Page 1334 - Week 04 - Thursday, 10 April 2008
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at the beginning of this sitting week that this bill needed to be dealt with this week. I paid particular attention, and I checked with the manager of opposition business as to whether this was raised in the government business meeting as a bill that would have some urgency. In fact, at the government business meeting a bill, unnamed, was foreshadowed as being introduced by leave on Tuesday.
The manager of government business introduced the bill on Tuesday in the absence of the Chief Minister, who was attending a funeral. At no stage did he say or in any way intimate that this was a matter that needed to be dealt with this week. It was only late yesterday afternoon when the revised program from the manager of government business came around that it became clear—although I had a suspicion—that this was going to be something that would be brought on today. It was going to be brought on today, but at no stage before the time that I rang the Chief Minister’s office this morning was there any offer for a briefing or an explanation or, “Mrs Dunne, we have got this problem, can we come and talk you through it because we would like to fix it up this week.”
I am very reluctant to support this bill and support its passage today simply because the government, as Mr Hargreaves likes to say, cannot get with the plan. First of all, through negligence, they overlooked the fact that there was no fee determination for a whole month and in some cases have collected revenues. In other cases they have not actually been game to collect revenues because it would be illegal to do so. When they discovered this some time earlier this year—it was actually uncertain from the briefing that I acquired this morning when it became clear—they faffed around—that is the word of the week—yet again on this. We have had the whole process where we have a minister who has a non-existent fee determination and he wants us to validate fee determinations under the Water Resources Act.
It is important to note that, again, these are fees that relate to the water abstraction charge which, as members will know, is a charge of some considerable contention in the first place. Now we actually have the situation where it seems that the licence fees, if they had been collected between 1 July 2007 and 30 July 2007, would have been invalid. It does seem that it is the case that a number of people who have bores have not had their licence fee collected for that period because of the lack of the determination, because to do so would be illegal.
I would like to dwell on yet again and draw the attention of the house to the concerns that the opposition has about the validity of the water abstraction charge. I put it in the context of the fact that I have not said that the water abstraction charge is wrong. I have not said at any stage that the water abstraction charge should be repealed. I have only said that I am concerned that the government’s administration of the water abstraction charge is not in accordance with the law. If the government uses the water abstraction charge for any means other than to put towards water infrastructure and maintaining and expanding our water infrastructure, it may be construed as an excise and, therefore, be considered as a tax illegal for a state or territory to levy.
This matter is a current matter of litigation between the ACT and the Queanbeyan City Council, which has had concerns on this matter. I am not the only person who has concerns on this matter, and those concerns have been sufficiently large and
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