Page 3553 - Week 11 - Thursday, 23 October 2014
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It also noted that they needed to reduce the cumulative compliance burden, which includes employment compliance. So let us bring up the payroll tax—all the confusion that that caused. What a debacle this government has been, just in the last budget, for small businesses in the ACT.
You would remember, I am sure, Madam Deputy Speaker, that in that debate I said that we had asked, when given the briefing, “Was there any analysis done on the impact of this bill and would the subsequent changes to the payroll tax actually lead to the creation of more businesses or less businesses?” The government had done no analysis. It was simply a grab for the cash. They had worked out they could make $10 million and they took the cash without even working out whether the “genuine employer” exemption had actually fostered business in the ACT and therefore made a stronger economy—which, of course, means the government gets its share through other forms of taxation. But no; that work was not done.
The poor revenue commissioner was sent out to discuss it with all the contractors to see where it left them, and we had backflip after backflip. It was meant to start on 1 July, then it was 1 October and now it is 1 January, which I think is an admission of the abject failure of the bill. The government may well get their $10 million but they cannot tell us whether or not it leads to a loss in another part of the economy, and that makes it bad regulation.
The third thing that the Productivity Commission said was that regulatory compliance processes should be made simple, transparent and accountable. You have only to look at the lack of this in the late development fees and charges calculation. What a debacle that has been from this government. There is a two-year window. If you are in the window, you are fine; if you are on either side of the window, bad luck. We know about the big bills, the big fees and charges calculations, for all those that purchased blocks earlier, particularly when the GFC was at its height, when they could not get clients for the buildings that they had proposed to build. But the government blithely ignores that, and that is the problem.
When you look at what is hurting business—and the Productivity Commission normally does a good job with these sorts of things—this government gets a fail on all of those initiatives. On all of these counts, this government has failed. On taxation compliance, on employment compliance and regulatory compliance, this is a government that does not get the job done.
As I said before, this bill does not cut a great deal of red tape; it merely tweaks it. The problem with red tape is systemic. What Mr Barr is doing is nothing more than mistaking the trees for the woods.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (11.31): The Greens will be supporting this bill today. It is a very short and simple bill to amend a range of legislation across many different areas of government as another small step towards making life simpler for people who engage with government processes without watering down necessary requirements that exist in a range of areas that are regulated.
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