Page 2486 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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added as part of these amendments. We have section 276, chargeable variation. This is what is described as a chargeable variation.
We have a page and a half of notes that tell us what is a chargeable variation in order to make this simple. In order to make this simple, as Ms Hunter claimed, we are going to have a page and a half on one clause dealing with what is a chargeable variation. It goes on and on:
… if a development application relates to the chargeable variation of only 1 residential lease—a variation to increase the number of dwellings permitted on the land under the lease; …
It goes on and on and on and on. This is the simplicity of these amendments which are being jammed through together in the dead of night after two years of process. After two years of process we get 16 pages.
Let us have a look at them. Proposed new section 276D deals with lease variation charges and chargeable variations. We have got another page to describe what that is. Let us get to the nub of where we are going to see some problems with these amendments—where these amendments, far from making it better, will take a bad piece of legislation and make it worse.
Let us have a look at amendment 14. It proposes to omit section 278 and to substitute it with a new section. It goes through what is proposed. We are going to allow the Treasurer effectively to do whatever the Treasurer likes. I think that on no less than 13 occasions this one particular amendment gives the power for the Treasurer to alter any remission. It does this in no less than 13 different places.
We just have to look at it. The minister will be able to determine all sorts of things. The minister will be able to determine a requirement for energy efficiency. The Treasurer may determine an amount to be remitted for a lease variation charge for a chargeable variation and when the amount must be remitted. It goes on. The minister will be able to determine the zone for the subsections. The minister is being given the power to do whatever the minister likes in this legislation.
This goes to the heart of how badly this has been drafted, Madam Deputy Speaker. Far from providing clarity, this provides more complexity and less certainty, but certainly it provides for a hell of a lot more tax. That is the one thing, that is the thing that—(Time expired.)
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (8.49): They say about making legislation and making sausages that they are things that should not be seen by the public. What we have got here today is the Greens-Labor version of legislative sausage making, which is a pretty unappealing thing. And because we are moving the thing as a whole, we do not get to see whether we are getting bits of offal, bits of tofu or what—whether it is beef, pork or lamb.
Mr Barr: Mrs Dunne cracked a funny.
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