Page 2317 - Week 07 - Thursday, 17 August 2006
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There is no legal requirement to keep government legal advice secret. Indeed, there are often strong arguments for making it public. It is part of open and transparent governance. It may also expose weaknesses in the government’s position that can be identified by outside parties and rectified by the government before it becomes a messy and expensive legal action. There are some circumstances where it is appropriate to withhold government legal advices, but this is not one of those cases. The government may argue that the advice is subject to legal professional privilege, but legal professional privilege is no bar to releasing information voluntarily and it is arguable that legal professional privilege in this legal advice has been waived now that the government has disclosed the substance of that advice.
Governments also do not release legal advices when they know that the advices are wrong in law and would never be upheld by any court, but which serve a political purpose and enable them to say, “We have legal advice that supports our position.” I am sure that most Labor supporters share the Greens’ contempt for the federal government’s refusal to release their legal advice regarding the human rights compatibility of the commonwealth’s terror legislation and also the commonwealth’s legal advice that the Guantanamo Bay military commissions are compatible with international legal standards. The bill before us today is far removed from the seriousness of those acts; nonetheless, I believe that this criticism applies. For the reasons I have detailed, I cannot support this bill in its current form.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs and Minister for the Arts) (11.58), in reply: I thank members for their contributions to the debate. As members have said, the Revenue Legislation Amendment Bill amends three acts. The amendments to the Duties Act 1999 improve equity of the trustees of self-managed superannuation funds. The language in relation to payment methods in the Payroll Tax Act is modernised. The Taxation Administration Act amendment protects taxpayers’ information and clarifies the administration of the secrecy provisions.
The bill amends the Duties Act to provide a duty concession for self-managed superannuation funds when a trustee retires or a new trustee is appointed. Larger superannuation funds can structure their affairs to take advantage of an existing duty concession provided in the Duties Act when a trustee of a trust retires or a new trustee is appointed. This concession applies only if none of the trustees of the trust after the appointment of a new trustee is, or can become, a beneficiary under the trust. This concession is currently not available to self-managed superannuation funds, as commonwealth legislation requires a member or beneficiary also to be a trustee of the fund. It was never intended to charge ad valorem duty for these changes in trustees for self-managed superannuation funds while other superannuation funds qualify for the duty.
Another provision of the bill modernises the Payroll Tax Act by including wages paid into an account by electronic means as wages to which the Payroll Tax Act applies. The current provision includes, as wages, a bill of exchange, promissory note, money order or postal order, as well as payments made by other instruments. The majority of employers nowadays pay wages by means of an electronic transfer of funds to an employee’s account, so there is no doubt about what constitutes wages. This amendment clarifies that
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