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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2070 ..
MR STANHOPE (continuing):
the scrutiny of bills committee are that this bill gives a wide enough power to modify by regulation almost the whole body of existing and possible future legislation of the territory.
Mr Speaker, my colleague has indicated that the Labor Party will support this bill, basically through force of circumstance and through the adjustments that have been made and the slightly different approach to the approach initially intended to the Interpretation Act, but it is worth recording that the Labor Party thinks that this is an unacceptable development. It is quite unacceptable that this parliament should delegate through this process power to the government, through the subordinate legislation process, to modify by regulation almost the whole body of existing and possible future legislation of the territory. It is an extremely undesirable development, and I have to commend the scrutiny of bills committee's report on both the Interpretation Amendment Bill and on this bill.
It is interesting to reflect on some thoughts of the Treasurer on this matter. When Mr Humphries introduced the Interpretation Amendment Bill on 9 March, he said:
When the collection of a fee will result in a GST liability the ACT, or a body such as ACTEW, will have to choose between passing that liability on or absorbing it. In most cases, the liability will be passed on. The extent to which this will result in fees increasing is not easy to predict. I have pointed out that it will be less than 10 per cent ... Of course, any increase in the fee that can be attributed to the GST will leave the fee open to the challenge that it is no longer a fair recompense for the service that is being provided.
But when Mr Humphries introduced the Goods and Services Tax (Temporary Transitional Provisions) Bill, this bill, on 23 May, he said:
The second substantive provision of the ... bill will enable the net effect of any GST-related increases in prices to be passed on. This will give effect to the underlying rationale of the GST legislation. This provision will allow prices set by legislation to increase for the impact of GST, without the need for legislative amendment.
It is to be noted that nothing was said on either occasion by the Treasurer about the GST component being inside the government fee or charge as described in his letter of 27 June. We were left with the impression from what he said at a departmental briefing that the GST would be tacked on, as provided for in the bill we are now debating. The Treasurer has not as yet explained why, if the GST is a cost of providing a service-to use his example, drafting a will-that cost cannot be included along with other costs, such as labour, workers compensation, stationery and rent, in calculating the price in the same way as petrol retailers include the excise in the price.
Retailers such as Woolworths and Coles are expected to work out tens of thousands of prices and change them overnight. It has not been explained to us why the fees and charges imposed by government apparently amount to the same or a greater scale of effort. I think people in the Canberra community would have expected this government to do something much better and more complete than it has done to date.
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