Statutes Amendment and Repeal (Budget 2015) Bill

Committee Stage

In committee (resumed on motion).

Clause 31.

Mr WILLIAMS: I thank the minister, but it does not solve the problem that arises in my mind and I seriously question why we bother. In 1990, the parliament passed a series of amendments to the Stamp Duties Act and certain questions were asked in the parliament of the minister. I think the parliament should be able to expect that the advice that it is given is given in good faith and that when the public sector is administering the law of the state, that it is conscious of what the parliament has decreed by setting out in the law. If there is any ambiguity, I would suspect that those charged with administering the laws of the state in the Public Service would be cognisant of the intent of the parliament.

I think this afternoon I have made it very clear to the house what the intent of the parliament was. I even pointed out the ill that was sought to be cured by the measure that the parliament took back in 1975 and then amended in 1990, and in doing so repeated the ill that had confronted the administration of the law and the measures taken to cure that ill.

Let me remind the house that the ill was that apparently people undertaking transactions which were subject to stamp duty were circumventing their full obligation by breaking up the contracts of sale into smaller parcels, therefore attracting a lower rate of stamp duty. It was never the intent of the parliament to do other than that. Indeed, the minister of the day expressed that that was the intent of the parliament simply to correct that ill and not to impose a further impost on genuine at arms-length transactions. I will explain to the house why I think that what has transpired here is wrong in every sense.

In the matter that was brought to my attention by my constituent he bought from three separate vendors three separate properties. He paid the purchase price on three relatively small properties. Anybody who knows anything about real estate, whether it be commercial real estate or broadacre farming—certainly this applies in broadacre farming—a small property will always attract a better price per unit area than a much larger property of the same quality of land.

Let me say that in my district in the Lower South-East high-quality farming land in a block of 100 acres will always attract a higher price than a block of 1,000 acres, all other things being equal apart from the size, simply because it is easier for more people to be interested, the market is bigger, and more people will have the ability to buy that 100 acres and the price will be bid up to a higher level.

This is important, because in the case of my constituent who bought three adjoining properties from three different vendors, if he bought them as one property, the price per acre would probably have been less, and the amount of stamp duty payable would have been less. What we have here is that the Commissioner of Stamps and/or some other administrator—and it might even have been an earlier minister of the Crown, I don't know, and I will come to that question in a minute, minister—has not only defied the will of the parliament, in my opinion, but made a serious error in applying the law.

In the case of my constituent, if it was one transaction—if the three separate vendors had conspired to sell their properties together to one purchaser—I would guarantee, and any valuer in the state worth his salt would also back up the argument, that the price per acre would have been less, and the overall value of the property would have been less and therefore the stamp duty payable on the transaction would have been less.

I see this as a very serious matter, and I will explain why. Back in 1990, when the bill was before the house, the deputy leader of the opposition, on behalf of the opposition, put this very case to the minister of the day. The minister of the day said, 'No, you are wrong; that has never been the way this has been interpreted. That is not our intention, and it won't happen in the future.' The parliament moved on with that advice.

Today, the minister has given me some other advice. His advice is that, 10 years on from when the parliament received that initial advice, crown law has given the government, or the Commissioner of Stamps, or somebody, contrary advice. Whose advice should the parliament believe? If I come in here representing my constituents and arguing a point on how we should frame a piece of law, and I am assured of the government's intention and told why the law is framed as it is and I put up my hand and vote for it, what is the point of any of us being here if a few years later somebody says, 'No, no, no, that is not what the law says, we will interpret it completely differently'?

The CHAIR: Is this the question?

Mr WILLIAMS: I have several questions for the minister. One is: who sought the crown law advice in the year 2000 from which a different interpretation has been given? Who sought that crown law advice? That is the first question. The second question is: will the minister tell me whether the word of a minister of a Labor government is worth anything?

The CHAIR: I do not think that is actually relevant to this, is it?

Mr WILLIAMS: Madam Chair, one of the roles I have as a member of this parliament is to scrutinise legislation.

The CHAIR: No-one wants to impinge on that right at all, but we are just a bit concerned about how we can satisfy your question.

Mr WILLIAMS: I am very concerned about it too. I have spent 18 years in this place—

The CHAIR: I have been with you every day.

Mr WILLIAMS: —and at the moment I am questioning—

The CHAIR: Every single day, I have been with you.

Mr WILLIAMS: —what the hell are we doing.

The CHAIR: Just getting back to the actual bill, your question is: who asked for the advice?

Mr WILLIAMS: Yes.

The CHAIR: I am not sure we can help with that—

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

The CHAIR: You can help with that. What is your next bit?

Mr WILLIAMS: My next question is: as a member of this place can I take the word of the minister who is giving the advice?

The CHAIR: And your next bit?

Mr WILLIAMS: The minister earlier in the day invited me, if I was unhappy with his explanation, to move an amendment to the act, and I am very tempted to do that, and so my third question to the minister is: will he support such an amendment?

The CHAIR: It depends what it is, of course, doesn't it?

Mr WILLIAMS: Will he support me in doing that and thereby support his predecessor?

The CHAIR: Let us get to the first two parts of your question. Minister, bearing in mind there are 11 minutes to go, I am sure you do not want this to drag on, do you?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Who do you trust? Independent candidate Mitch Williams, who then goes off and joins the Liberal Party?

Mr Williams: No, I just want a straight answer.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: So did your constituents when you betrayed them and joined the Liberal Party after being elected as an Independent. Fiercely independent to the bitter end, until you joined the Liberal Party. Anyway, RevenueSA are the ones who first sought the advice to clarify the operation of the provisions.

Point 2: yes, you can trust Labor ministers because they are more honest, open and transparent than Liberal ministers. That has been my experience. Thirdly, no: I do not know what your amendment is so I do not know if I can support it or otherwise—although, until you launched into your tirade about how trustworthy I was or otherwise, I had a bit of sympathy for you. How do you think that is going for you now?

The CHAIR: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: So, the answers to all those are: RevenueSA first sought the opinion; yes, you can trust Labor ministers and you can trust all members of this parliament, because I think we all speak the truth, especially in this place, and I do not think you have any evidence to say that any minister deliberately misled anyone in this place about what their intent was.

Secondly, I would have to see your amendments before I could support them but I think you are better off writing to me about the inconsistency and the way this has been applied in relation to your constituent and ask the government to consider a remedy for that, rather than getting up and calling us all a pack of liars.

The CHAIR: Can we just think about clause 31? We have had lots of questions.

Mr WILLIAMS: Absolutely. I just need to respond to that. I have not called anybody a liar.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: 'Can you trust a Labor minister?'

The CHAIR: Order, gentlemen! Let us try to just concentrate on clause 31.

Mr WILLIAMS: Absolutely. I am absolutely certain that Frank Blevins told the house what he told the house in 1990 in absolute good faith. My question is: does the current Labor government stand by the position that he put to the house? The reason I ask that is that if I can get an assurance that the Labor Party stands by what Frank Blevins told the house, I will certainly bring an amendment to the house. That is why I asked the question. Madam Chair, I thank the minister for what he has just said. I apologise to anybody if I have offended anybody—

The CHAIR: No-one is offended.

Mr WILLIAMS: —but I regard this as a very serious matter. I have spent a fair bit of my life in this place and I have argued consistently that this house is sovereign and the decisions we come to in this house I think should be sacrosanct.

The CHAIR: So the question is: do we stand by what the then minister said?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I am not going to be held responsible for what was said in previous parliaments when I was 19 years old.

The CHAIR: Clause 31 as printed?

Mr GRIFFITHS: Can I ask a question? It is very valid. It relates to the response given by the Treasurer to the member for MacKillop's first question in this committee where he used the terms 'essential unity' and 'intended uses'. That, I believe, came from the legal interpretation provided in 2000, but it just seems to me it sets up where someone has to determine within the bureaucracy that the intention of the purchaser has to be provided at the time of the sale being contemplated, when that may change. That is my concern in the discussion I had with the member for MacKillop. It sets a precedent that you have to say at the start when you buy the place, or places, what your intention is to do with it and that may never occur. That is where I think the flaw is.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: What we ask is for people in good faith to lodge with the department what their intentions are and we do a prima facie investigation. In my experience, despite what people say about the Department of Treasury and Finance, they are people of goodwill who are not seeking to relieve people of their hard-earned money unfairly, and they interpret the act on the basis of independent crown law advice. I am also a local member of parliament and I also get frustrated with decisions that are made but we have to, in this system, accept the independent, fearless advice we get from our lawyers and from our public servants. We may not like the outcomes of the laws that we pass if we have drafted them incorrectly.

I take the point the member for MacKillop said earlier. I walk in here, hear a minister say, 'This is the intent,' and I vote for it and it turns out to be different. We are all adults. We are required to read legislation that we are voting on. If we have read that legislation and we have not asked the appropriate questions about whether or not it does satisfy the intent, well quite frankly, we have voted for legislation that does not satisfy the intent and we are just as guilty as the people who have drafted it.

Rather than pour scorn on people who cannot defend themselves, I think the solution, member for MacKillop, is to write to me. I will have a look at it. You have done yourself a lot of favours by calling us dishonest. I will look at it over the next few months, but public servants are only implementing this in the way that they are advised; they are not trying to rewrite laws.

Clause passed.

Clauses 32 to 60 passed.

Title passed.

Bill reported without amendment.

Third Reading

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Treasurer, Minister for Finance, Minister for State Development, Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy, Minister for Small Business) (18:56): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.