Land Tax

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (14:35): My question is to the Treasurer. Why did the Treasurer announce a new policy of land tax aggregation and publish revenue estimates in last month's budget without having done any modelling on the impact of this policy?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (14:35): Well, that's just untrue. Treasury did estimates and modelling in relation to the—

The Hon. K.J. Maher: Estimates and modelling, or estimates or modelling?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: Both estimates and modelling.

The Hon. K.J. Maher: That is not what you said before.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: You can characterise it as you will. Treasury have looked at the proposals, as they did for the former Labor government's state tax reform proposal, and in 2015 Treasury estimated that the aggregation provision changes would collect $30 million. Treasury's estimates in relation to this are $40 million. As I said this morning, if you want to characterise Treasury estimates as modelling, then it is indeed modelling.

The Hon. K.J. Maher: So estimates are modelling?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS: Well, exactly. What else are they? What else are estimates? Estimates are modelling. They are one and the same. It would only be the Leader of the Opposition who couldn't understand that. I understand he has a little bit of a legal background but not much of an economics and finance background. Let me explain it to you in simple language: the Treasury did estimates and you can refer to that as modelling or estimating and modelling. They did all of the above. They did it for the former Labor government and they did it for the current government.