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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (28 June) . . Page.. 2150 ..
MR OSBORNE
: I have a supplementary question. I will just read you a letter that I received, just for your information. It says:Paul, it's many months since you got the legislation on temperature correction on petrol passed. Nothing has happened in all that time. No corrections are taking place, even though it is now the law. The oil company reps are saying to service station owners that it will never happen as there's not any measuring equipment available. Read the attached advertisement, which is from the magazine "Service Station and Convenience Store News" recent issue. It makes it very clear that there is suitable equipment available to make your legislation easily workable Why the delays?
I do not expect an answer to that, but I look forward to you getting back to me after consultation with your department.
MR HUMPHRIES
: I assume that is a letter from a service station operator.Mr Osborne
: Yes.MR HUMPHRIES
: It is. I am certainly interested in looking at those claims, Mr Speaker. I think it is most concerning if the legislation, having been passed, is not being observed in the industry. I imagine that, because most people who sell petrol in this town are supplied by a limited number of distributors, procedures would have been put in place following the legislation that covered all of those distributors. If that is not the case, the government certainly would view that matter with very considerable concern. I undertake to follow up that matter and report to the Assembly as soon as possible.MS TUCKER
: My question is to Mr Smyth, the Minister for Urban Services, and is in regard to public housing rental rebates and the new family tax benefit that will come into effect on 1 July. Under the new package, families can receive the benefit through the tax system or directly from the family assistance office. In the case of a single parent family with one child between five and 13 years and an income of $35,000, the fortnightly family benefit would be $107.63. If the family took the tax cut and lived in ACT public housing, the rent rebate would be assessed against their gross income. In this case it would be $8,750. If the same family received the benefit directly from the family assistance office, the rent rebate would be assessed on that income plus 10 per cent of the family tax benefit; in effect, a tax increase of $3.80 a fortnight. Obviously a person needs to be cluey enough to claim the benefit through the tax system in order to avoid this marginal tax.While many public housing tenants will not pay enough tax to be entitled to family tax benefit, it will be by no means all of them. I am interested to know whether you could advise us as to what notice, if any, has been given to public housing tenants of the two options here and of this tax increase. I would like to know how many tenants would be likely to be affected by it and how much additional revenue that would give ACT Housing if they actually accepted the benefit rather than the tax cut.
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