Stamp Duty

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (15:53): There has been some suggestion in recent days that one of the potential announcements in the budget will be an announcement in relation to the removal of stamp duty on non-realty property transfers and non-quoted marketable securities. If that is to be the case, and I do not know whether it is—we will find out tomorrow—I want to put on the record the history of those particular stamp duty provisions.

When the intergovernmental agreement in relation to the GST was negotiated between the federal government and state governments in and around about 2001, for the introduction of the GST, all state and territory governments agreed in that intergovernmental agreement to remove various state taxes and charges over a period of time. A phase-in period was allowed for state and territory jurisdictions.

All of the state taxes and charges that were part of that intergovernmental agreement have been removed in South Australia with the exception of stamp duty on non-realty property transfers and on non-quoted marketable securities. The history of that is that if one goes back through it, in the 2005-06 budget the Labor government announced that the rates on those two areas would be halved from 1 July 2009 and completely abolished from 1 July 2010. If you then follow it through, in the 2008-09 Mid-Year Budget Review, post the GST, the government delayed the completion of that particular policy commitment when it said that stamp duty on the transfer of non-quotable marketable securities and non-real property transfers would be abolished from 1 July 2012. So, it was delayed by two years.

When we came to 1 July 2012, the government issued a statement 'Information Circular No:44' from Revenue SA which said that the government had previously announced that it would abolish stamp duty on non-quoted marketable securities from 1 July 2012 and on non-real property transfers from 1 July 2013, but that as part of the 2012-13 budget, '…the Government today announced that the abolition of stamp duty on'—both those areas—' will both be deferred until budget circumstances allow'. That was announced in 2012.

My understanding is that there has been some considerable pressure from the federal government to the state government indicating that this commitment had been made almost 15 years ago now on the condition that if the state government was to get the GST revenue, it had committed to removing, over a reasonable period of time, various state taxes and charges including these two particular examples of stamp duty.

If, ultimately, the state government announces this change tomorrow, it will be only as a result of pressure from the federal government to comply with an intergovernmental agreement which had been signed almost 15 years ago and which has been promised for much of the past 10 years in terms of having to be implemented. So, at some stage, the state government will have to implement those particular commitments.

The second quick point I make today is in relation to TVSP policy. As I indicated yesterday, Treasury has just issued a directive which says that, as from 1 July, agencies will have to pay for their own TVSPs for the future. This has caused considerable concern in some agencies, because considerable extra costs will now be incurred by individual agencies. As an example, within the Department of Premier and Cabinet I am told there has been an urgent call for TVSPs to be processed before 30 June. I am also told that 100 people are so fed up with what is going on in DPC at the moment that they have applied for the TVSP.

The TVSP policy requires that an individual must be given at least three weeks to consider a TVSP—it is a big issue. I am told that that particular requirement is not being implemented within DPC, and in some way DPC is going to have to look at getting around that particular requirement, because officers have been told they will have less then three weeks before 30 June to decide whether or not they want to accept a targeted separation package.