Page 2054 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 25 October 1989
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It makes employment agents liable for payroll tax for certain on-hired employees. I will leave the rest to you, Chief Minister, if you get the opportunity. May I indicate on behalf of the Rally that we do not have an ideological objection to payroll tax. We believe that this Bill brings on the wider debate, well aired in this community, about the advantages and alleged crippling disadvantages of payroll tax.
This is an issue that the Chief Minister will have to face in the long economic pull that is before this Territory. It is an issue for another debate. The question for the Rally is: has there been adequate consultation with the business community? If there has not been, is it not proper that the matter be deferred for some time?
Mr Duby has mentioned that this may cost $200,000. The fact of the matter is, as the Chief Minister knows, that the Treasury does not know how many people will be pulled in by these fringe benefits and other shams at discovery proceedings. Experience in Victoria and New South Wales has shown, I believe, that this may bring in about $200,000 a month. The question as to whether in the next month the Treasury can identify such schemes and thereby be able to secure the funds is another issue that has to do with administration that I am not confident to comment upon. I do not think that we should readily assume that Mr Duby's assertions that we lose $200,000 automatically are necessarily correct, and I say that with all due respect to Mr Duby.
I had in my office this morning some leaders of the business community - CARD, the Master Builders, BOMA and the Australian Small Business Association - all claiming very strongly that they had not had sufficient consultation. Now, putting aside the ideological issues to do with this debate that obviously are behind much of what they say, the question for the Rally is: do we say, "Right, you have got a certain period to come up with the evidence of the unintended results that are alleged in the area of subcontracting businesses, particularly in the ACT"? It is said that this might have very serious consequences in the subcontracting area. The Rally, being sensitive about issues of consultation these days, takes the view that we should.
Mr Whalan: Do you apply the gag to those consultations? Do you let Michael be consulted?
MR COLLAERY: The rest of the Rally has never applied the gag in this chamber. The Deputy Chief Minister should listen to what I am saying. I am not canning his Act at all, the Act of his Government, this Act that allegedly attacks business. We have already heard a very strong attack on the consulting business by the Deputy Chief Minister this morning. Let us have this period within which we can hear what these leaders of business allege they can establish within the period. I take for the Rally
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