Emergency Services Levy

Dr McFETRIDGE (Morphett) (15:03): My question is to the Minister for Emergency Services. Is the government proceeding with making farm firefighting units exempt from the ESL?

Mr Goldsworthy interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Kavel has been on the ran-tan all day. He will cease interjecting. Treasurer.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Treasurer, Minister for Finance, Minister for State Development, Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy, Minister for Small Business) (15:04): We do have concessions in place for people who have their own vehicles which are used in response to fires, and we do charge a fixed ESL levy, I am advised, on the vehicle registrations. I will get a more detailed answer for the member.

I point out that the ESL was a levy introduced by the former Liberal government and it was introduced for very good reasons at the time. It was introduced to appropriately fund, train and equip communities to be able to fight fires because we all know that we cannot have standing fire units in place to fight fires in some regional communities.

We do offer discounts to people who live in regional communities. For example, people living in certain townships receive a 20 per cent discount, further out from that you receive a 50 per cent discount, and if you are not in an incorporated area at all you receive a 90 per cent discount. We do offer incentives.

The overwhelming point about the emergency services levy is that this is not money that I can take and use for anything else. This is money that is used to fund our emergency services. I understand the member for Morphett has a keen interest in this because he is a dedicated CFS volunteer. I do not for a moment think that he is asking these questions for a political motive. I think he is asking out of genuine concern for those CFS volunteers. I will put this out to the member for Morphett—every time we offer a remission, we have to use our other source taxation to subsidise those remissions, and that means taking money out of the hands of hardworking South Australians through business taxation. That means small businesses—mums and dads out there trying to get ahead—cannot—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It is either cutting expenditure in health and education or increasing taxes. There is no magic pudding. Remissions being reintroduced will cost the budget in excess of $90 million and we will have to take that from our own source revenues, which will mean that we cannot cut taxes or we cannot spend money on health and education. What I am saying to the member is that we are doing all we can to make sure that these farm units have the equipment that they need and that we can help them when they do respond on our behalf.

The ESL is a levy that was born out of a necessity which was understood by the former Olsen government. It introduced by your former treasurer, Mr Lucas, and Mr Griffin, the former attorney-general. These are the people who argued for it. I think it is a bit rich now for members of the opposition to be saying it is a bad tax. It was their tax; they introduced it.