Page 514 - Week 02 - Thursday, 9 March 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
intellectual property and a statutory licence or permission under commonwealth or territory law.
Partnership interests and goods in the ACT will now only be dutiable property where they include, or are dependent on, an arrangement that includes land, a crown lease, land use entitlements, unquoted marketable securities and units in a units trust. Transfers and transactions involving partnership interests and goods will not be liable for duty on goodwill, intellectual property and statutory licences or permissions.
Currently, the duty treatment of franchises differs across jurisdictions. While New South Wales and Victoria do not assess duty on franchises, Tasmania, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia treat franchises as business assets, dutiable at conveyance rates. The ACT and Northern Territory currently assess duty on franchises under the leases chapter of the Duties Act.
In the spirit of the IGA, the government has also agreed to treat franchises as a business asset and bring forward the abolition of duty on franchises. This will harmonise their treatment across all jurisdictions, noting that the Northern Territory proposes to abolish lease duty in 2006. This bill ceases duty on franchises on 1 July 2006, except for long-term franchises—that is, longer than 30 years—where existing conveyance duty will be retained as an anti-avoidance measure.
The bill also contains anti-avoidance provisions to capture arrangements where the main purpose is to defer a transfer or transaction until after the abolition of these duties. Similarly, replacement transactions and the use of options to try to avoid duty will be captured in the duty net. These transitional arrangements will expire after five years.
I think members also know that this bill is the function of a quite acrimonious debate between the states and the federal Treasurer, and it has been, in fact, by dint of blackmail really that various states have accepted proposals to eliminate taxes that were only scheduled to be considered, not necessarily eliminated. We put forward a timetable, as have states other than New South Wales and Western Australia, to the federal Treasurer the best part of 10 months ago, and at this stage we have not even received a response. So, after Mr Costello has beaten his chest, we are yet to see how he takes on the problem he has now with New South Wales and Western Australia. Given that the treasurers council will take place at the end of this month, I await with interest to see what occurs at that council. I commend the bill to the house.
Debate (on motion by Mr Mulcahy) adjourned to the next sitting.
Standing orders—suspension
MRS BURKE (Molonglo) (10.38): I move:
That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent order of the day No 12, private members’ business, relating to childcare in the ACT, being called on forthwith.
I move this motion today not in a light way at all but in response to the action taken yesterday by the government, which prevented yesterday’s program from naturally being
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .