sufficient time and in sufficient detail for us to debate it in this chamber through a disallowance motion.

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