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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2820 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

I am reminded of a homily delivered by Dr Peter Wilenski, although I am not sure he was the original author. He said that anything you can quantify is, by definition, trivial in the matters of mankind. Given the focus by several of the members opposite on what can be quantified, their focus on minutia is an ineloquent commentary. They are trivial indeed in the way they are approaching the job. One of the things that disturb me is that there are very few issues coming out. We want to try to build some political issues around the finer points of how, when and why, as opposed to what you are doing. In estimates, that even got to the point where it boiled down to them asking, "What are you thinking?"

Mr Humphries: We needed to find out. That is why we had to ask the question.

MR QUINLAN: Yes. I think greater focus on the wider issues of the community would be more appropriate and more contributive to the government of the territory.

On the point of retrospectivity of payroll tax, this was a move put in place by the previous government. I do not think it was incumbent upon this government to implement that initiative-to keep moving payroll tax down. More important is the realisation that Mr Humphries left out of his delivery the fact that there was extensive public debate-public debate engendered, in large part, by his saying that we were not going to deliver on the commitment on payroll tax. Certainly the issue of payroll tax arose months ago. I came out and said, "We are not bound by commitments made by the government that was sacked in October." Regularly and consistently, I said, "No, we will not be committed by them."

Mr Humphries went on to say that anything which increases the take on payroll tax is bad, or wrong. One of the reasons why there will be an increase in payroll tax is the fact that we are going to bundle up in that some of the non-cash salary payments that people earn.

I will tell you what I believe is bad and wrong-people not paying the legitimate taxation of the time. What is bad and wrong is tax avoidance. Part of the take, and part of the change to payroll tax, is to eliminate tax avoidance.

It is the same with some of the changes we have made to land tax, where Mr Humphries became a little garbled. We are trying to make sure people do not abuse the system with companies or trusts owning properties, as tax avoidance devices.

Mr Humphries was focusing on investment properties. If a house is an investment property, then it will be subject to land tax. I believe that is fair-and that we should not have these devices for tax avoidance.

Mr Smyth focused a little on value for money, as if this were some new process to be applied, and applied by this government, under pressure.

Mr Corbell made telling comments in relation to the sad history in this place of business plans, and the lack of evaluation of the costs and benefits. There has been a lack of genuine evaluation of costs and benefits on a number of projects-and they have cost the ACT taxpayer dearly. For the opposition to come in here and start serving it up, saying,

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