Page 4230 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 26 November 2013
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MADAM SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Rattenbury. Mr Hanson, your interjection was unhelpful. Mr Rattenbury sought leave from me and he had my leave. If I thought that he was extending beyond standing order 47, I would have sat him down.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (4.46), in reply: It is an interesting afternoon. Let me start with Mr Corbell’s contribution to the debate, with the most absurd argument of the day: to assert that there was no call for documents. I am not sure what land he is living in or whether he has actually read the previous debate. Mr Rattenbury’s amendment said:
… in accordance with standing order 213A—
so it is an order, in accordance with the standing order—
calls on the Government to table, by 31 October 2013, any other analysis of the impacts that the taxation reforms implemented to date are expected to have over time.
How can you table that information, minister, in a document? It is absurd to say there was no call for documents. Either you need to get a dictionary and look up the word “document”, Mr Corbell, or perhaps you should pay more attention. You know Mr Barr is in trouble when he stands up and he goes straight to the vitriol. Three or four words into his supposed debate on the argument in his defence, it was simply vitriol. You can see the nervousness. He has got some tells, and one of his tells is when he goes straight to the slag. And where did he go? He went straight to the vitriol in this case.
Mr Barr interjecting—
MR SMYTH: You point to any slagging in the debate this morning, minister. There is none.
If we are to believe what the Treasurer has said here today, and what he has told Mr Rattenbury and what Mr Rattenbury has accepted, the entire government reform package—it is a four-word slogan as opposed to a three-word slogan, or a three-thought slogan, anyway—is based on the ACT government’s taxation review. We know this because he has now tabled an index, and the index says that the only documents that are relevant here are the government’s response to my motion, which I note the Treasurer himself claims to be the author of; appendix A to the ACT taxation review; and two documents in the 2012-13 and 2013-14 budgets.
So there are absolutely no other documents that they looked at. They got the review and they said: “Bonzer; we’re onto a winner here. We’ll do this.” There is no counter-analysis. There is no consultation. There is nothing where anything else was looked at as an option. They say: “We just got this one document and it was perfect. It was so perfect we based the taxation future of the ACT for the next 20 years on it.” If Mr Rattenbury accepts that there is nothing else, on the word of the Treasurer, then good luck to him. But I am amazed that we would even begin to believe that, on such
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