Page 1663 - Week 05 - Thursday, 11 May 2006

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MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation and Minister for Industrial Relations) (11.24), in reply: I will be very brief. I thank members for their support for this minor amendment which will remove uncertainty and ensure that stakeholders do have sufficient time to put in place all the necessary arrangements to support the introduction of this asbestos management regime.

Bill agreed to in principle.

Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.

Bill agreed to.

Adjournment

Motion by (Mr Corbell) proposed:

That the Assembly do now adjourn.

Taxation

MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (11.24): Mr Speaker, I want to explain a matter that has become evident through inquiry of mine late today. It relates to data on the levels of taxation per head in each of the states and territories which I have referred to in the Assembly and which obviously caused great excitement to the Treasurer today.

The data provided to me by a normally reliable external economic source showed that the ACT was close to New South Wales in the amount of taxation per head applying. I accepted those data in good faith and presented them to the Assembly similarly in good faith. Today I made inquiries about the detail of the data provided to me and in the event have determined that, whereas the data presented by the Australian Bureau of Statistics included both state and local government taxes, the data which had been provided to me and which was the basis of my remarks referred only to state taxation and did not include local government taxation.

In the ACT, of course, local government and state functions are counted together for statistical purposes, whereas for New South Wales local government taxation was not counted in the data that was provided to me. I want to assure the Assembly that I accepted that data in good faith and regret unintentionally presenting information to the Assembly which I now know was incorrect. I withdraw my earlier comment in relation to that aspect of the tax level as it was based on incorrect data and ask members to accept my apology.

Public Education Day

MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation and Minister for Industrial Relations) (11.26): Briefly, I wish to bring to members’ attention that Public Education Day will be held next week. In fact, one of the highlights of the week will be Back to School Day on Tuesday, 16 May. Back


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