Page 59 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 15 February 2011
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For financial management, the Appropriation Bill will again be central to the legislative and financial agenda for the upcoming financial year. It will be presented in May for provision of appropriation to administrative units. Payroll tax is to be reformed with a rewrite of the territory’s existing act through adoption of nationally harmonised legislation. It is proposed to adopt the harmonised New South Wales Payroll Tax Act as a template, except for provisions that are specific to the ACT, such as rates, thresholds and some exemptions.
The current payroll tax rate of 6.85 per cent and threshold of $1.5 million will not change as a result of the new act, and exemptions that are currently available to taxpayers will continue to be available under the harmonised regime. The new Payroll Tax Act will simplify the ACT’s administration of payroll tax and at the same time reduce compliance costs and administrative burdens.
To follow up a major project that was undertaken by the Department of Treasury, a Planning and Development (Change of Use Charge Codification) Amendment Bill will codify the amount of change of use charge payable. Instead of the charge being determined by individual valuation it will be determined by reference to a codified table.
There will be a number of significant changes to progress legal reforms, address justice issues and promote community safety. Three bills will reform the law of evidence in the ACT. Since self-government, the provisions of the commonwealth Evidence Act 1995 have been directly applied in the ACT, providing most of the law of evidence for the territory. The Evidence Bill 2011 will replace the application of the commonwealth Evidence Act in the ACT with our own legislation, a move acknowledging the responsibilities of ACT self-governance.
The ACT has been a strong advocate in relation to efforts to achieve uniformity of evidence law Australia wide and will continue this commitment by independently adopting the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General’s agreed model uniform evidence law in the ACT. As the commonwealth Evidence Act largely mirrors the model law, there would be no substantive change to the existing law of evidence as it is currently applied in ACT courts. Amendments to be made by the Evidence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment Bill will establish a framework to be applied by ACT courts when a party seeks to disclose the counselling notes of a sexual offence victim in civil proceedings.
The reform of evidence law in the ACT provides also an opportunity to review the entire ACT statute book to update, consolidate, reorganise and discard redundant provisions in light of the reforms proposed. Any such changes will be implemented by the Evidence (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2011.
A Criminal Proceedings Legislation Amendment Bill will be introduced to limit the nature of offences in which elections for trial by judge alone can be made to exclude charges involving the death of a person and charges of a sexual nature, including child pornography. It will include changes to strengthen existing legislative provisions to ensure that elections for trial by judge alone cannot be made once the identity of the trial judge is known. The penalties for some sexual and child pornography-related offences will also be increased.
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