Page 3542 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 20 November 2007
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minister’s office and also the speedy response that they provided this morning when we had some outstanding questions on this particular legislative measure which they were able to quickly deal with this morning before the Assembly came into session.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (10.54): I too will be supporting this bill. I just want to start by thanking the officials for the explanatory statement which came with this bill. It is always good when explanatory statements achieve their purpose and provide the members and our staff with assistance in interpretation. People will be aware that this is an issue that I harp on about a bit and that the scrutiny of bills committee talks about quite a lot. This is an exemplary explanatory statement and I congratulate the legislative drafting unit and the government for ensuring that they up the act on these very important documents.
It is no surprise that I usually express the view that laws imposing monetary penalties, duties, charges and taxes should, wherever possible, be used as both carrots and sticks to encourage environmentally and socially responsible behaviours. I do think there is a role for territory taxes. I believe that in our jurisdiction where we have very few ways of raising revenue—and I am sure that we at times wish to have less dependence upon federal government funding—we will always need taxes. But I do believe that they can perform policy functions as well.
In relation to this bill, perhaps the duty on long-term leases should be able to be deferred, similarly to the duties provision of part 2.6A, if the transferees met some set criteria. Such criteria could include committing to lodging an environmental covenant on their land, for instance, if it is a rural property, to rehabilitate and preserve habitat or to install a certain amount of photovoltaic geothermal or thermal mass technologies. This is probably not the bill to achieve these effects, but I hope that the government and the public service will look harder at future revenue bills to see if we can work such mechanisms into them.
It is good that this bill takes a proactive approach in clarifying the scope of the remaining duties obligations, and this is particularly appropriate in terms of the amendments to section 10 (1) clarifying what duties apply to new leases granted on surrender of a lease and extension of an existing lease to the original lessee. Similarly, with new sections 17 (6A) and 17 (6B), while it could be argued that provisions that purport to impose similar duties twice on the same transaction are unnecessary, it could take many thousands of dollars and wasted public resources to prove that that is the case. Of course we do not want to be responsible for creating a lawyer feeding frenzy by passing unnecessarily ambiguous legislation. This bill is commendable in taking a cautious approach by clarifying areas that could otherwise lead to wasteful legal argument in the future. Consequently the bill has my support.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Minister for the Environment, Water and Climate Change, Minister for the Arts) (10.57), in reply: As previous speakers have indicated, the Duties Amendment Bill 2007 amends the Duties Act 1999 to reinforce existing anti-avoidance measures where they relate to business or commercial leases in the territory. The bill has two measures. Firstly, it provides greater certainty regarding long-term leases and, secondly, it strengthens the anti-avoidance provisions relating to the expiry of chapter 5 of the Duties Act.
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