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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
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Bills

Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill

Referred to Select Committee

Debate resumed.

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (19:34): I am so glad that has all been sorted out. Mother is pleased. We are talking at the moment about the contingency motion I have brought to the house, which is to refer the Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill 2019 to a select committee. I put it to the house and to the members here that this is the only sensible way forward with a bill we have all heard a lot of debate about this week here in the house and also in our electorates for the past three weeks.

I have listened to everybody's contribution and, sadly, I have to tell you that it has not been a big item in Florey. Unless someone can show me where a lot of Florey residents have attended any of these sessions, I am at a loss to see how we can have so much disquiet and misunderstanding in the community. We are working from a certain number of premises, is that land tax needs to be reviewed and sorted out in an effort to make South Australia competitive and to raise our hope of having a prosperous economy.

As I said in my four-minute contribution last evening—I know, my brevity was good—the devil is in the detail. If no-one understands it, then we have a clear problem. I do not want to be part of a parliament that has a 'crash through or crash' sort of mentality. That is last century's model of parliament. At the last federal election, we saw a franking dividends explanation that went down very, very poorly—I might say this is another area that may have been in need of reform. We cannot keep doing these things. It is land tax today, but unfortunately it is going to be every other issue we come across, unless we start acting as responsible parliamentarians and legislators.

Not to cast aspersions on anybody, as we all come in here with the best of intentions, but as I look at parliaments around the world I see how they get themselves into trouble by perhaps not using their best possible means and methods to make sure the people come with them. The people expect us to do our job, and I do not see how, with the bill we have before us—without even yet going into committee, we all know the numbers in this house and that the action will be in the Legislative Council—it is going to be any good if we send the bill upstairs to a place when, again, no-one truly understands what is actually happening.

We have heard from the Treasurer, who said everyone is going to be much better off. I cannot see how that is going to be the case if everyone is so distressed. If there is money to be collected, clearly somebody is going to have to pay something different above and beyond what they are paying at the moment. It is definitely going to cause those people some distress. It is going to cause my constituents distress if rents go up and if doctors stop bulk billing.

These are not threats people have made: these are statements of fact. They are already putting in place mechanisms within their businesses to make these things happen. People have sold property and moved interstate with their capital—I am not making this up—and I do not think anyone here thinks that has not been the case in some instances. If all these people are such bad businesspeople that they have not understood this business model, then something has gone wrong with the way we are conveying what we are doing.

That is why I suggest to members. While we all might sneer and say, 'Oh, no, two years of our lives wasted,' we do not have to have a select committee that long. If parliament cannot put together a select committee, commission expert information and reports, make sure we are hearing the right information and make the right comparisons, it is going to be a race to the bottom as each state tries to outbid the other, and South Australia is not going to win something like that. Let's take a pause, take deep breath and make sure this goes to a committee that does the right reporting, does get the right information and does listen to the witnesses and advice that it receives.

The major problem for me, and no doubt for a lot of people in the community, as well as members, has been the lack of modelling. We just cannot take a bill on good faith. We are just not going to do it. That is bad legislation. Someone said a bit earlier it does not pass the pub test. I have news for everybody: there is a supermarket test as well and it is not doing too well in the supermarkets of South Australia and that is without referring to fat women who sing at the end of a show, which I never want to hear the Premier say again—ever. It was so disrespectful, so last century and so beneath him. I could not imagine that he would say it more than once this week, but he has.

I want to uphold the integrity of this parliament, make people have faith in what we do as members of parliament, restore some dignity to the process of parliament and democracy within this place and make sure we actually talk about the select committee and its process and where we might have gone wrong in introducing this bill in, let's face it, a method that has not gone over well with the public. So let's take a bit of a break, move back and do the select committee on it.

I am not going to be happy supporting a bill that no-one actually likes, and I do not think that any of us will sleep any better at night knowing we have blocked something that may have had some merit that we have not explored properly. I beg the parliament and I beg the government to think twice. They might have the numbers here, but they are going to have a very ugly scene next sitting week in the upper house. Do not put the public of South Australia through this.

It is land tax today. Do not think you are going to do this to health and every other issue for government because I know you are going to do some terrible things to health in the next few months and I am not going to settle for that either. You have already attacked things like Service SA, data and all the rest. I do not care who starts all these issues. This particular parliament is charged with making sure our state gets the best possible deal for everything: submarines, space, health, education—you name it. I am not going to support half-baked pieces of legislation that come through this place on a nod and a wink that it will be fixed up between the houses. It is not acceptable.

I do not care if we do not have the numbers in this room. Treat us with some respect and give us the dignity of giving us the proper information so that we can actually vote on it in a sensible fashion. If we keep doing things in a political, marketed and half-hearted way, we are going to end up with that sort of legislation for this state, and I think this state deserves a great deal better than it is getting. I look forward to the debate on the select committee and to a positive result. I am asking you to listen not only to me but to the people of South Australia who are watching us. Do not think they are not because they are.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General) (19:42): I will speak to the member for Florey's motion to refer the bill to a committee for examination. I did not identify any terms of reference in relation to that motion, but I am assuming that in a general way it is seeking that a select committee be established for the purposes of scrutiny of the bill. There are some parliaments in Australia, including the commonwealth, that scrutinise every bill in this way. They send it to a committee for thorough examination and a report is prepared and provided for the members to consider.

Tax reform is probably not something that is immediately legible or identifiable or understandable by most people in the community, including members here in the parliament. It is invariably quite complex. But I think what it has in common with most pieces of legislation is that, whatever the motive of the mover of the bill—in this case of land tax by the government of South Australia it is reform—I would say it is meritorious and beneficial to a very significant number of land tax payers in the state, but more importantly the Premier's message has been consistently that it is for the benefit of the state in the opportunities for investment in the future.

In relation to scrutiny of bills, the people who step forward are usually those who are most positively or adversely affected in relation to any piece of legislation and the stakeholders of any particular piece of legislation. We can pick any number of bills. There might be a health reform bill, there might be a gambling reform bill, there might be a land tax bill. The people who are invested in the outcome of this legislation, unsurprisingly, are the ones who can step forward and say, 'Yes it's good for me. I want you to advocate it,' or, 'No, it's not good for me,' or, 'I don't understand it. I want some more clarification.'

What the government has done in relation to this piece of legislation, understanding it is in the envelope of a package of reforms, is go to what I call the usual suspects, in the sense of the stakeholder groups that normally indicate they have an interest in any taxation reform, and invite them to make comment. Over quite a sustained period, since the budget announcements in which the proposals were incorporated in this bill, from June, there has been quite a significant period of consultation.

We have heard in numerous contributions already in this debate that people have stepped forward and made plaintive claims to their local representative on either side of the house. I have had my own in the electorate of Bragg. People have had public meetings, we have had discussions and we have had people coming in to see me individually. People have brought in information from their accountants and asked, 'How's this going to affect me? Is it good or bad?' or whatever. It is a normal part of our responsibility as members of parliament to be able to do that.

In the time that I have been here as a member of the opposition I have certainly availed myself of a briefing with the government minister and/or their advisers to make sure that any issues that seem unclear have some level of clarity before I come in to make a contribution to the debate, in those days in opposition and now in government. I have not been to all the briefings that the Treasurer has provided, but I am advised that there have been a number. I have asked for them. I had a meeting with Treasury officials to be apprised of the detail of both the bill and foreshadowed amendments.

With due respect to the mover of this motion, I do not see this as a situation where an advance of legislation would in some way cut through the legislative process in the parliament as though it has been introduced and expected to be debated promptly. There have been some months of gestation and development of what ultimately has come before the parliament and then some foreshadowed amendments. I suggest that it is probably not the case, as has occurred.

I have certainly been in here when urgent legislation has been pushed through the parliament. Some of it has been identified as having some very serious weakness in the law that needs to be addressed. Usually at those times I have been in the opposition, and I have been asked to acquiesce to a process of abridgement of the usual time frames for the discussion and debate of legislation. If there is good reason for it, frankly that is something that we need to do as a parliament. We need to be flexible. Most of the time with our legislation, we need to have time to comprehend, to get advice, to consult and, obviously, to then resubmit any queries that we have and then come in for the debate and go through a committee stage.

I think we are yet to consider a committee situation in relation to this bill, and it would follow, in the event that this motion is not successful, that that would be a teasing out for all members if there are any residual areas of concern that they would be seeking clarification on. That is the process. It has not been abridged. Everyone has had an opportunity to consult. In fact, there has been a widespread contribution of that consultation in the debate to date, which is a good thing to hear. I am pleased to hear that members have been going to public meetings and are actually listening to their constituency. That is exactly what we are here for: to make sure that we come in, that we understand what the position is and that we are prepared to vote. We should be able to make a contribution, depending on what we have done.

The other issue that has been raised is the lack of modelling. I sat here for 16 years in opposition and I can honestly say there were many financial bills, many taxation reforms, some of which were worthy and some of which I took the view were not, but briefings were provided. However, the calculations and the workings that were done by the Department of Treasury were not placed on the table for our consideration.

What is happening here, though, is that even though the previous government—still here, as such, now in opposition—and the same people working in Treasury were there when they were there, they are nevertheless saying, 'We want to see all this modelling.' The mover of the motion asks, 'Where is this modelling?' I have sat here for 16 years and we did not get Treasury modelling.

What the government has done in this instance is to ensure that the model that has been utilised by Treasury for the purposes of the assessment has been under scrutiny, and that report has been made available. That report by PwC, prepared on the land tax model methodology review, has been tabled. That has been made available. That has been clear in its confirmation that the way in which Treasury has gone about its assessment is an appropriate, reliable and robust model.

That is the reassurance that this government has given to the house as to the way these things are done, because not every one of us here has expertise, obviously, in relation to either modelling in relation to financial assessment, or indeed the legalities of the amendments that are currently being proposed, particularly to aggregation of taxation. I think thresholds and rates of tax are frankly pretty straightforward and most of us understand how they work, but the aggregation, which has been with us for 170 years, which is now—

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: Land tax started in 1935.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: No, I am sorry. The member for West Torrens interjects to suggest that land tax started in 1935. In fact, I will give him a copy of the Victoriae Reginae 1884 act which is 'An Act for a Tax on Land and on the Income from Real and Personal Property, Professions, Trades, and Avocations.' It is No. 323 of the South Australian statutes. That act made provision for taxation. We have had land tax and we have had aggregation aspects of that since 1884.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: More misleading information from the government.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Lee, you will have your opportunity.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: The fact that the land tax bill that we are currently amending was the 1936 iteration.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: Fifty-two years later.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Lee!

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: If the member for Lee wants to have a talk about the history of land tax, I am happy to do that, but in relation to the member's proposal—that is, the question of aggregation and the modelling that is applied to that and the exemptions that have been there and developed and extended and rejected and so on, over a number of years, decades—this is a new iteration of that.

It is still complicated. I think the public and the parliament need to be fully apprised and able to have an understanding that the modelling that is applied by the Treasury department, which had previously been under the responsibility of the member for West Torrens, is actually doing the calculations correctly and that they are applying the same modelling—and that is reasonable. That is why, as a government, we have ensured that this land tax model methodology is reviewed and that the reviewing of that is made clear, to give some confidence to the public.

There will always be those who will take the view that a change in relation to land tax, or any other tax for that matter, is something that they do not agree with. That is fine. We understand that. The assessments that have been done, the advice that we have received and the arguments that we have submitted are that there is an overwhelming majority of people who will benefit from this total package. Certainly, there will be some losers. There are many more winners. One of them, of course, is the member for Taylor.

We need to advance that within the reform envelope for the benefit of the state. That is the position of the government. If there was an untidiness or a raging conflict between parties as to modelling or anything of that nature, I have not heard of it. I have heard of people complaining about what they see as the outcome and the disadvantage that might result for them or the association members they represent, but I have not heard an argument to suggest that there is a constitutional invalidity, that there is some legal impediment, or that there is a defect or weakness in the modelling that has been applied.

What I have heard, though, are repeated submissions by a number of the members, particularly from the opposition, that their constituency does not like it. That may be so. That is part of the debate that we have in here. In the end, it is the view of this side of the house that this is a package of reform that has significant advantage to many. It will make us competitive nationally and it will encourage investment. I do not need to repeat all the arguments. We have put our case and it is a matter for the parliament to consider those.

It is the government's view that referring the matter to a committee, in the absence of a number of these disputes that I have raised, is not necessary. As much as the member would advocate a committee review of this, it is not the view of the government that that would be helpful or indeed resolve what is in some circumstances an implacable view of something that they do not agree to. We respect that. That is why we are here in the parliament.

The government must bring these matters to the parliament, the parliament must consider them and sometimes when there is a major area of, I suppose, challenge to aspects of legislation, it is reasonable that we go through a committee process in addition to the committee that we already operate here in the parliament, that is, a select committee, which is the basis of the member's motion. The resolution will not be supported by the government, but we appreciate the sentiment that has been presented by the member. I would urge that the motion be rejected.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (19:56): I rise to speak on the contingent motion moved by the member for Florey to establish a select committee on the bill that we are considering, a bill to amend the Land Tax Act of 1936—not 1884 for those of us who might be under some misapprehension that the previous laws may be being amended here—so that we can, for the first time in this debate, get some detailed particulars as to the impacts of these changes that are proposed in the bill, because, over the last 15 years there have been a number of significant changes to land tax.

The most recent, I am happy to concede, was actually brought to the parliament last year by the current Liberal government to amend land tax and to provide a significant amount of relief to affected landowners. As I have mentioned in a previous contribution on another matter related to this bill, that was supported by the Labor opposition because of course it was the Labor opposition, going back to 2005, that commenced the first of the tranche of significant changes to the land tax regime in South Australia to consecutively provide very significant amounts of relief to landowners.

Each time the former Labor government did that, not only did they announce what you could perhaps describe as the headline impacts of the tax changes—for example, how much revenue in dollar terms would no longer need to be paid by affected landowners to the government in total; for example, how many tens of millions of dollars a year in tax relief was being provided by the government—but there were also details about changes in the land tax scales, changes in the rates and the thresholds at which those rates would apply, and there were also details about how much the benefit would be for particular landholdings of particular values—in some instances, of particular landholdings at particular values in particular circumstances. Also, further to that point, there were details about how many landowners within particular land value thresholds would also benefit from these changes

That was certainly the case in the first of these significant tranches of reform which was released in 2005. The first of it was announced in February and then confirmed in the state budget of that year again in 2005 when it was announced that there would be a $245 million package of land tax relief provided over four years for 121,000 South Australians who would be liable for land tax from 1 July 2005 when those changes were to take effect.

The government at the time released details in its press release that 44,000 land tax payers would no longer be liable for land tax. Both within the details of that press release of February 2005 and the details of the budget papers which were released later that year in the middle of 2005, further particulars were provided about those sorts of impacts to which I previously referred: how many people would be impacted at particular land values, how much the benefit would be at particular land values and so on.

I recall very clearly that in the course of that budget bill being taken through the House of Assembly there were several questions asked by the then opposition seeking further particulars from the government. I must admit my memory starts to get a little hazy about whether the information was provided back to the House of Assembly or whether it was provided, as we now refer to it, between the houses. But when further information was sought in addition to the amount of information that had already been provided, it was provided by that former government.

That was also repeated a number of years later when there was another significant tranche of changes first announced in the then Labor government's Mid-Year Budget Review of 2009. You will recall that that would have been just before the 2010 state election—memorable for other reasons that we need not digress into—and then confirmed in the budget of 2010 that there would be further significant relief, not just further changes to rates and thresholds, particularly a lifting of the tax-free threshold quite significantly but also the introduction of a measure to avoid future bracket creep for landowners by making sure that the average land value assessed by the Valuer-General each year would form an indexation rate by which land tax thresholds would be indexed each year. That would mean that if a landowner's property value went up by 2 or 3 or 4 per cent, as long as that corresponded generally speaking to the average increase in land values across the state, the land tax thresholds would increase by that amount and they would be protected from the worst effects of any bracket creep.

These were very significant reforms and by the end of the forward estimates, in that budget, those reforms themselves were estimated alone to cost the government $114 million in that financial year. Further particulars were provided not only about the beneficiaries of those changes but also about how much the benefit would be at particular land values and what the cohort of landowners would be at particular land value thresholds within the land tax scale. These are all important details for members of parliament to consider when they are looking to support land tax changes.

Even last year, when the government made good their election commitment on land tax—they went to the election saying that they would look to increase the tax free threshold and adjust the rates and thresholds that applied above that to provide further land tax relief—when that bill was introduced into the house, or I should say more accurately when those amendments were made as part of the Budget Measures Bill, as shadow treasurer I sought further information from the government along the lines of the sorts of information that had previously been provided both publicly and to the parliament about the number of landowners affected and what the impact on land tax bills would be.

To give the current Treasurer credit, his office provided me with those sorts of responses. Indeed, the document I am looking at right now is the attachment to an email provided to me by the Treasurer's office that goes into those sorts of details. In fact, it is also my recollection that I asked a number of questions and I think the Hon. Kyam Maher in the other place also asked some further questions, and the government was willing to provide further details about those land tax changes at that point in time.

Those three examples stand in significant contrast to the information that has been provided by the government to members of parliament, let alone the broader public, in the context of this bill standing before us now. When the government first announced they were looking at imposing these significant changes to aggregation of land interests for the purpose of applying land tax, people were concerned—and I am talking about members of the public, not necessarily members of parliament—about what the impacts would be, both generally and, in particular, how they could apply those changes to their own circumstances and find out what the impacts would be.

If I can be so bold as to put words into the mouths of other members, as members of parliament we were concerned about what the general impact would be on the community. How many landowners would be impacted by the aggregation changes? How much more would they be paying? What would it mean for landowners who had landholdings at particular value thresholds in terms of having to pay more land tax?

It was particularly significant because, unlike all those changes I mentioned before—not the only two but certainly the biggest two tranches of land tax relief that were provided by the former Labor government and the land tax relief that had been provided in last year's budget by the relatively newly elected Liberal government—the aggregation change was not about providing further relief. Really, it was perhaps just of interest, and not much more, to members and to the public how much relief was being provided.

This was the opposite, this was the imposition of a more punitive taxation regime for many landowners in the Land Tax Act. So it became particularly important, not just to members of the public but also to those of us who represent them in this place, to understand the detailed particulars of who would be affected and how much more they would have to pay. Also in aggregate—to mix the metaphor, given the bill we are discussing—how many landowners would also be affected within particular value thresholds? Again, these are not unreasonable questions to ask, particularly in the context of the three previous examples where that sort of information had been provided.

However, at every juncture this government has refused to release the modelling. At the same time as they have refused to release the modelling, they have deliberately engaged in a deceptive rhetoric to try to give South Australians, in particular landowners, the impression that this bill leaves people better off. That is just not the case. Last year's land tax changes provided $150 million of land tax relief over three years. The government is now claiming that last year's land tax changes and this year's land tax changes combined provide landowners with $90 million of relief over three years.

It does not take a rocket scientist to do the equation that this bill results in $60 million more in land tax revenue being paid by landowners to the government. It is a tax increase; 92 per cent of people are not better off as a result of this bill. It is blatantly wrong, it is false and it is misleading for those opposite to continue to claim it, let alone the Premier, who has the temerity to continue to claim it during question time.

It is just wrong, and demonstrably wrong. We know it is wrong because even yesterday the Treasurer confirmed that analysis, which I have just provided to the house, on ABC radio. He admitted that this bill, these latest changes, this latest land tax proposal, increases revenue from landowners to the government. It is a tax increase not a tax cut. That is why the government refuses to release the modelling. Waving around that PricewaterhouseCoopers report does nothing to provide further information to the community or to members of parliament about who is affected and by how much.

That piece of work by PricewaterhouseCoopers was deliberately sought to try to provide some comfort to the government that the way in which the Treasury department and RevenueSA were making their calculations was valid. It did not provide those calculations. It did not provide the details about the number of landowners impacted at particular value levels. It did not provide us with the information that would have allowed members of parliament and the community much more quickly to form a judgement about whether this bill should be supported or not.

In that vacuum of accurate information the community has been left to try to find its own perspective on this bill. Landowners have had to go back and speak to their accountants. Other landowners have had to engage tax lawyers. Other landowners have had to engage both tax lawyers and accountants for the first time, paying out many dollars to try to find out what this quite complex bill will actually mean for their personal circumstances. They have had to do that largely because the government refuses to release the details that are necessary for both them and members of parliament to arrive at an informed conclusion about the merits or otherwise of this bill.

The Deputy Premier says, 'Well, it's fine because the public has had the capacity to be consulted with since June.' That, again, is wrong—blatantly wrong. The government only released its bill in September, and it was open for four weeks for consultation. Again, it was a bill, nothing more: no modelling, no details, no further particulars, just the bill.

I come back to the example that I gave in my second reading contribution: those constituents of mine, those first generation Italian migrants living in Seaton who are terrified of a land tax bill increase of many thousands of dollars. They have been lumped with dozens of pages of parliamentary counsel's best efforts to make sense out of this policy change. They are meant to interpret that and have a clear understanding about what it means for their circumstances. I think you can readily see from that one example how difficult it makes life for them and hence how difficult it makes life for many other landowners who have been furnished with nothing else except this bill and a PricewaterhouseCoopers report that does not shed any light on the details that are required.

The crossbench MPs in the other place, in particular the Hon. Frank Pangallo and the Hon. Connie Bonaros, made it very clear that they were more than happy to move to establish a select committee in the other place to try to get some answers on this, because at least then for the first time the parliament would be able to push beyond the deliberate obfuscation of this government in refusing to release any details on these land tax changes. It would be able to summon those officers from the Department of Treasury and Finance, RevenueSA and wherever else was necessary in order to get the full details of these particulars.

The government, of course, does not want any of these details out, lest their dirty little secret about this bill comes out—that this is a tax hike and not a tax cut. So they announced immediately that they would not be supporting that select committee.

I think it is unfortunate that, while initially announcing his support for it, the Hon. John Darley has now reached the conclusion that, through the five various iterations of this land tax bill the government has come up with over the last three or four months, this debacle has gone on long enough. You only need to read the paper or examine the business confidence reports or the economic data coming out of the ABS to know how damaging the government's mishandling of these land tax changes has been for small businesses, for the property industry, for the real estate industry, for the housing construction industry, and for the economy as a whole. He has formed the view that enough is enough: the parliament needs to get on with this.

I think what the member for Florey is proposing is very sensible because it is quite feasible that we will not get through this bill in this sitting week in this place. There is a lot of detail to be worked through, not just members ventilating their concerns about whether this inquiry should now be supported or not, but I assume we are in for a lengthy committee stage of this bill as well. Of course, depending on what happens here—notwithstanding any future judgements which are made about whether this particular time of proceedings has been validly convened within this place between the dinner break and midnight—there will be many questions and potentially decisions which could be taken when it comes to amendments in the committee stage which will warrant scrutiny.

The member for Florey puts a proposition to us that we can easily accommodate. We can establish this, get on with it straightaway, get those people in the room who can finally provide us with some detailed answers so that when we decide on this bill, both here and in the other place, we can make an informed decision.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Sir, I bring your attention to the state of the house.

A quorum having been formed:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (20:17): I hope everyone is settling in for a nice long evening to debate the member for Florey's very important motion on whether or not this parliament should consider a select committee. Of course, hanging over that motion is the cloud of legitimacy of even the proceedings that we are in this evening. Whether or not privilege applies to the remarks made, whether or not the proceedings are legally constituted, that will be for another body to determine, as our lawyers are working away at their submissions.

That aside, assuming tonight's proceedings are legitimate and constituted and that we are not just a bunch of people standing in a museum talking about land tax and that this is actually a parliament, what does tax reform look like? After the Premier was on radio this morning, where he was, I think, comprehensively dismantled and unpackaged by the Leader of the Opposition and shown for what he is: a fraud, we saw what a—

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Point of order.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: There is a point of order from the Minister for Education.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, the Minister for Education has a point of order. What is your point of order?

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: The member has used offensive words against another member.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for West Torrens, we are debating the motion from the member for Florey so we should stick to that motion.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I will.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you. Try not to digress too much.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I will not digress any further, sir. After the comprehensive dismantling of the Leader of the Opposition this morning by—no, of the Premier by the Leader of the Opposition this morning—

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: You had it right the first time.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I did—thank you very much for confirming what I said earlier about the Premier—very decent of you. The Premier said on radio this morning that tax reform is difficult, that tax reform is hard. It is, and the great thing about the Westminster system of governance is that there are tried and tested precedents for how reform is done. The traditional method for tax reform is green paper/white paper. The government announces a green paper, goes out to consultation and talks about what the problem is, what the problem is they are attempting to solve.

To go one step further, before then generally parliamentarians seek mandates. I will give you some recent, modern-day examples. John Howard sought a mandate for a fundamental change in the tax redistribution system in this country through the goods and services tax, first proposed by treasurer Keating in 1984, I think, in a form of constitutional convention held after the 1983 federal election. Generally, parliamentarians seek a mandate from the people. Then they go through a process, generally governed by the public sector, where you have green paper/white paper, then the parliament considers that, while the public is consulted through those two processes of green paper/white paper.

The green paper sets out the problem; the white paper takes any information from affected parties. For example, hypothetically, if you were talking about land tax reform, you would go out to interested bodies—you would go out to the Property Council, Business SA, REISA, SACOSS, the Motor Trade Association and the UDIA, and you would ask them their views and then speak to the broader public: what are the inequities in land tax, what are the impacts of the rates, what have been the impacts of ad hoc changes over the last 20 or 30 years? Treasury will take that advice and formulate a comprehensive policy.

The most recent example of that in South Australia was the 2015 tax review, which I conducted as treasurer, where we did a wholesale root-and-branch evaluation of all our taxes in South Australia. We checked the efficiency of those taxes, we looked at the impact of those taxes on the economy and where decision-making was impacted by government regulation or taxes. We came to a conclusion, after a long period of consultation—indeed, I went to Port Lincoln at the time the Deputy Speaker was a Liberal backbencher to talk to his council about our tax review and the impacts of state taxation on the Eyre Peninsula economy. I did this across the state. That helped inform me on a couple of things.

It showed me that South Australia, overwhelmingly, is (1) a small business state and (2) a family business small business state. The biggest concern that those two cohorts had was generational change, that is, succession planning. Through that process, the government decided that we would abolish commercial stamp duty, all transactional taxes on real property and non-real property, to allow the transfer of property from one generation to another or from one buyer to another without there being a transactional tax, to improve the efficiency of the economy—and it worked.

It worked for family farms, it worked for family manufacturing and it worked for family small businesses because it was a comprehensive process. That comprehensive process allowed the state government to come up with a piece of tax reform which, even though it was initially degraded by the then opposition leader, the now Premier, as being the wrong tax to cut, the inappropriate tax to cut, and a waste of time, it turned out to be something today he champions as something he supported.

The truth is that abolishing commercial stamp duty was not my idea; it was the idea of the people who responded to our consultation. We listened to the people of South Australia. The Treasury, for the first time in a long time, had its ear to the people of this state. How do we grow jobs? How do we improve efficiency? How do we improve the efficiency of the economy? It was our Public Service at its best. It was the parliament at its best. Were there other taxes that we could have cut? Yes, we did cut some other ones. That was, I think, a very big change in the way we do business in this state. You can buy a building now, a commercial property, and the activity that creates has no transactional penalty from the government.

So, in the decision-making bodies of our small businesses, whether it is in the boardroom or in the family home, the government is not a consideration. The consideration is only the value of the proposition: should we or should we not buy this business? Should we or should we not buy this plant and equipment? Should we or should we not transfer our succession planning now to junior or to whoever else it is who is going to start running the business? This is without the Treasurer and Treasury being in their way, waiting for their cut—and it worked.

The question then becomes: why did the government not embark on that process with land tax? Why was there no green paper? Why was there no white paper? Why was there no consultation period? The process for this has been ad hoc, and the government finds itself in the bind it is in today because of the process it has undertaken. The cabinet is a victim of its own process. They have manufactured this crisis—and I do not say 'crisis' loosely.

The former president of the Liberal Party, now the member for Davenport, abstained from rather than support the government's legislation on increasing land tax through aggregation measures. If that does not send a shiver down the spine of every self-respecting Liberal in this state, what will? Your own president will not back you. Your own president thinks that you are doing the wrong thing. Let's be clear about this: in all the forums that the Labor Party has held, the people turning up to those are not unionists. They are not Labor voters. They are not our supporters. They may be that now, but they were not when they turned up. They are supporters of the government and, more importantly, supporters of free market principles, and they feel abandoned.

How would it harm the government to go out and talk to these people? They have not talked to these people. This government is from on high. This is the ultimate expression of the arrogance of the executive: 'We know best. We know what your concerns are. We don't need to talk you; therefore, we will legislate on your behalf and you will thank us for it.' We even heard the Deputy Premier lecture a member on this side about how we do not understand how lucky we are that we have her genius in amending the land tax act to make us all better off. The way she spoke to the member for Taylor I think was deeply offensive and symptomatic of the arrogance of this government.

It has only been 18 months—only 18 months. This is not a 10-year-old government—although you could not tell—this is an 18-month old government. They are behaving as if they know best and that people are not to be trusted. In my experience, and in the experience of all good governments around the world, you are at your best when you put yourself in front of the people and find out their will. I can tell you that the multitude of Liberal supporters who are on my Facebook page, in my office, on my email, on my Twitter, on my SMS and now coming to my sub-branch meetings are the ones who are aching to make this system better.

They are the ones who are aching to try to make land tax efficient, so it is not an inhibition to invest and grow jobs, so it is not going to stop the mechanic who has built up his business and bought three or four properties and is planning a succession being hit with an $80,000 land tax bill after paying $2,000 a year. These are massive increases. These are real life experiences. These are not things we are making up.

The Liberal Party thinks that they do not need to speak to the people. When the people, through their parliament, ask for the modelling that they have based these decisions on, we are told that we cannot be trusted with it. We are told we cannot see it. We are told that there are privacy issues and considerations. Yet, when we raise examples of individuals who are worse off, the government thumps the table and demands to know who they are, where they live, what they own and how much they pay.

Mr Brown: They smear them in the papers.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: They smear them in the papers the next day. Where were the privacy concerns for Timothy Goh? Where were they? They were nowhere to be seen. The adult thing to do here, the proper thing to do, is to follow the traditions of this parliament, of the system of government that we have been given. Winston Churchill said, 'The Westminster system of democracy is the worst in the world, but there are none better.'

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: Not quite, but near enough.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Near enough. I have not paid $2.67 million to an accused murderer, so I am not as smart as the Deputy Premier, but, yes, that is a view of what Winston Churchill said.

An honourable member: You tried.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I tried. I am not up to the Deputy Premier's standards. What they are trying to say is that we have been handed a system of government that is robust, that can cope with dissent, that there is not winner take all, that there are nuances in all arguments, that not everyone is right, but there are some things that fall through the cracks. The way you identify that is by going out and speaking to the people, taking out the reforms, taking the amendments out and going town to town across South Australia. Go to Port Lincoln, go to Mount Gambier.

Mount Gambier is the second largest city in South Australia. They have one member of parliament in this place. Adelaide has over 30. They get one say on land tax aggregation—one. The Premier has not been down there with his Treasurer to say, 'What's the impact of this on the economy in Mount Gambier?' No-one has been to the Iron Triangle or Upper Spencer Gulf to say, 'What is the impact of these changes on Port Augusta, Whyalla and Port Pirie?'

No-one has been to Port Lincoln to say, 'Look, let's hold this up to the light. What does it actually mean for tuna fishermen? What does it mean for aquaculture? What does it mean for mining? What does it mean for the regional towns that require commercial businesses to employ young people to stay in those towns? What does this actually mean for our towns?' None of that has occurred—not once. They have had one conversation with the Property Council on a weekend somewhere in an undisclosed location and they turn up like Neville Chamberlain saying, 'Peace in our time.'

Steve Murray, the member for Davenport, does not think it is peace in our time, to use Churchillian examples. Thank you to the Clerk for reminding me—it would be unparliamentary to remind the parliament that the person who abstained from the vote on the Premier's key piece of economic legislation is a former president of the Liberal Party and now current member for Davenport. That is how you conduct economic reform: you trust the people. You go out and speak to them. You speak to the shopkeepers, you speak to the taxi drivers, you speak to the warehouse operators, you speak to the people on the coalface and you ask them, 'What do you think of this? Is it common sense?'

If the Premier is right and we are wrong, they will carry him on their shoulders all across South Australia.

An honourable member: What's he afraid of?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: What is he afraid of? If the Premier is right and the Labor Party is wrong and we are on the side of the 8 per cent who are worse off and the members opposite are on the side of the 92 per cent they claim are better off, take it to an election. If the Premier had it absolutely right the first time, why the change? Why the compromise? Why not live and die on the principle? Of course, the Premier has not got it right. This is ad hoc policy on the run.

What has occurred here is very simple. The government in opposition made promises they could not keep and could not afford. They attempted to implement some of those policies. They now have to pay for them. They are now trying to recoup some of that money. So they have come into this parliament with a $60 million tax increase on the people of South Australia, and those people are overwhelmingly a cohort that have voted for members opposite previously. Those people have spoken up. They have found a voice in us—

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Point of order: in the four minutes remaining I would ask you to bring the member's attention to the motion before the house, and that is to refer the bill to a select committee. So far, we have had 16 minutes of a rehash of a presentation on the substantive debate on whether or not we should have land tax reform, apart from the insults he has made about how you, as the member covering Eyre Peninsula, are failing to consult with people. I would ask you, Deputy Speaker, to bring the member back to the matter before the house, which is the motion.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, Attorney. Just to be clear—

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: What is the standing order?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Lee, I am speaking. I did not take offence at the member for West Torrens' assertion that I had not consulted in Port Lincoln but, quite rightly, in the four minutes remaining you will be speaking to the motion. Member for West Torrens.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Yes. I believe that this policy should be taken to the people. And despite the arrogance of the Attorney-General, who thinks that she knows best, I think the people should get to decide this.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for West Torrens, you are back to the motion.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I am, sir.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I am, sir, because I think a select committee is the only way we can flesh out the inequalities of this legislation, the inherent unfairness of a retrospective tax change. It is a retrospective tax change—that is, the government is changing tax laws that affect people who have legally established ownership structures within their land and they have had no ability to tell the government or this parliament or this house what the impact of that has been.

I do not know what the government would have to fear from a select committee. I could trawl through Hansard and find multiple examples of members opposite demanding inquiries into the former government's legislative measures. Why not now? Are you as bad as we were, or are you arrogant? I suppose that is the question that they have to contemplate. My view is that there are examples from the last term of how tax reform is conducted. It is conducted by speaking to people, going out and talking to them, not turning up with a bill and amending it five times to try to placate interest group after interest group and please no-one. That is not how tax reform is done.

If we are successful at the next election, we will be left with a system of land tax that has satisfied no-one—if this measure is successful—that has been made on the hop without consideration of the long-term consequences of the changes and without consultation with the people. The people will feel as though the entire process has once again seen them and their views devalued. Once again, the separation between the people and their politicians grow. The disaffection grows. Why? Because the government just will not have the sensible instincts to go out and ask their own citizens what it is they want.

Any government that fears its own citizens is not worthy of being a government. We are here on their behalf. It is our job to represent them. Surely it would cost the government nothing to spend three months, four months, five months, six months—

Ms Bedford: It doesn't have to be that long.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: —a few weeks—to talk to people about what the implications of this tax change will be. Speak to the postwar migrant. Speak to the institutional investors. Speak to the people who have done nothing else but invest in property. Speak to people about what the impacts of this are and stop living in your ivory towers.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (20:39): I rise to support the member for Florey's current motion to establish a select committee to examine the bill to reform the Land Tax Act. I have to start by saying that we finished up here at midnight last night. By the time I got home in the wee small hours, it was a little bit of an effort to get up at 5.30 and tune in to the British parliament. That has been such a train wreck over the past few months, it is compelling viewing, and everyone should tune in and have a look.

So I was up this morning and I was having a look and I was thinking, 'What a rabble! How can this place function as it is in what is meant to be a world-leading nation? Why can't they just get their act together and work things out?' Then we came in here this afternoon and the education minister moved to adjourn this place—and, when you adjourn it, it means until the next day—instead of suspending it to come back after the dinner break at 7.30. We had all sorts of chaos break out about—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Mawson, the member for West Torrens was actually pretty good at staying on track. You, on the other hand, are digressing, so I would ask you to speak to the motion.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Deputy Speaker, I am telling you why I am saying this because I do not know whether I am covered by privilege in here, so I want to preface what I am saying. I am going to curb what I have to say in here because I do not know whether this is actually a lawful gathering of the Parliament of South Australia constitutionally.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Mawson, that is another question that I understand is being—

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members, Attorney-General and member for West Torrens, the Chair is speaking. Member for Mawson, that is a question that is being dealt with elsewhere, as I understand it, but I think you should take the opportunity. You are on your feet and you are speaking to the motion that has been put by the member for Florey, so you should go ahead with that.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Sir, I draw your attention to the state of the house.

A quorum having been formed:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I thank the Leader of the Opposition. You are in fact No. 17, leader. Member for Mawson.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Thank you again, Deputy Speaker, and before I interrupted myself by calling for a quorum I was talking about some of the things that may well be omitted in my speech tonight. So I want to put that on the record because I am not sure whether this is a properly constituted sitting of the Parliament of South Australia. If people are reading this or tuning in at home on the World Wide Web, there may be some things that I do not say here because I may not be covered by privilege.

There are a lot of omissions from people on the other side as well who have not had the ability or the courage perhaps to get up and say what they are hearing in their local areas. I am not sure whether they have had pressure put on them to do that but that is what I am hearing. There are several disgruntled people on the backbench of the Liberal Party. We saw the former president of the Liberal Party abstain from the vote in here this afternoon when it came to the government trying to get its bill through to savagely cut the income and the potential retirement benefits of people who have invested legally in land throughout South Australia.

For those members of parliament, when people ask us why their local MP did not stand up and speak up on their behalf, we will be reminding them about who did not speak. We will point out that they do not necessarily represent the people in their area to the best of their ability because they put their party before the people.

When we come in here, it is a democracy. When we come in here, our number one thing should be 'of the people, for the people'. We should be listening to what the people in our areas have to say and coming in here to advocate for them. This government seems not to want to listen to people, including their own backbench. We have had other moves in this place this year to set up select committees. One of them concerned the forestry industry down in the South-East, which was put forward by the member for Mount Gambier.

Along with many other members, I supported that. Even as the former minister for forests, I said, 'Well, it might find things that we didn't do to the best of our ability, but it's worth having a select committee because I strongly believe in the select committee system.' We set up a lot of them when we were in government. They are a very good way of going out and listening to what the people of South Australia have to say. They are also perhaps a good way of going interstate or getting interstate or overseas witnesses to address the select committee.

We had a select committee on grain handling operations in South Australia. The member for Hammond, the member for Chaffey and the member for Light were on it, and it was chaired by the member for Frome. We went all around regional South Australia. We went to some places twice because we wanted to go back, put our findings and listen to the community for a second time to see what their thoughts were.

We were very happy to see people like the member for Flinders turn up to those hearings. I think you were there at Ceduna, then we did the little side trip out to Thevenard. We went down to Port Lincoln. We spoke to people from right across Eyre Peninsula. I think we went out to the centre of Eyre Peninsula as well. We dropped in to see as many people as we could and give those people the opportunity. We were in places like Wallaroo. We were down in Naracoorte and in Snowtown and Crystal Brook. We were in Loxton.

Mr Pederick: Pinnaroo.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: I have to say that it was the worst schnitty on the whole trip. One of the pubs had a good schnitty and the other one not so good.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Mawson, be careful. You may not have privilege.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: I might not have privilege. Thank you for your protection. They might have just been having a bad night. The member for Hammond only got half a schnitty—of all the blokes to get only half a schnitty—but the sundaes were good. The chocolate sundaes at the Pinnaroo pub were the best we had on the whole trip. I have to say about the Pinnaroo bakery that it has the best vanilla slices in South Australia. The bakers from the Ouyen bakery that Jeff Kennett said had the best vanilla slices in Australia moved from Ouyen to Pinnaroo. They are rippers.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Mawson, back to the motion.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: I was going to pre-empt you. I thought you were going to say, 'But the Cummins bakery has the best vanilla slices,' and I do not reckon you are far wrong. They come a close second. It is almost a dead heat for the best.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you for your reminiscences, member for Mawson. Back to the motion, please.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: We had a terrific time. We had a great time. Do you know what else we did? As well as getting around all of South Australia a couple of times, we went to Canada. We went to a place called Manitoba, and we met with farmers. You should have seen the member for Hammond; he loved the big trucks and harvesters. We climbed up on the harvesters. We met with the transport people.

What we learned about Manitoba is that it is so flat you can watch your dog run away for three days. What we learned about Saskatchewan is that it is a really hard word to pronounce and spell, but it is really easy to draw. We learned that. We went to Vancouver in British Columbia, and we met with the people who run the ports there. We met with the people who run the railway system in Canada. It was fantastic. We learned a lot about how another country does it.

Guess what? There might be some people in other jurisdictions who can tell us a bit about land tax. There could be some people who might know a little more than the Premier, the Treasurer and the Deputy Premier, who think they know it all. They think they know more than their backbench. They think that they have all of the answers, but guess what? We might actually come up with some good ideas by going out and talking to people across South Australia.

Another example of how this government does not listen is by cancelling the country cabinets. We used to love getting out to the country and listening to what people had to say—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Mawson, I have suggested this a couple of times, and I understand you are building a framework for your argument—

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Yes, based on schnitties and vanilla slices—and Canadian geography.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: You are nearly halfway through with time, so the point is the motion that is—

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Yes, it is about a select committee.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, thank you.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: It is about a select committee, which is also a select committee you have so that you can listen to people. What I was saying—and the member for West Torrens discussed this as well—is that when he was treasurer and brought in those great taxation reforms, it came about through a similar listening process to the select committee that has excellently been proposed by the member for Florey.

I remember being at those country cabinets, and the then Treasurer (member for West Torrens) was asking people what they had. Farmers and fishers in your seat, Deputy Speaker, were giving him some really good feedback on how their lives could be made better. All I am trying to do is give a few examples of how it can work for politicians and governments if they actually get out and listen to people.

That is at the crux of what we should be doing as representatives in this place, particularly when you are in the executive and when you are in a position to change people's lives forever in many cases. A lot of people who have legally invested money in a system that has been in place for decades. I think to make changes that are not grandfathered, or not have a discussion or move any amendments in this place about grandfathering any of those changes—there might be some really good ideas out there in South Australia.

I reckon there were some pretty good ideas. From what I have heard from some of the backbenchers, there were some pretty good ideas put up in the Liberal party room. If we set up the select committee as proposed by the member for Florey and bring those out, people could speak candidly in front of each other. We can have Hansard reporters who will take down all the notes. We did not take any Hansard people to Canada; it would have maybe blown the budget—sorry, but it is good. Hansard people come with us around the state. The Loxton Bowling Club was absolutely full to—

Mr Brown: It's no Canada.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Loxton was great. I tell you what, the ladies at the bowls club put on a lovely afternoon tea. The night we went to Pinnaroo, we had all those mice running in the fluoros. Remember that? One of the Hansard people was so scared, she had to jump up on the chair. Again, it is just an example—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Member for Mawson, I am really enjoying your tales from Canada, from the Mallee and from all over—

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Well, if I can get on this select committee, I can take the show on the road.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, okay—so we are coming back to the motion before the house, which is to establish a select committee.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: We could take the Fringe—

Mr Pederick: I think he wants to go global with the select committee.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Yes. But you do need to listen to people. The other good thing about what we did with the country cabinets was that the heads of the Public Service were there, including Treasury. Everyone heard what the people wanted in all of those communities. I will tell you what people do not want: they do not want an increase of 2,352 per cent on their land tax bills. That is what we are hearing from people in our areas. Members on the other side who represent Liberal seats are hearing it as well; they are just not allowed to talk about it. I better be careful because I am not sure whether we are covered constitutionally and lawfully as a proper sitting of the house, so I will not say what I was going to say in case I get sued because there might not be privilege.

We are listening to people. We are hearing some absolute horror stories about how so many small businesses and investors, who, as I have said, made these investments lawfully under a system that has been in place for decades, are being affected. We come in here. We have listened to what the people have said. We stand up for those people and we say that we reject this proposition and these changes to the law because we stick up for these people and we stand with the member for Florey and her very sensible motion.

Who can be scared of a select committee? It is just the people of the state who pay our wages to come in here and represent them. It is just a matter of going out and listening to what they have to say, so why would anyone in this place be scared of the people of South Australia? They are actually really nice people. You should get out and meet a few of them and listen to what they have to say.

I was going to mention another bloke from the Property Council, but again I am not sure that I am safe to do that, so I am not going to. I had an email from him a little bit earlier in the day. I am not sure whether everyone got that.

Ms Cook: Call him Fred.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Okay. I got an email from a bloke. I am not sure whether everyone got that, but he is kind of having a go at MPs for being obstructionist.

Ms Cook: We all got that.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Okay, everyone has it. He is having a go at MPs in this place for being obstructionist. I think there was a little club that got together when we were in government and we wanted to bring in a tax on the banks—you know, those big four or five institutions that do not actually have any people working in South Australia much any more and who do not like lending money to small businesses to expand and to start up.

When we proposed to bring in a tax that would have resulted in a $91 million increase in our budget here in South Australia, they were all out there then obstructing what it was that we were doing and they have been obstructing this government for whatever they said in the email—I think it was 135 days—but the minute they come up with a little sweetheart deal over a short black, everything is meant to be hunky-dory.

We are listening to more than one person. We are listening to the whole state, and the basis for our decision to vote against this bill was formulated on those listening posts. I commend the member for Croydon, the wonderful leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party in South Australia, for getting out there and listening to people, and I congratulate the member for Lee, who has also been out there. I think the Premier has done a tremendous job in listening to his backbench and informing us of what is happening.

Our caucus is a very cordial place to be. I am not sure I can say the same for the other side, from what I am hearing, but we have a very collegial attitude to these things. The stories that we are hearing have been quite incredible about how badly people will be affected by these changes that the Liberal Party wants to wreak across South Australia. For those who were not tuned in to the world wide web last night, I have to say that the Treasurer, Rob Lucas, when he came in here in 1982—

Mr Brown: You might not have privilege.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: I am not saying anything bad about him. When he came in here in 1982, he was on a very generous pension scheme. There was another scheme that superseded that one. Most of us are on the one after that, which is still a good scheme and I am not complaining about what we get, but in 2004 that change came in. We knew what the rules were, but they did not change the rules in 2004 and say, 'We are going to make them retrospective and we are going to put them back past 1982, so, Rob Lucas, we are not going to take away from you that very good scheme that you are on with the defined benefits and everything else,' because guess what? That would have been unfair to poor old Mr Lucas. It would have been unfair to him to have done that. That is why I reckon it is unfair that you make changes to people who have invested in property and land since—was it the 1800s figure we were going with, member for Lee, or the 1935 figure?

Members interjecting:

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: They have been doing it since either 1856 or—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Okay, whether it is the one from the 1800s or the one from the 1900s, those people have made these investments in all of that time because the law has allowed them to do that. You have to see that it is unfair for people that it can just be pulled out from under them. The Treasurer says he will retire in 2022. If that happens, he will retire on the same system that he signed up to in 1982, but none of these other people who might have made investments in 1982, before 1982 or after 1982 will be able to retire on those same conditions with the same sort of wealth that they thought they would have because of the changes that this government wants to bring in without consultation with the wider community of South Australia.

That is why I am here tonight: to support the member for Florey's motion to have a select committee. There is nothing to fear from having a select committee and going out and listening to the people we represent as members of parliament in South Australia. Whether this sitting tonight is constitutionally legal or not, we are in this place. I hope it is, and I reckon you might hope it is because I do not want to have to repeat this tomorrow night for another 20 minutes. I reckon 20 minutes is enough; I do not think you want 40 minutes.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General) (21:01): I move:

That the time allotted for the remainder of the debate on the motion be limited to five minutes.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: So that is clear. It has been moved. Is that seconded?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: May I speak on this motion?

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Sir, standing order 114(a) provides that such motions may not be amended or debated.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is right, member for West Torrens; 114 is quite specific: there is to be no debate on this motion. I will put the motion.

The house divided on the motion:

Ayes 24

Noes 20

Majority 4

AYES
Basham, D.K.B. Chapman, V.A. Cowdrey, M.J.
Cregan, D. Duluk, S. Ellis, F.J.
Gardner, J.A.W. Harvey, R.M. (teller) Knoll, S.K.
Luethen, P. Marshall, S.S. McBride, N.
Murray, S. Patterson, S.J.R. Pederick, A.S.
Pisoni, D.G. Power, C. Sanderson, R.
Speirs, D.J. Teague, J.B. Treloar, P.A.
van Holst Pellekaan, D.C. Whetstone, T.J. Wingard, C.L.
NOES
Bedford, F.E. Bettison, Z.L. Bignell, L.W.K.
Boyer, B.I. Brown, M.E. Close, S.E.
Cook, N.F. Gee, J.P. Hildyard, K.A.
Hughes, E.J. Koutsantonis, A. (teller) Malinauskas, P.
Michaels, A. Mullighan, S.C. Odenwalder, L.K.
Piccolo, A. Picton, C.J. Stinson, J.M.
Szakacs, J.K. Wortley, D.

Motion thus carried.

The SPEAKER: There is five minutes left on the debate. Member for Florey.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! Members wanting to listen to the debate, please do so quietly.

Ms BEDFORD: As a point of clarification, Mr Speaker, is it one speaker for the five minutes or can the five minutes be—is it one person to speak or can two speak for 2½ minutes? What is the story?

The SPEAKER: It depends who seeks the call, but I am told that there are five minutes left in the debate.

Ms BEDFORD: Which can be shared?

The SPEAKER: It can be shared.

Ms BEDFORD: In that case I will defer to the member for Hurtle Vale, who desperately wants to speak for three minutes.

The SPEAKER: Whoever would like to speak, the time is ticking away. There are five minutes. I call the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (21:09): I rise under extraordinary circumstances, where the Liberal Party is now officially on the run. We are now dealing with a government that can—

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Point of order.

The SPEAKER: There is a point of order. I am going to pause the clock.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Members on my left! Minister?

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Relevance, sir.

The SPEAKER: I have the point of order. I will be listening assiduously.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: I ask for the interjections to cease so that I can hear the Leader of the Opposition. Please resume the time. The leader has the call.

Mr MALINAUSKAS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. As I was conveying to the house, we are now dealing with a government that is officially on the run. The fact that we now have a government that controls the majority of this house and that has elected to use that authority to suppress debate on an important matter before the parliament and the people of South Australia is nothing short of a complete farce.

We have already seen this debate descend into utter farce this afternoon as a result of the government literally not being able to control the entirety of its own party. All the parliament is seeking to do is ensure that on a very substantial taxation measure—which is retrospective in nature, which was never mentioned once before an election, which a mandate was never once sought on—it has the opportunity for the scrutiny of a parliamentary inquiry.

The proposition from the member for Florey is not just rational; it is also fundamentally fair. I think that the people of South Australia legitimately expect that their government and their parliament use all the measures available to them to scrutinise such an extreme taxation measure that has not arrived into this parliament with a mandate or arrived into this parliament in a thought-through process.

This is an elementary proposition, one that I would have thought all here would be willing to embrace. The fact that the government is not only unwilling to embrace it but would also seek to use its numbers—which, for once, actually stuck—to impose itself on actually debating the opportunity to have a parliamentary inquiry really does demonstrate the lengths this government will now go to suppress debate on debate. This government was elected—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr MALINAUSKAS: —talking about wanting to be an outfit that provided transparency and open and accountable government, yet here we are, in the parliament of this state, depriving the parliament of the opportunity to do exactly that. What an extraordinary proposition. I find it utterly incredible that we have a Liberal Party that talks about the virtues of freedom yet seeks to stifle debate in the very chamber that has the principal responsibility for scrutinising money bills.

This is yet another representation of a government trying to develop policy on the run, trying to suppress debate and examination of that policy that is done on the run in a way that I think most South Australians would quite rightly be alarmed about. This opposition, though, will not let up. Those people who have felt voiceless up until this point in time will continue to get a voice, but only through those members on this side of the parliament, who will fulfil our solemn obligation to provide a voice for the voiceless, to provide scrutiny over this government that has truly lost its way.

The SPEAKER: I have two members who rose at the same time. Member for Florey.

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (21:14): It is very unfortunate, because I would love to hear the member for Hurtle Vale's contribution, but she may let me read it shortly. I want to use the last minute and a bit to address the members of the government, who I understand are in a difficult situation.

As an Independent now, I can speak to you as someone who has experienced a caucus and how it works. I have sat through some very difficult decisions in caucuses. The one that was most difficult was the WorkCover decision, and we will not go there tonight, so I understand what you have had to debate in your party room.

I am asking you not to feel bullied into doing something that you are not totally comfortable with. A select committee will not ruin anyone's future or place anyone in jeopardy. I think it will give us a really good basis to go forward with good reform, but we must have a bill that is good reform, not a bill that is half-baked and no-one is absolutely sure what it will do. The one thing I am sure about is that there will be unintended consequences, and I do not want to see my people suffer because we have been unable to get the right formula through this place.

I am asking the members of the government to think long and hard and support this opportunity to have the select committee. We all know things will happen in the other house anyway, but let's make the House of Assembly actually use its force and will to make the people feel proud of us.

The house divided on the motion:


Ayes 20

Noes 24

Majority 4

AYES
Bedford, F.E. (teller) Bettison, Z.L. Bignell, L.W.K.
Boyer, B.I. Brown, M.E. Close, S.E.
Cook, N.F. Gee, J.P. Hildyard, K.A.
Hughes, E.J. Koutsantonis, A. Malinauskas, P.
Michaels, A. Mullighan, S.C. Odenwalder, L.K.
Piccolo, A. Picton, C.J. Stinson, J.M.
Szakacs, J.K. Wortley, D.
NOES
Basham, D.K.B. Chapman, V.A. Cowdrey, M.J.
Cregan, D. Duluk, S. Ellis, F.J.
Gardner, J.A.W. (teller) Harvey, R.M. Knoll, S.K.
Luethen, P. Marshall, S.S. McBride, N.
Murray, S. Patterson, S.J.R. Pederick, A.S.
Pisoni, D.G. Power, C. Sanderson, R.
Speirs, D.J. Teague, J.B. Treloar, P.A.
van Holst Pellekaan, D.C. Whetstone, T.J. Wingard, C.L.

Committee Stage

In committee.

Clause 1.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Let's all settle in for a very nice long evening. Just so the parliament is aware, every member of parliament is constitutionally entitled to a 15-minute statement on every clause three times.

Members interjecting:

The CHAIR: Members, we are not off to a very good start. Thank you, member for West Torrens, for pointing out the standing orders; we are familiar with them. Each and every member has the opportunity to speak up to three times on each and every clause and ask a question. The member for West Torrens.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: In terms of the short title of this bill, the act may be cited as the Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Act 2019. It is an interesting choice of words by the government. It is also very interesting that the Premier is not in the building, despite—

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Point of order: referring to a member not being present in the chamber—any member, whether it is the Leader of the Opposition or the Premier or anyone else.

The CHAIR: That is right. I was in discussion with the Clerk, so I did not hear what the member for West Torrens said, but if he did make a reference to a member who was not here for some reason, then that is disorderly, but he knows that.

The Hon. R. Sanderson: And you can kick him out if he keeps it up.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: 'Kick him out,' says the member for Adelaide. Isn't it interesting: we are debating land tax and I am up here asking questions of the government on their retrospective land tax changes and the person who wants me thrown out of the parliament is the member for Adelaide. I reckon her constituents would be very interested to see the Facebook video of this: the member for Adelaide saying, 'Throw them out! They are asking questions! How dare they ask questions!'

The CHAIR: Member for West Torrens, you do not need to respond to interjections.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I was threatened, sir.

The CHAIR: Minister for Child Protection, you interjected, 'Throw him out.' I had no cause to think that I needed to throw out the member for West Torrens—at this point, anyway. The member for West Torrens.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Thank you very much, Chair. Thankfully you—

The CHAIR: Back to clause 1.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Yes, the short title. Often, when the government is considering what to make of a title for a bill, there are many iterations that the government could consider. One could have decided to call this bill the 'land tax (retrospective) amendment bill' because the retrospective nature of this bill I think is something that has caused great alarm, despite the member for Adelaide's insistent support of retrospective land tax changes.

The member for Adelaide, who has championed the cause of retrospective land tax changes, may wish to explain to the house in her contribution why it is that the government decided that the act be cited as the Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Act, rather than the 'retrospective change'. If not retrospective, how about the 'aggregation bill' or the 'land tax fairness bill', or any other descriptor the government might want to come up with? Importantly, in the first of my three 15-minute contributions on the short title of the bill, I think it is important that we consider where we are, why we are here, and why it is that we are considering the short title of this bill.

As I said earlier today, perhaps potentially we are debating a piece of legislation that should perhaps have been developed another way, perhaps through the traditional methods of consultation—green paper/white paper—where the government puts out a set of problems, puts out a proposed solution, then puts out a white paper for final consultation and then presents legislation to the parliament. That is the orthodox way to enact legislation.

That way, perhaps, the name of the bill could have been titled aptly the 'land tax amendment bill to introduce fairness', but of course the government cannot use the word 'fairness' because it would be inappropriate to mislead this parliament, because calling it fair would indeed be misleading, because retrospectivity is in its nature unfair. The reason retrospectivity is unfair is that people who have in good faith established structures, whether in companies, trusts or through any other legal entity available to them, have acted within the guidelines of the law. They have done nothing wrong.

The average investor at home who is considering or watching these measures is asking themselves, 'Why is it called 'miscellaneous' and not 'retrospective'?' I would say to those people who are at home thinking about this debate that it will last into the early hours of the morning, given that we are all going to speak three times with our 15-minute allocated slot on the short title—all 19 of us. It will be an interesting debate. We will flesh this out clause by clause. Because the government will not give the people their consultation, it is our solemn duty to do this.

Some members opposite might call this a filibuster. Let me give the parliament a history on what filibustering means. Filibustering is a term that has been coined in parliamentary practice when members of parliament talk at length on a topic within standing orders in order to fill out time. That is disorderly, but within the rules. I would never engage in filibustering. I think filibustering is not only offensive to the house but also offensive to the process. That is why I am going to talk at length about why this short title was deemed as it is.

I think this short title says it all because, in the end, as future generations look at this legislation they will ask themselves—and indeed, as courts consider land tax bills or any legislation this parliament passes, the short title is important. It is there for a reason. Parliamentary counsel, which is a senior chamber of the state, has designated this for a reason.

The Attorney-General does not represent the Treasurer in this house. It is the Premier who represents the Treasurer in this house. I accept the executive's ability to have any member representing him, but it was the Premier who introduced this legislation to the house, it was the Premier who said that this was his legislation and it was the Premier who said he was not for moving, until he moved.

The Hon. A. Piccolo: The lady's not for turning.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: The lady's is not for turning. You know what—that statement stands.

My good friend the member for Kaurna talked about the word 'miscellaneous' being able to disguise all sins. Given that it can disguise all sins, the question that we are attempting to flesh out in here is: what are the retrospective changes? Have the government been able to flesh out what those retrospective changes are? Do they know the impact of those retrospective changes? What modelling has been done by the government on the retrospectivity of this bill? Have they received any advice, from any agency in government, advising against retrospective changes to commercial arrangements for taxation purposes? The other question is: are there any precedents for this in the parliament and in the state's history?

The Hon. A. Piccolo interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Let's not go there. The important thing—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: He said, 'Danger, Will Robinson, danger.' As we discuss retrospectivity, the important thing to ask here is: what are the precedents for the government making retrospective changes, given most acts and most parliamentarians do all they can to avoid a retrospective change? The question is: why is the house embarking on retrospective change now?

An honourable member: Embracing it.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Not only embracing it but attempting to make a virtue of it—attempting to say that it is introducing fairness? When you title a bill Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill to become the act, I think it is rather discourteous towards all those people who have made arrangements under state law to establish their arrangements in a certain way to protect their assets.

If there is an unintended consequence that they are paying a differential rate of land tax through the entirety of their properties, should the state be able to introduce a miscellaneous bill to undo that retrospectively so that going forward, despite there being no change in the ownership structure, the government can then charge a rate as if those ownership structures did not exist? That is the question we have to grapple with. This parliament is supreme and can make laws like that. There is no legal requirement for the government to compensate, unless it chooses to.

The government can make taxes as it pleases, and that is why with great power comes great responsibility. I think the government is failing that test in regard to the short title. Quite frankly, the short title should be amended to 'land tax (retrospective implementation of aggregation) amendment bill'. If that were the title, at the very least the government could claim some sort of honesty in what it is attempting to do.

You have to ask yourself: why did they not do that? I suspect that maybe it did have that title and was changed by the government, changed by the minders. You know the ones who thought they should put Timothy Goh on the front page of The Australian? Those minders.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It was.

An honourable member: The dream factory.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: The dream factory, I have always wondered: why does the Premier always use the term 'dream factory'? I keep on hearing this term 'dream factory' over and over again. I do not know why the Premier keeps on using the term 'dream factory'. I am sure that that there is a logical explanation for why that term is used constantly. If only he were here to explain.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I heard the Deputy Premier interject another reflection, in her wisdom. I note that the Deputy Premier referenced the gallery during question time, which is also out of order. Of course, that brought great laughs and joy and merriment to the government benches. In regard to the short title—in the four minutes and 30 seconds that remain to me in the first iteration of my first statement on the short title, given that the government is so keen to guillotine this debate—I would say to the government: at least have the honesty to call this bill what it is, namely, a retrospective tax grab, an increase.

The short title is a revenue measure. It is a money bill and money bills by their very nature raise revenue—not always, but generally. This bill raises money. This bill, titled the Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill, raises money. My questions to the Deputy Premier are: was this its initial title? Was anyone in government involved in designating it a title? Will the government accept an amendment to change the name of the title to the 'land tax (retrospective aggregation implementation measure) amendment bill 2019', just so people know exactly what it is the government is attempting to do? I think that would be the honest and fair thing to do. My colleagues are all going to speak on the short title.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: They are all looking forward to it.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I do not believe that the member for Playford cannot speak for 45 minutes on the short title. That is a challenge I think he can meet and exceed, because the reality is a short title of a bill is more than just the entry. It is like the title of a book. The title of a book is very important, and I would say to members opposite that the first dishonesty in this bill is in its naming, and when you begin with a dishonest frame, the rest of the bill really is questioned.

The CHAIR: Member for West Torrens, we have just put the clock up on the wall. You are approaching your 15 minutes.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Thank you very much for your assistance. I have it at two minutes 21 seconds, which is about right, sir.

The CHAIR: No, we started the clock at the beginning of your—

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I appreciate the Clerk's eagerness to have me timed.

The CHAIR: Because there is a time limit, member for West Torrens.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Thank you so much. Again, I want to thank the Attorney-General for all her advice. My question is: did the government have any role in naming this bill? Were alternatives canvassed? Why has the government not called this the 'land tax (retrospective implementation) amendment bill for aggregation', or a version of that? Why is the term 'aggregation' not in the title of the bill? Why is 'retrospective' not in the title of the bill as a term?

I think that would be important for people who are looking at this, to know the true intent of the bill, because simple, common language in legislation is where parliamentary counsel is moving towards, and clear, concise titles make it easier for members of the general public to understand the laws that are being made. That is my first question on the short title.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: I understand the three questions. The first was: what was the first name of the bill? The first name of the bill was Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill. I am advised that there have been no changes or requests to change. In answer to the third question, as to any change that is proposed: no.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: That was very disappointing. As I begin my second 15-minute explanation on the short title, I will just make sure that I am checking the clock of the Clerk, with Apple technology versus the technology of the House of Assembly.

The CHAIR: It is up on the screen, member for West Torrens.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: If it indeed is the House of Assembly right now. It could just be a museum, or a heritage building where a group of people have come together to talk about measures in a bill, because the house actually adjourned at 6 o'clock. We will let the Supreme Court decide all of that. I did ask the Deputy Premier whether or not she would accept amendments to rename the bill—

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: I said no.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: —no, you didn't—and I asked whether or not she would consider these amendments. She refused to answer. Interjecting does not change the fact—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Who is interjecting?

Mr Basham: She said no.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: He speaks—the firebrand from Finniss. I have to say that I am impressed. I have been here 18 months and I have never heard him speak.

The CHAIR: Member for West Torrens, you are not to respond to interjections; you know that.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I will do my best, sir. I will do my best. The opposition now has a new person to fear.

The Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill should be retitled to better inform people who are looking for legislation to understand its intent. Intent is everything we do in here. The government claimed that they were attempting to insert fairness into land tax. That is not the feedback that we have had. The feedback that we have had has been very, very different. The feedback that we have had says that this bill actually makes land tax unfair, that this bill makes the impacts of aggregation and ownership of property less fair.

It targets certain individuals. It identifies a group of people who have structured their ownerships of multiple properties in a certain way that was legal and available to them under state statute, and the government will not recognise that in the title.

The title of the bill, as I said, is important because understanding why we have gone through that title is to understand exactly how legislation is made. You do not put, for example, motor vehicle registration and the laws governing that under another title that is difficult to find and understand, because in terms of open democracy you want the titles to be something that people can see, easily identify and know the intent of the bill by.

Anyone picking up this amendment bill would be hard pressed to understand its intent. I have always thought the government, when introducing its intent into this bill, would at the very least make the title representative of what it is attempting to do. In making it more representative of what it is attempting to do, you get better outcomes with the public, particularly given the government's refusal to consult on this matter, even for a short period of time, going as far as to guillotine debate, to not allow every parliamentarian in this place to have their say.

One of the important principles of this parliament is that when we enter here we leave our personal identity at the door. I am no longer Tom Koutsantonis when I walk into this chamber; I am the member for West Torrens. I do not speak for myself; I speak for my community. Those communities were denied a say on a vote to create a select committee because of the government guillotine.

At the very least recognise the impact of this bill in the title if you will not let people be consulted on the bill. At the very least allow Finniss, Heysen, Newland, Lee, Florey, Light, Badcoe, Enfield—not Piccolo, not Stinson, not Michaels, not Bettison, not Bedford. The whole principle here is that we are not here to serve ourselves but to serve the public. The short title is crucial to that in any piece of legislation. I do not know why the member for Newland finds this so funny. I think this is a serious piece of democratic literature that should be taken very, very seriously. The title is everything.

Legislation should reflect the government's intent. The title of this bill in my humble opinion does not reflect the government's intent. Indeed, it attempts to disguise the government's intent, and that is unfair. Governments can use their majority—the tyranny of their majority—to try to avoid scrutiny and change the name of the bill. For example, in a celebrated case of euthanasia legislation, after the second reading debate was completed and the house, in a previous parliament, had agreed to the principle of euthanasia through the second reading, then Speaker Atkinson from committee attempted to change the short title of the bill.

He made an impassioned plea to the parliament about the importance of the title of the bill for intent. I think intent is everything. That is why I say to the parliament: 'miscellaneous' means nothing. Quite frankly it is sloppy work. It is sloppy. People can do better. Parliamentary counsel can do better. Miscellaneous, really? It is an aggregation bill. It does a number of things: it changes thresholds, it changes rates, but ultimately it defines aggregation.

Let me give you a brief history on some of the titles of the bills introduced by the current government. The first one was Disability Inclusion Act. That speaks for itself—disability inclusion. Anyone looking at the title of that bill would know that it is about disability inclusion. The second one was Sentencing (Release on Licence) Amendment Act 2018. Again, it speaks for itself. We are not talking about dramatic changes to the short title. We are talking about sensible reforms. The Supply Act: what is more simple and majestic than a supply act? We all know what that means.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Exactly, one paragraph. It is simplicity at its best. The Criminal Law Consolidation—wait for it, sir—(Dishonest Communication with Children) Amendment Act. How clear is that? That is something the Attorney-General brought into the parliament. She knew. Let's be clear about this. Any dishonest communication with children is an offence. Simple, easy to follow, the KISS principle—keep it simple, stupid. We move on to Statutes Amendment (SACAT Federal Diversity Jurisdiction) Act 2018—again, self-evident. Farm Debt Mediation Act makes sense.

Ms Stinson: It's probably about farm debt mediation, right?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I would say so. Health Care (Governance) Amendment Act makes sense. Criminal Procedure (Miscellaneous) Amendment Act: they have snuck in 'miscellaneous' there, so that is one out of the first 10, making it 10 per cent. I would have thought that the government could do better than that. Public Finance and Audit makes sense in terms of managing public finance and auditing. Criminal Assets Confiscation: again, it is clear and evident.

Ms Stinson: Confiscating criminal assets.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Exactly. Anyone can read that and know exactly what the intent of the bill is. Statutes Amendment (National Energy Laws): obviously, that is about national energy laws. Given the state is the jurisdiction that is the legislative parent of all national energy policy, it has to be very clear and concise legislation. Evidence (Journalists) Amendment Act: again, there was an election commitment that the Attorney-General took to the election, as I remember.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: Shield laws.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Shield laws. That would have been another good name for the bill—'shield laws'. Infrastructure SA Act establishes Infrastructure SA and guides its operations. Children and Young People (Safety) (Miscellaneous) Amendment Act: again, it says 'miscellaneous' but we know basically what it means. Fair Trading (Gift Cards) Amendment Act, Late Payment of Government Debts—they are pretty self-evident. Fair Trading (Ticket Scalping) Amendment Act: the gift cards bill is obvious, the late payments is obvious, ticket scalping is obvious.

Here is my favourite: Payroll Tax (Exemption for Small Business) Amendment Act. That is very clear and concise. The government has decided that all small businesses with a payroll of a certain level will be exempt from payroll tax. It is very simple. Despite Treasury arguing against that for the four years previous, they were able to come up with a very concise piece of legislation to implement the government's will.

The Terrorism (Police Powers) (Use of Force) Amendment Bill obviously describes what the government is attempting to do. National gas (capacity trading and auctions) is a piece of legislation that I led when I was minister. What the current Minister for Energy is quite good at is completing legislation that I did not have time to pass. He introduced and passed it. Of course, that has created a capacity for the nation to trade gas that is held in storage in pipes. That has increased liquidity in the gas market, lowering power prices and gas prices, and created a transparent gas market around Australia. Again, for anyone involved in this industry, it is very clear what this stands for.

Petroleum and geothermal (ban on hydraulic fracturing), the most controversial piece of legislation this government has passed. Again, it is clear: it is banning fracking under the Petroleum and Geothermal Energy Act. The title says it; it is very simple. I can go on and on—

Mr Brown: And I will.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: —so I will. You stole my line, you bugger. The Teachers Registration and Standards (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill is no doubt a bill about teacher registration and standards. The Public Interest Disclosure Bill is no doubt about how whatever is in the public interest should be disclosed. The Appropriation Act is where the government gets to borrow record levels of debt, nearly doubling the state's debt. This is a bill that will go down in history. Indeed, it was in relation to this bill, if my memory serves me correctly, that the Treasurer was asked: will this appropriation be paid for in his lifetime? He said, no, it will not. He will not make it.

Mr Brown: That's sad on so many levels.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It is sad. I do wish him a long life. This is very clear and concise: the Summary Offences (Disrespectful Conduct in Court) Amendment Bill. That is a clear intent by the state. As I am getting to the last minute of my second question of my 15-minute explanation of the short title, before we move on to my colleagues to do exactly the same thing can the government explain to me why they did not use the term 'retrospective' in the short title to apply to aggregation?

Will the government accept amendments that include the term 'retrospective' and 'aggregation' in the short title to make sure that there are absolutely no ambiguities about the intent of this bill, that is, to impose a land tax increase on the people of South Australia by aggregating their properties and making it retrospective in nature?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: I note the complimentary assessment by the member of the government's description of other bills that it has brought before the parliament, otherwise, I refer to my previous answer and, in the absence of the member presenting any amendment after 14 days, I will treat the rest of his contribution as a comment.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: That was disappointing. I would have thought my 15 minutes deserved a more fulsome answer.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: You're lucky you got one at all.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: 'Lucky I got that at all'—the arrogance on display is breathtaking. It is almost 'let them eat cake'. If only we understood.

The Hon. A. Piccolo: Only if we can aggregate the cakes.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Only if we could aggregate the cakes. All this aggregation is bad for you. Let me go on with the list of bills that have simple, simplistic, easy to use, easily referenced names. What was I up to? I am going to start from the beginning. No, here we are: the Office for the Ageing (Adult Safeguarding) Amendment Act 2018. Quite clearly, that is about the Office for the Ageing. This is an interesting piece of legislation: the Statutes Amendment and Repeal (Budget Measures) Act 2018.

Mr Brown: Did that have land tax in it?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It may have, because I suspect that bill repealed some aspects of taxation.

Mr Brown: Did that have big tax increases in it?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I doubt it. The Sentencing Amendment Act. The Health and Community Services Complaints (Miscellaneous) Amendment Act no doubt talks in depth about health and community services. The Statutes Amendment (Domestic Violence) Act—if I am not mistaken (and I could be wrong) that is something that the member for Badcoe, the member for Fisher, the member for Elder, the member for Enfield, the Attorney-General, the member for Reynell, the member for Florey and other colleagues in the parliament have been championing to try to minimise domestic violence. Again, the simplicity of the title of the bill gives people—especially women—the ability to understand their rights and have a look at—

Ms Stinson: Women in this case.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Women in this case, yes—to look at the legislation and get to it quickly to find out—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I seek your protection, sir. The next one is tobacco products. There is no doubt that legislation is about the regulation of e-cigarettes and review. Title after title gives us a concise summary of what it does in a few words. The Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill means nothing. The road traffic (evidentiary provisions), the South Australian Employment Tribunal, residential parks, the Construction Industry Training Fund (Board) Amendment Act—that must be an amendment act to allow Nicholas Handley to be able to get on the board without being qualified. That must have been—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Of course, yes; privilege may not apply because this may just be a room of people talking to each other.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: Who are we defaming? The minister or Mr Handley?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Mr Handley, I am attempting to defame. What was I up to?

Members interjecting:

The CHAIR: Unfortunately, member for West Torrens, if you started again I would have to invoke standing order 128.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Tedious repetition, sir?

The CHAIR: Yes, but you have not got to that yet.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: That came to my mind in my first speech. I was waiting for you to use that; I was glad you did not, sir.

The CHAIR: If you started your list of titles again, I would invoke it.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: If I can quote from a guide by parliamentary counsel:

Part 2—Short titles

General

25 As a general rule, you should take particular care when naming Bills to ensure that the names you choose are as informative as possible (within reason) and do not cause unnecessary confusion to the Parliament or to any other users of legislation…

There it is, with my 11 minutes to go. It continues:

In particular, this involves avoiding names that could easily be confused with the names of other current Bills. For instance, Bills whose titles differ only in the inclusion of a 'noise word' like 'Legislation' or 'Laws' may well confuse some users.

With all due respect to everyone in this parliament, there are very few people who understand the intricate workings of land tax legislation—perhaps the member for Lee, perhaps the Treasurer, and probably Mr Raymond, who is in the parliament today. They are the only people who probably really understand—sorry, my apologies. The member for Enfield has probably written the book on the interpretation of land tax laws—expert. It may well confuse some users. The guide continues:

Location of 'Amendment' in titles of Bills

26 The simplest Bill title for an amending Bill is created by adding 'Amendment' to the title of the Principal Act (e.g. Public Service Amendment Bill).

27 Less obvious titles for amending Bills are created in several other ways.

28 In some cases—

parliamentary counsel tells us—

we add 'Amendment' to a title describing the kind of legislation being amended (e.g. Taxation Laws Amendment Bill, Social Security—

I think we would consider social security, as we are a state jurisdiction—

Legislation Amendment Bill). In these cases, the title gives a clue, at least to those familiar with Commonwealth Acts—

it distinguishes between them and state acts—

since it would be rare for a Commonwealth Principle Act to contain 'Laws' or 'Legislation' in its title.

I think that is something interesting for us to cogitate on as we debate the Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill. It continues:

29 In other cases, we have added explanatory words in parentheses to the title of the Principal Act, usually accompanied by 'Amendment' (e.g. Student Assistance (Budget Matters) Amendment).

30 The practice—

we are told by parliamentary counsel—

of creating Bill titles as described in paragraph 29 could confuse readers.

We want to avoid the confusion of readers because it may be difficult to tell whether the words—

Mr BROWN: Point of order: I might interrupt the member for West Torrens. I draw your attention to the state of the house.

The CHAIR: You have drawn my attention to the state of the house. Counting the members present, I see there is not a quorum. Ring the bells.

A quorum having been formed:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Back to the important descriptor by parliamentary counsel on how short titles of bills should be named:

30 The practice of creating Bill titles as described in paragraph 29 could confuse readers—

Not the Attorney-General. Nothing could confuse her.

Ms Stinson: No, she's too smart.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: She is too smart for all of us.

because it may be difficult to tell whether the words in parentheses are part of the name of the Principal Act or only an explanation of what is in the amending Bill. For instance:

the Higher Education Funding (Student Organisations) Amendment Bill 1994 was an amendment of the Higher Education Funding Act 1988;

It creates confusion. How much time do I have, sir? Is it 14 minutes? I had nine on mine, sir.

The CHAIR: We have eight. Lucky you set yours, member for West Torrens.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Thank you, sir. It continues:

31 The problem is particularly acute in areas in which there are a number of Acts whose titles refer to specific subject matters in parentheses. For anyone familiar with the Crimes (Hostages) Act 1989—

and I know the member for Playford is familiar with this act—

the Crimes (Foreign Incursions and Recruitment) Act 1978, the Crimes (Aviation) Act 1991 and the host of other Crimes Acts with equivalent titles, the Crimes (Child Sex Tourism) Amendment Bill and the Crimes (Search Warrants and Powers of Arrest) Amendment Bills, which in fact amended the Crimes Act 1914, could easily have been amending a Crimes (Child Sex Tourism) Act and a Crimes (Search Warrants and Powers of Arrest) Act.

32 Accordingly, expressions in parentheses which indicate the subject matter of the amending Bill should appear after 'Amendment' rather than before it, for instance—

Pay attention, my young Padawan learners—

Higher Education Funding Amendment (Student Organisations) Bill;

So what we have here is an attempt at the same but using 'miscellaneous'. It continues:

Crimes Amendment (Child Sex Tourism) Bill.

In Numbering of Bills, I want to get to the part where we talk about 'miscellaneous', and that may take me some time to flesh out, Mr Chair, given I have seven minutes on the short title left. I suppose the question that I want the Attorney-General to start considering is: has she read the Parliamentary Counsel Drafting Direction No. 1.1, which was reissued on May 2019 while she was Attorney-General? It has in its content some important paragraphs:

Long titles—

Material in Bill must be within scope of long titles…

General rule…

Amendments…

Use of 'and for related purposes' and 'and for other purposes'—

which perhaps could have been a better title: land tax and for other purposes, i.e. ripping people off who have made investments amendment bill.

Ms Stinson: Catchier.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It is catchier. Finally, the Attorney is seeking advice. This could be a moment in the history of the parliament: the Attorney-General might not know something. That is remarkable. If only we could record it for posterity, Mr Chair. The numbering of bills is important in avoiding numbered titles in favour of titles with subject matter references. Why? Why would we avoid numbering of bills rather than just bill No. 1, bill No. 2, 2A, 2B, whatever it might be? We have no less than the Senate select committee that has done a body of work on the naming of bills. Who said we do not get value for money out of the Australian Senate?

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: Not I.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Not I. It continues:

The Senate Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills raised with the Attorney General in 2003—

so it is appropriate that the Attorney-General is here—

the potential for confusion when Bills that include an identifying number do not pass in the calendar year in which they are introduced, and instead roll over into a new calendar year.

Hence, we do not number bills. It continues:

36 The use of identifying numbers generates confusion in several ways. Confusion arises, for instance, in a case in which the first in a series of Bills introduced in a year is called 'No. 4', and the preceding Bills, presumably numbered 1 to 3, are nowhere to be found on the public record.

Mere mortals like us might find that confusing; not for the Attorney-General, I accept that. No, she is much smarter than all of us. If bills 1, 2 and 3 do not pass but bill 4 does within a calendar year, it could create some confusion, which is why the Senate committee found that bills should avoid numbering and 'extend the use of explanatory words' in bills, which brings us to the short title.

I know that this is a long, roundabout 45 minute journey on the short title. Can I just say that I have just opened the gate. There are many more to speak on this to try to explore the full path of the short title because ultimately it is important that we understand this. This is for the bureaucracy:

38 Accordingly, if you receive drafting instructions for a Bill identified by a generic title plus a number, you should draw the Committee’s views to the attention of your instructors and encourage them to consider using instead a subject matter reference (with or without the words 'and Other Measures'…

'Miscellaneous' does not cut it—it does not cut it. It means nothing.

I think the government should have honesty and decency, as is said in chapter 39. This is particularly important in the case of a bill that is unlikely to pass in the calendar year of introduction, like this one, or a case in which two or more bills in the series are likely to be before the parliament at the same time. Land tax 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and, of course, genesis 6 to come in the Legislative Council—6.0. It would be much easier for us to follow the workings of Daniel Gannon and the Premier to understand exactly where we are up to—

Mr Picton: The dance, the tango.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: The tango. I ask the Attorney-General whether she has read this procedure? Why was it not followed in this case? Could she go away and get some information for the committee about why 'miscellaneous' was used and not the appropriate descriptor as described by a Senate committee? If it is 2013, I suspect the chair of that committee would have been a Conservative member of the Senate, probably a colleague of the member for Bragg, someone she knows, trusts and admires. Then perhaps we would avoid the confusion of not knowing what 'miscellaneous' actually means when it comes to the short title of this bill. I would enjoy an explanation worthy of the question that I have asked her.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: In respect of the document that has been quoted, it does not identify for me any recognition of a document that I have read. I am advised that it is a document—from the quotes that have been read out—that actually applies to the federal parliament and has nothing to do with the guidelines for our parliamentary counsel.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: I am just relying on information that you have given me, which is guidelines for parliamentary counsel. I am just explaining to the committee, Mr Chairman, that the parliamentary counsel we are talking about in relation to the document, which I think the member is reading from, actually does not relate to our parliamentary counsel. In any event, they have presented the title, as I said. It has been unamended and, in the absence of any other amendment by the member, I will again treat that as comment.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I rise with respect to clause 1 of the Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill. Similar to the member for West Torrens, I also register my surprise at the short title of this bill, not necessarily in respect of it being named 'land tax' but that the misnomer of the bill is then included of 'miscellaneous'. The provisions do not accord with the concept of miscellany, as I understand it.

The CHAIR: Member for Lee, I hate to say this, but I am not quite hearing you. You can either speak up or bring your microphone closer to you.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Alas, I must commence again.

The CHAIR: Yes, and I will not invoke 128.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Not dissimilar to the member for West Torrens, I also rise to speak about the short title of the bill, not so much in regard to the first two words comprising its name 'land tax'—I think we all understand that that is the context of the changes contained within the bill— but the misnomer of 'miscellaneous' in the bill. My understanding of the concept of miscellaneous, or miscellany, is that it is meant to refer to a collection of unrelated matters within a cohort.

It is very clear to me, and it has been very clear to others, both in here and out in the community who have looked at this bill, what the intent of this bill is. This is not some tidying up of various provisions of the land tax regime which has been in existence variously from 1936, 1884 or at some other period with which the longer serving members of the government are more familiar than me.

This is directly related to a package of changes to the Land Tax Act to give effect to a retrospective application of aggregation changes. Those aggregation changes are solely designed to generate more land tax revenue for the government, and those land tax changes are designed specifically to group landowners' landholdings together so that those landholdings, in the total value, can be assessed for land tax at the sum of their values, and hence attract a higher tax rate than they might have previously. That is the purpose of the bill, to aggregate those landholdings and to generate more revenue for the government.

The member for West Torrens is far more experienced and loquacious than I when it comes to considering how bills may or may not be better named so, perhaps much to your displeasure, Deputy Speaker, I will not burden you with some of my suggestions about how this bill could have been more accurately named. However, I think it is fair to say that this bill would have been more accurately named had it not had the misnomer of 'miscellaneous', and had it had the more direct, more accurate nomenclature of 'aggregation' or 'tax raising' or 'retrospective harvesting of people's hard work and livelihoods'—in parentheses—amendment bill.

That is certainly the feedback we have been receiving from members in the community, and not just members of the community who are landowners but members of the community who are generally concerned on behalf of landowners or who have genuine concerns about the broader impact beyond the impact on those landowners. The impact it might have, for example, on the tenants of landlords impacted by this bill or, indeed, people who participate in the property development industry, people who are involved in the real estate sales industry, people who are involved in the property management industry, people who are involved in the housing construction industry.

It is not just people who have first tried to approach the government, found an unwilling and deaf ear to their concerns and who have then approached the opposition and crossbench MPs in both houses to make their concerns known. It is those, in particular, who have felt misled, and the short title of this bill best embodies the misleading nature of this government's land tax reforms. It provides some sort of blancmange-like name to the title of this bill to cover up what it actually does to those people who will feel the full, most deleterious effects of its measures should they be passed. It is one more leaf in the extensive War and Peace-length novel of the misleading mischaracterisations of this reform that we have been subjected to by this government.

At no stage has the government been up-front with this parliament or the broader community about what this bill actually seeks to do and what impact it will have on the community. To just claim that this bill and its impacts are some form of miscellany on the community is, I think, an outrage. It is an absolute outrage. It absolutely seeks to cover up what this bill attempts to do.

I must say that I find it wholly unsurprising that the Deputy Premier is completely unwilling to contemplate a different, more accurate and more to the point name for this bill than the Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill. This is not a miscellaneous collection of amendments to tidy up the Land Tax Act. This is a series of changes that are closely related to give effect to these aggregation measures, to effect those aggregation measures as they relate to individuals, as they relate to land held in trust structures and as they relate to land interests held in company structures. That is the purpose of the bill.

It does not bode well at the commencement of the detailed examination of this bill that we have got off on the wrong foot, having first of all to contemplate how we can start having a more accurate discussion about the contents of the bill. If the Deputy Premier had been a bit more forthcoming in her response to the member for West Torrens' entreaties that we have a more accurate name for the bill, then I think some of the goodwill, the bonhomie, that we have been missing in the operation of this place in these recent times—

The Hon. V.A. Chapman interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Do I need an elocution lesson, Deputy Premier?

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: No, lobotomy; is that what you said?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: No, bonhomie. I realise in these careful and particular times that might be inadvertently gender specific, but I think you can understand the point I was trying to make, which is that we have been alleviated of a significant dose of goodwill in recent times in this place, to the point where many of us do not even know if we are meant to be here this evening.

Ms Stinson: Didn't we rise at six?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Yes, some of us understood that was inadvertently the case. However, we do find ourselves here, trying to wade through what is, albeit relatively short in terms of the number of clauses, still a relatively complex bill to give effect to these aggregation changes.

If the point of my contribution is more representative rather than specific in desiring an outcome that the Deputy Premier change the short title of this bill, if my point is indeed that the title of the bill as it stands signifies the months of deliberate deception and misleading rhetoric which we have had from the government about this package of land tax changes, then I implore the Deputy Premier, let's get back on the right foot. Let's start talking with some sense of accuracy and reality about what we are trying to achieve here in this place, and that is to get a far more accurate and far more specific look at what the impact of these changes will be.

Without that, what I am very much worried about is that, without that return to the good-naturedness, which I understand used to exist in this place some time ago between members and particularly in the conduct of the sort of business in which we are currently engaged, I fear that the legitimate questions that will be raised by the opposition throughout those 18 clauses—again, some of which are very complex—may be glossed over or brushed over by the Deputy Premier or by the government.

I fear that they will not be taken seriously, that these reams of questions that we have to ask on these various clauses and hope to have answered not just to satisfy our own interest and our own curiosity about how these clauses are to apply in the future, if indeed the bill is to pass, but more to the point to satisfy those queries which we have had from those members of the community who genuinely feel that they are yet to be provided with any comfort or accurate answers from the government when they have attempted to approach the government for that sort of information.

Really, in that regard, I leave it in the Deputy Premier's hands. She has a unique opportunity here to turn this bill into something similar to those bills to which the member for West Torrens has made reference, those bills which had a very specific purpose, which had it absolutely clear in their title what they sought to do and what they sought approval from the parliament for in putting those matters to the parliament.

The member for West Torrens, not in his most recent contributions in this place but certainly in previous contributions I have heard him make on this land tax matter, has made reference to the unfortunate circumstance which South Australians are exposed to each Monday and that is, after hearing with some great relief and fanfare of the retirement of the former federal member for Sturt, unfortunately they are confronted every morning with not just another several hundred words of what he considers to be worthwhile reading but, even more dispiritingly for the community, a large picture of himself as well. In one of those recent articles—

The CHAIR: Member for Lee, in the dying minutes you seem to be digressing.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Was I?

The CHAIR: Yes.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I had not yet got to sneeze, Chair.

The CHAIR: Wrap this one up.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Let me perhaps wrap this up on this question: Deputy Premier, on hearing my exhortations, will you not now reconsider the entreaties of the opposition and contemplate a more accurate renaming of this bill?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Can I start with the allegation of this conspiracy of concealment that has been presented and say that the government utterly rejects that assertion. Of the 193 submissions that have been received in relation to this bill, of those I have read—most of which, unless there is a confidentiality request in them, are on the YourSAy website—or any that I have been informed of, I do not recall any complaint by anyone at any time on the accuracy or description of the short title. I may have missed it. The member may have received some submission on it. I am happy to, again, remind the member that in the last 14 days he has had the opportunity to present an amendment. In the absence of there being one, there is really nothing further I can add.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I appreciate the Deputy Premier's response to that, that in the unnumbered submissions that she has read that she made reference to she did not encounter a complaint about the short title of the bill. I am surprised. Perhaps I can avail the house of some of the feedback I have witnessed to the government's land tax changes, which I think strikes at the very heart of the matter of the title.

In fact, one gentleman at the Lockleys land tax forum said that the government is not entitled to do this. I realise that might be stretching which direction we are heading, but where I was heading previously, more accurately—and accuracy is, of course, what we are seeking to achieve in the context of the debate on this short title—was the number of people at these forums who spoke about the government's dishonesty in regard to these reforms.

We had Graham, who spoke about this at the Lockleys land tax forum, and we had Will, who also spoke about this at the Lockleys land tax forum. We also had Tom—not the one with whom we are most recently familiar—speak at the Goodwood land tax forum to make the same point. Particularly Tony, at the same forum, made the point as well that the Liberals are dishonest. It may be that some of those representers were more specifically referring to the fact that the government promised to cut land tax before the election, and now, 18 months later, they seek to increase land tax receipts to the government. However, I do believe that this issue about the short title of the bill is important.

Anyway, that was a digression, because before I completed my remarks previously, before I was digressing further on the topic of sneans, I was talking about the former member for Sturt's—Christopher Pyne's—contributions in Monday's Advertiser. In referring to the land tax reform that the government is seeking to make, he drew an analogy with the reform of the former Howard federal coalition government in the introduction of the goods and services tax. He made a number of points in that regard, drawing an analogy between the introduction, by Howard and his government, of the GST and the attempted introduction of the aggregation arrangements with regard to the land tax regime by the Liberal state government here.

He said that it was difficult reform and that important tax reform is always hard. I do not disagree with that part of the former federal member for Sturt's analysis. It was hard for John Howard because he was replacing a number of large revenue-raising taxes at the federal level with a new broad-based tax, the application of which was not intuitively understood by the majority of Australians, who would, of course, be responsible for paying that tax. So that makes it hard. What makes this land tax reform hard is the government's mishandling of it and repeatedly having to change its package in an effort to win sufficient political consent to get it passed through parliament.

The CHAIR: I understand the point that you are making, member for Lee, but we are debating the short title.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Indeed, and an analogy of the GST and the land tax will be joined up to the short title posthaste, sir.

The CHAIR: You are building the argument.

Ms Stinson: Don't rush.

The CHAIR: He's not, member for Badcoe.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: You will remember that the title of the GST legislation—or the bill, as it was before it was passed—raised some interest in the national media. Because it was an unusual title for a bill, it sought perhaps to describe what the bill did in a way in which perhaps previous pieces of federal legislation had not done previously. It was called A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Bill—it was not called 'miscellaneous'.

There was a lot of miscellany in the goods and services tax legislation. There were many matters that needed to be attended to. I am not referring to the infamous birthday cake, of course, because that was from another time, but there were many different provisions that needed to be addressed in that bill because it was far reaching.

It repealed a large number of provisions of other taxation legislation. Principally, I think we can all remember the sales tax taxation regime, which was abolished as part of the introduction of the GST, but of course there were also the application provisions. There were also the transition provisions and there was also the range of amendments that were necessary in order for businesses who were paying for goods and services before providing them to a subsequent purchaser in the course of their business, and they were dreadfully worried when this tax was first being flagged about the risk of double taxation, hence the regime of input tax credits and all the other measures that were necessary in order to successfully navigate businesses through that, let alone win sufficient community consent for that.

But that is not what we are discussing here. We are discussing a series of 18 clauses, some of which are merely—and I know this is not a word—'definitional'. Some of them are definitions would perhaps be a more accurate or more appropriate way of describing it. Some of them are definitions, so even a smaller number of clauses than 18 clauses are then being required to give effect to these changes to change the aggregation regime in the Land Tax Act.

I do not think it is unreasonable in that respect that this bill should indeed be named something more akin to the fact that the aggregation provisions are being extensively broadened and that the purpose of that is to generate more revenue for the government. I would not go so far as to say that the bill seeks to place South Australia on some sort of parity with other interstate jurisdictions, because that is certainly not the case and hence certainly you would not want the short title to reflect that, it not being the case.

That is not what happens here. If indeed this bill was merely a replica of aggregation provisions that exist in the Eastern States, then I am sure we would have had the bill at the time of the budget, and the provisions within this bill could have been provided in the Budget Measures Bill—again, while we are at it, an accurately titled bill. Measures that are in the budget are called the Budget Measures Bill. But that was not the case, because the government, of course, not only continued to shift the goalposts in terms of what their policy was, it also shifted the goalposts in terms of what needed to be included in this bill, to the extent, of course, that the Deputy Premier has also been required to file amendments to give effect to the latest iteration of these changes.

I will not belabour the point too much further about the need for more accurate naming of this bill so that the community has a better or more accurate understanding of its provisions, but I did want to commence perhaps placing some matters on record to give the Deputy Premier's advisers some opportunity to start to become familiar with some of the concerns that have been raised with the opposition about the provisions of this bill. As I have said a number of times in my contributions, during the second reading and also this evening, this is a complex bill.

The changes affecting particularly land holdings in trust structures as well as landholdings in company structures, for example, have raised many questions not just in landowners' minds but also in those professional services workers who advise those landowners. I am talking about accountants and tax lawyers in particular. I have a couple of representations that have been made to me which I have been asked in particular to raise with the government so that they can have some better answers.

They tell me that these matters were raised with the Treasurer in direct approaches from these representors, but unfortunately they were unable to get answers to satisfy their queries. They are long, so I will do my best to commence getting onto these now, and hopefully that provides the Deputy Premier's advisers some capacity to start thinking about how the Deputy Premier may respond to them, if not in the extensive debate in which we are currently engaged on clause 1 then at the appropriate juncture at the later clauses within the bill.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Point of order: unless these matters do relate to the title, I think they are more appropriately identified in the substance of the bill—the sections of the area of complaint.

The CHAIR: It is a fair point. Member for Lee, you have given your best effort to addressing your remarks to clause 1, but you are now starting to digress. I might just seek some advice. Yes, member for Lee, we really need to stay specific to clause 1. There might be another more appropriate time as we work our way through the clauses.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Let me return to the miscellany. I do have a miscellany of matters to raise throughout the context of the bill, but if you would like me to give some specific examples about why the title of this bill is so misrepresentative of what this bill actually seeks to do, I was forwarded a copy of how the Cambridge Dictionary defines the term 'miscellany'.

Some of the synonyms are remarkable: 'all manner of things', 'alphabet soup', 'biodiverse', 'crucible' (I am not sure if you are an Arthur Miller fan), 'hodgepodge', 'it takes all sorts' (well, it does indeed in this place, does it not?), 'jumble', 'kludge' (one that I was previously unfamiliar with), 'panoply', 'patchwork', 'plurality'. So there are some examples, and placing it in the context of a sentence often assists somebody to get a firmer grasp on the more appropriate usage of a term.

The CHAIR: Member for Lee, I am pleased that somebody forwarded you the definitions from the Cambridge Dictionary, which we all once had a copy of, of course, but not so much these days, but I am going to bring you to standing order 128, irrelevance or repetition.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Which is it, sir?

The CHAIR: It is not repetition.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: No.

The CHAIR: No. It's—

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Is the 'miscellaneous' term irrelevant?

The CHAIR: Well, listing synonyms for 'miscellany'—

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Or 'miscellaneous'.

The CHAIR: Or 'miscellaneous'.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Which is the short title of the bill.

The CHAIR: Yes, I understand that, but I am going to say it is stretching it, alright?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Okay. Well, let me contract it.

The CHAIR: Yes, please do, in the final two minutes.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: 'His bedroom is full of guitars, keyboards and miscellaneous instruments.' That would be an appropriate use of the term 'miscellaneous', not in the middle of the short title of a land tax bill which seeks to impose aggregation. You may think that that is stretching the point. I think that is a fairly accurate representation of a more appropriate use of the term 'miscellaneous', rather than parking it in the middle of the short title of this bill. If the bill was to be called—and I tried not to do this, sir. I said I was not going to burden you with alternative suggestions as to how this bill could be named, but I am sorry. I am going to have to go there now. I have been forced into this.

The CHAIR: I think you have painted yourself into a corner, member for Lee.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I have. It is a heavy heart. 'The land tax introduction of more punitive aggregation measures bill'—

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: You have already told us these.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Have I?

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: Yes.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: See, that would be repetition—not tedious or irrelevant, but possibly repetition. Once again, Chair, I implore you. Will you accept the entreaties of the opposition and rename the short title of this bill?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: The discourse provided by the member has given me the opportunity to be briefed on previous land tax amendment bills. The last one, which had substantive changes to the Land Tax Act, had almost exactly the same name—the Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill 2010. It covered a number of reforms to the land tax law at the time.

For whatever reason—I am assuming that, as at 11 May 2010, the Hon. Kevin Foley was still the treasurer—he seemed to see fit that this was an appropriate descriptor for the purposes of significant amendments to the Land Tax Act. It was not often that I agreed with Mr Foley, but on this occasion he seems to have been quite wise.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I appreciate that explanation. Let me enlighten the Deputy Premier as to contents of the 2010 Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill. Unlike the specific aggregation measures contained in this bill, there was indeed a miscellany of different changes made in that bill.

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: Thresholds don't count, do they?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: I am glad the Deputy Premier put that forward. No, she is right. She is correct. It did contain a change to the thresholds—not one but multiple thresholds—but most notably an increase in the tax-free threshold. But, sir, you will be happy to hear that the changes did not stop there. New amendments were inserted into the Land Tax Act to give effect to a new regime whereby in the future land tax thresholds were to take effect, not from 2010 but from a later year in 2011. New amendments were included in the Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill 2010, unrelated to that increase in the tax-free threshold.

Those amendments sought to introduce a new regime where every year the Valuer-General would be required to furnish RevenueSA with their annual land values and hence an assessment made of the increase between that year's land values and the previous year's land values, and a percentage increase could be determined between the two, and the land tax thresholds would be adjusted accordingly. It was a very significant change at the time and, as I said, not related to that significant increase in the tax-free threshold from $110,000 to $300,000. If my memory serves me correctly, it was a measure that exempted 74,000 landowners from having to pay land tax as a result. It places in context the Premier's claims that his aggregation measure is the most significant measure of all.

The CHAIR: And that is very interesting, member for Lee.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Yes, I am drawing a distinction between that miscellaneous amendment bill and this miscellaneous amendment bill, and really I am doing it at the behest of the Deputy Premier. It was her suggestion that we go to this place. That was a very significant amendment because, in addition to that increase in the tax-free threshold, there was this new regime of the indexation of thresholds going forward. That was to address the concerns of the community about that situation that they had experienced, particularly in the early 2000s where very significant increases in property values would not mean that their land values were jumping from either a tax-free threshold into a taxable threshold or even from a taxable threshold up to another taxable threshold and, of course, have to pay far more land tax.

That miscellaneous amendment bill contained different provisions aimed at doing different things. In that respect, perhaps that could be called a miscellaneous collection of land tax reforms. There were different elements to that land tax reform rather than just the introduction of the necessary provisions to give effect to the change in aggregation. I am grateful to the Deputy Premier for giving me the opportunity, perhaps in the clearest context we could with regard to land tax bills that have been considered before in this place, to consider why, in this instance, the reference to 'miscellaneous' is not appropriate but, in that instance nine years ago, it was appropriate.

I think you can see from that very clear example, where there is a disparate range of reforms within the one bill, that you could call it—and I am sorry to go back to it—a hotchpotch of measures aimed at different parts of the land tax regime. I will not labour the point any further, but I think that it would be more conducive to the parliament's consideration of this bill, and it would get it off on the right foot, if we were to have the opportunity of having a more accurately named bill so that we know from the outset what we are dealing with.

As we have heard from the member for West Torrens, there are some people who are intimately familiar with taxation acts. There are some people who are very familiar with the process of amending those acts, the types of provisions contained in the bills that are necessary to give effect to those changes, how the parliament considers them, how they are drafted and how they are worded by parliamentary counsel to enable that consideration, but there are some of us who are less familiar.

The member for Bragg, of course, has a pretty good memory for these things. She was able to recall not only the Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill 2010 but also that the Hon. Kevin Foley was the treasurer at that time. But there are members here, perhaps like the member for Colton or the member for Heysen, who were not here in 2010 and are not able to draw a clear distinction between that miscellaneous amendment bill and this miscellaneous amendment bill.

If for nothing else other than the benefit of the member for Heysen, to enable him to have a firmer grasp of whether we are dealing with specific provisions here or if we are being presented with miscellany, I think it would be worthwhile to have a more accurate naming of this bill. The member for Heysen, of course, will be grateful that I have not yet reflected on our parking arrangements to date, although it seems I have inadvertently done so. With that, I draw my contribution towards its close. I think the Deputy Premier would do us all well if she would consider more accurately naming this bill, and I will now ask her once again whether she would contemplate doing so.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: No.

The CHAIR: Member for Playford, you have the call.

Mr BROWN: My question to the Attorney relates to clause 1 and the short title of this bill, which, as members may be aware, is the Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill. We are all grateful for the assistance of parliamentary counsel and the fantastic work they do in assisting us too do our jobs. I do not in any way mean to express a concern for the work of parliamentary counsel, but more a concern for the activities of the government when it comes to working out what the title of this bill is actually to be. I know that other members have expressed views that there are other potential titles of this bill, such as the 'land tax (attempt to grab money from mum-and-dad investors) amendment bill', or potentially the 'land tax (grubby deal between the government and the Property Council) bill'. I am not sure about those titles, but I know that they have been suggested by some.

I would really like to know how the government came up with this particular name, given some of the submissions they received during their so-called consultation process. For example, I have one submission from a gentleman who lives in Kensington Park, which I think potentially makes him a constituent of the member for Bragg. In his submission, he says, 'Hello land tax,' which I think is a pretty good way to address the government, and continues:

My Mum…is in a nursing home with dementia and she does not have a family home.

Mum has two rental properties, the land tax last year was $255.00 The rental from these properties—

this is unfortunately blacked out on the submission, but I am sure it was not a particularly large amount of money. He continues:

Less rates, water, insurance etc leaves her about $10,000.00 With your proposal land tax will be $3422.48

How is she better off?

Regards…

That is one submission that the government received and one submission that they have used in coming up with this bill. Another submission the government received says, 'Hello, I am writing to you to voice my concern over—'

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Point of order, Mr Chair: again, these submissions do not relate to the title of the bill. In answer to the question that has been—

Mr BROWN: This is a point of order?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Yes, on a question of relevance.

The CHAIR: It is relevance.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: There is a question that has been asked, and I am happy to answer it, but I would suggest that reading out submissions that do not reflect some argument to support a change of the title or to support an amendment that is going to be presented by the member is irrelevant.

Mr BROWN: On the point of order, Mr Chairman.

The CHAIR: On the point of order?

Mr BROWN: I feel it is more than appropriate to express to this house the submissions that the government received in the consultation process that they conducted in order to come with this entire bill, including the name.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Can I put this to you, sir, in relation to the question. As has been abundantly clear to this committee, in response to question 1 of the member for West Torrens as to the origin of the title and given that there has been no request or change to that title since it was presented by parliamentary counsel, the assertion by the member that there has been some reliance on submissions, which purport to be the basis upon which the government made a decision about what the title would be, is completely inaccurate.

If the member has submissions that he has received that would justify some supported amendment that he proposes to make, then let him put them; otherwise, it is irrelevant.

Mr BROWN: On the point of order, Mr Chairman: how is the Deputy Premier able to inform this house that these submissions have nothing to do with it when I have not even told her what they are yet?

The CHAIR: Members, if I could just read from Blackmore's Practice of the House of Assembly—

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: Blackmore's?

The CHAIR: Blackmore's House of Assembly—you might want to note this, too, member for Lee.

Members interjecting:

The CHAIR: The spine is going on it, but on page 311 it states:

Repetition of the same arguments is considered, equally with irrelevance, an infringement of the rules of debate.

Mr BROWN: On the point of order: I am not being repetitive; I am simply providing additional information—

The Hon. V.A. Chapman interjecting:

Mr BROWN: I know that she does not want to hear it, but I am going to say this. I am simply providing additional information for the Attorney-General to enable her to answer my question.

The CHAIR: Let's go back a bit. The Attorney-General has raised a point of order about relevance. I am tempted to uphold it, member for Playford, because I know you are all going to do your very best to fill out your 15 minutes three times over and the tendency will be towards repetition and irrelevance. I know that, so if you can really bring your argument back to the short title of the bill, clause 1, I would appreciate it.

Mr BROWN: Given these particular submissions, which unfortunately I feel I need to inform the Deputy Premier about in order for her to answer the question, I find it is difficult for her to answer a question on submissions that I have not actually read to the house.

The CHAIR: Let's do it succinctly, member for Playford.

Mr BROWN: The submission states: 'I am writing to you to voice my concern over the current proposed—

The CHAIR: Member for Playford, let's do it succinctly. Perhaps you could precis or paraphrase.

Mr BROWN: Okay, we may dispense with the salutations; how is that?

The CHAIR: Yes. So we will forget about the 'hello government'.

Mr BROWN: We can dispense with the salutations.

The CHAIR: And a bit of some of the other as well.

Mr BROWN: The submission states:

I am just beginning my property investing journey and believe it is important to secure our own financial future in retirement and not be a burden to the government. If the proposed changes were introduced—

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Point of order: I fully accept that we are in a situation where the member has received some letter of concern about the substance of the land tax bill, but it has nothing to do with the title. If the member has a submission, which outlines some concern about the descriptor of the title, and wants to present an amendment to the committee for our consideration as to a different title, for example, then let's get on with it. The member is really just getting out a pile of correspondence and attempting to read it in; it is completely irrelevant.

Mr BROWN: On the point of order, I cannot believe that the Attorney-General is trying to inform this committee that somehow the title has been plucked out of thin air. Surely the government has done what they believe to be some sort of consultation process. How was the name chosen? It must be done from submissions.

The CHAIR: Member for Playford, in the first instance, it was relevant. What I have asked you to do since is not read word for word a number of submissions. I have asked you to precis it, pull your argument together and relate it to clause 1, please.

Mr BROWN: As I was saying, Mr Chairman—

The CHAIR: No—

Mr BROWN: I am taking your ruling on board, of course.

The CHAIR: Thank you.

Mr BROWN: There are a number of submissions. One of them is from someone—I am not going to read it out, Mr Chairman—who describes himself as Trevor, 37 years of age. He has found it very difficult to invest in property in this state because of what the government is proposing to do on land tax.

Mr Pederick: What is his complaint about the title?

Mr BROWN: Mr Chairman, may I have protection from the bullyboys on the other side?

The CHAIR: Member for Hammond, you are interjecting. I will run this committee. I was just having a quick conversation with the Clerk. I am listening carefully, member for Playford.

Mr BROWN: He has written and put in a submission to the government talking about the difficulties that he will now have because of what the government is proposing to do. There is another submission here from a gentleman who talks about the difficulties that he will face because of the retrospective nature of what the government is planning on doing with their land tax increase, particularly regarding the new rules on aggregation. I have another submission—and they keep coming, Mr Chairman—

The CHAIR: I can see.

Mr BROWN: —from someone who has a few properties that they have managed to buy over the years by saving up. They have worked very long hours. They have bought these properties so that they could have some form of superannuation in their retirement years. They say that the fact that they decided to invest in property means that they need to take a longer term view. They cannot take a very short-term view of their investment strategies; a longer term view is needed for property. These changes, which have come out of nowhere for them, are going to dramatically impact on their ability to invest.

The CHAIR: Member for Playford, I am sorry to keep interrupting you, but we are on clause 1, and what you have just presented to the committee I cannot relate back to clause 1. It is valid to the whole bill.

Mr BROWN: We will get there, Mr Chairman.

The CHAIR: It is not about getting there; it is about relating your argument to clause 1. I am going to remind members that standing order 128 talks about irrelevance or repetition:

If a Member indulges in irrelevance or tedious repetition of substance already presented in a debate—

Admittedly, yours is new information—

Mr BROWN: Yes, indeed.

The CHAIR: But that does not mean it is not irrelevant to clause 1. If a member does that:

1. the…Chairman may call the attention of the House or the Committee to that fact, and

2. may direct the Member to cease speaking.

I am very reluctant to do that. You know that, as a Chair, I am always as fair and as reasonable as I can be.

Mr BROWN: Indeed.

The CHAIR: But I can sense that we—

The Hon. R. Sanderson interjecting:

Mr BROWN: Sorry, can I just ask the member for Adelaide, who I know is passionately in favour of this bill, to stop speaking?

The CHAIR: No, I have not finished yet, member for Playford. As I said, I am very reluctant to ask any member to cease speaking because I am as fair and reasonable as I can be, but I sense that there is a deliberate attempt to stretch the committee stage out, and I do not think I am wrong in that. So, can we please—

Mr BROWN: We want answers.

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan: We are uncertain whether we are meant to be here, so we do not want to take any decisions or do anything in case they are challenged by a Supreme Court.

The CHAIR: No, I understand that. You are all quite within your rights to talk three times on each clause for a maximum of 15 minutes, but it must be relevant. Member for Playford.

Mr BROWN: I will get to my question then, Mr Chairman.

The CHAIR: Thank you.

Mr BROWN: A number of submissions were received during the submission process—and I will not go through them all, but there are a number here—and they certainly have a theme that runs through them all, which is that these people were completely opposed to the government's proposed changes for a variety of reasons. Given that so many people were completely opposed and so many people expressed the view that the core of this bill was a large increase in the liability of small and medium investors, why did the government decide to go with such a bland name as 'miscellaneous'?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: This is the third time that I will inform the committee, but the member might want to look at the answer that I gave in response to the first question from the member for West Torrens at the commencement of the committee, and that is that the bill was named. The name was presented by parliamentary counsel. On the advice I have received, there has been no change to that since the recommendation of that name, as per the original draft. I suppose consistent with the precedent of an exactly similar bill for amendment to the Land Tax Act in 2010, as I have explained, that is the position. There has not been a development of the title of this bill based on submissions, as the member seems to be of some misunderstanding.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: I seek to rise today to talk about clause 1, the short title of this bill, the Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill, as it stands before us today. That seems like a pretty bland bill. It seems like it is just a bit of a fix up of administration, of things that contemporary bills might need to look at. What we know is that this proposal before us has brought a massive amount of uncertainty to South Australians, South Australians who have been doing everything right by the law as it stands.

Although they have been criticised for taking a loophole, which many of them have taken offence to, the reality of this bill is that it is retrospective, with a clear focus on aggregation. It is a clear change. In fact, this government has said that this is about a major reform—

The CHAIR: So, member for Ramsay, you are talking in general terms about the entire bill?

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: Well, it is the title, Mr Chairman.

The CHAIR: The short title, so you are going to relate your contribution and question back to the short title, clause 1.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: My concern about the short title, if I may elaborate, is that it is not transparent about what this bill is actually about. Because this government has refused to share the modelling with South Australians, and have changed their mind multiple times about the impact of this bill, there is confusion out there. There is fear and there is angst.

If the bill were called the 'land tax retrospective aggregation bill', maybe it would be clearer. Perhaps people would say, 'I have to pay attention to this because it is going to impact me.' But what we know has happened during this time is that these have been decisions on the run, policy on the run and legislation on the run that will impact South Australians. South Australians have made commitments for their future. A lot of people think that we come to this place for the wrong reasons, but I do not think that is true. I think most people who are representing their electorates here come to advocate for the geographical areas that they represent, and do the right thing, and what that means is advocating for their interests.

However, what we have with this short title is a lack of transparency. It is a lack of transparency for South Australians who have made decisions within the confines of our planning system, our legal system and our taxation system. The government did not take this to the election; in fact, what they took was an increase to the threshold, which we supported, and it went through in the first budget, but now we have this surprise package: a surprise package with no modelling released, and a short title that hides what it is.

My question to the deputy leader is: why is this not reflecting more accurately what it is? Why is this not called the 'land tax retrospective aggregation bill'? Why are South Australians not openly understanding what this government is trying to do? We know we have had four, five, six goes at it. We know that only the Property Council was the last one to do the deal, and we know there are other stakeholders out there who have been advocating for their members: the MTA, Business SA, the Master Builders Association and the UDIA. They did not get a look in, in the last deal. We do not even know if this is the final deal. We do not know if this is it.

Ms Stinson: Version 6 might be around the corner.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: It might. What I see out there is fear and anger. I see people who have sacrificed because they have made decisions for their future. Many times I have read in submissions to the YourSAy website from people who said they did not want to be a burden on the future. They wanted to have financial means in the future for decisions over their retirement. This is something that is just going to unwind this. Not only is it unwinding it, but it is hiding it, and it is not being clear to people about what they are doing.

Something that people say about politicians is that they do not listen to the everyday person. They make it complex, they make it confusing and we do not really know what they decide. A short title like this goes to that argument because it actually does not say what the intention of this bill is to be. It should be clearer. Every South Australian who takes the opportunity to look at this bill that we are debating before us today should be able to understand what it is, understand the nature of the bill, understand that the bill is a tax increase, understand that the bill is going to impact their livelihoods, and understand that it will impact long-term decisions they made about investments for their future.

Whether it was an investment for their business or an investment in property, they made these decisions for a long-term return of investment. They are willing to pay land tax according to the law, but when they take this risk—and it is a risk when South Australians make those investments—they want certainty. They want certainty in knowing that the government of the day supports them in taking this risk, and they want to know that if changes are going to happen in the future, they will be given transition opportunities and will be given notice. The simplistic nature of the title of the bill does not accurately reflect what it does.

The CHAIR: You had, earlier in your contribution, a question for the Attorney.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: I certainly have a question.

The CHAIR: Are you happy to repeat that question for the Attorney?

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: I will get to my question.

The CHAIR: You will get to your question? Okay.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: I wanted to make clear to the committee how I have come to the position of asking this question, and I am getting to that position. I think we owe it to South Australians who have made this commitment, who are not tax cheats, who have not done something outside the law, but who now feel they have been given that label. We have heard it over and over and over again.

The other thing about the retrospective nature of this bill is that we have people who do not have superannuation, who do not have what I have been very fortunate to have the whole of my working life: compulsory superannuation. May I remind the chamber that a federal Labor government made the decision that we were going to build wealth for every individual, and for the country, through compulsory superannuation. I have been the beneficiary of that, and I will benefit into the future.

However, many people—self-employed people, farmers, business owners, people who came here and worked in Australia before we had compulsory superannuation, people in highly casualised industries—did not have that choice. They did not have that person backing them up. They did not have the compulsory nature of superannuation. So what they did—because they did not want to be a burden in the future, they wanted to have the opportunity to support their retirement—was invest in property. They made that choice, and they made that choice in accordance with the legal frameworks we have now.

What we are saying with this short title is, 'Nothing to see here. They are miscellaneous amendments.' However, be honest about what this apparent massive reform will be. Be open about it, show us the modelling, because we do not believe that 92 per cent of people are going to be better off. How can we believe that when they will not show us the modelling? Why should South Australians believe them that that will be the case?

My question to the Attorney-General, the Deputy Premier, is: will you take on board my concerns at the lack of transparency in the title of this bill, and will you consider that we should have the words 'retrospective' and 'aggregation' in the title of this bill so that South Australians are clear on what this bill is about and on the impact it will have on them?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: I have noted the member's contribution in relation to this. It is, frankly, a repeat of other members' contributions that I have answered. However, I do note them, and if she is proposing to introduce an amendment with any change, then of course the committee must consider it. In the absence of that, I will take that as a comment.

Mr PICTON: It is my honour to rise to speak in relation to this bill and to the first clause of the bill which, as we have mentioned, is clearly something that is of significant concern to many South Australians. As I mentioned in my second reading contribution, something that is of concern right from the first words of this piece of legislation is how this government has presented it to the people, and how they are front-facing this forward to the people in the naming of this legislation.

That is why clause 1 is important. That is why we are making this very significant point tonight about the way this legislation has been drafted right from the very beginning. This is not a miscellaneous piece of legislation. These are not a few little tidy-ups to legislation. These are not a few boring pieces of administrative fixes or parliamentary drafting errors, as Attorneys-General sometimes introduce in legislation before the parliament.

Here we have the Premier and his landmark piece of economic reform—so-called reform—that he is seeking to introduce as Premier. This is probably the biggest, most important area of action by this government since they have been elected. To somehow call this 'miscellaneous' is deceptive to the parliament, it is deceptive to the people of South Australia and it is deceptive to our statute book. It is offensive to the way that our laws should be drafted, and it is a clear attempt by this government to try to spin their significant land tax increases by calling them 'miscellaneous measures'.

These are very significant measures. We have all heard from people across the state how they are going to be impacted. We have all heard from people about the impact that they are seeing in terms of their businesses, their livelihoods, their families. We are all hearing the impacts that this is going to have and is already having on business confidence, on jobs, on the economy of South Australia. To call all those things 'miscellaneous' is an insult to all of those people who have raised those concerns.

It is an insult to all of those people who came to our forums, put their heart on their sleeve and said what a significant impact this legislation is going to have on them. It is nothing more than an insult. I know the Deputy Premier is clearly perturbed by the fact that we want to dare question the way that they have drafted this legislation, the Premier's legislation, but we will make the point and raise in this parliament our concerns with how this has been drafted incorrectly right from the beginning.

You can see the difference between how this has been drafted and named in its title versus other pieces of legislation that this government has introduced that it has wanted people to know about, that it has wanted to spin, that it has wanted to have out there and say that this is a landmark piece of reform. Whereas clearly the government want to talk about anything else but this land tax aggregation measure at the moment. Clearly they want to talk about anything else. That has been the Premier's strategy this week. A number of journalists have commented about the fact that the Premier's social media, which obviously has a significant department of people managing it, is talking about anything else than this. That is evident from this clause in this bill, where it is being called 'miscellaneous'. It has been referenced as, 'Don't look here. There's nothing to see here. This is just a view miscellaneous tidy-ups.'

When bills are presented like that, I think it is all the more reason for parliament to scrutinise them even more thoroughly. Dare I say it, even when the Hon. John Rau SC would bowl up with an Attorney-General's portfolio bill No. 4 and I sat on the caucus subcommittee that dealt with Attorneys-General's matters, I would pay close attention to what was in the bill, because a title like that could cover a whole series of things that might just slip under the radar of people's attention.

That is why legislative drafting is important. That is why we have the people who do fantastic work in our Office of Parliamentary Counsel. This is one of the few areas of government where they are public servants but they do work for the government, for the opposition, for minor parties, and they somehow keep walls amazingly well between the people who are working on things for different members of parliament to make sure that confidences are not betrayed and that all parliament is able to trust their advice.

I recall various times when I was in the government, behind the scenes or as a minister or member of the government backbench that certainly there were times when parliamentary counsel could be frustrating in terms of the ways in which you wanted to get things drafted and the exact wording, but they would be firm in terms of making sure that the right procedures were followed, the right standards were upheld, and that we had laws that were accurately drafted and that could be held up to proper scrutiny for this state. And so I take back all the bad things I have ever said about them and thank them for their hard work in doing that. The good thing is, in opposition you get to be a bit more free willed and sometimes you can slip some things in there that the government might not be able to do.

Clearly, it is a principle of legislative drafting that the title of the bill should reflect what is in the bill. The title of the bill should give the reader, should give the people of South Australia, the idea of exactly what is going to be in the legislation as a clear guide for that. When we are starting to enter into the field—I think there are two concerns with how this can come about: either you start getting pieces of legislation that are overtly drafted to say how wonderful they are and spin in a positive sense how fantastic they are that go to the point of not being accurate, or you get the reverse of pieces of legislation that are doing the opposite where they are no longer reflecting what is in them because the government is trying to go under the radar with their true intentions of the legislation.

This, I think, is clearly a case of the latter. This is clearly a case where instead of the government producing a piece of legislation and saying, 'Here is a land tax aggregation bill,'—and this is not even a land tax reform bill: this is a land tax miscellaneous amendment bill. That is significantly misleading because even if you believe what the government is saying about this, even if you believe all of their lines, which certainly I do not, they are saying that this is the most significant land tax reform ever. They are saying, 'We've got the guts to take on this land tax reform that should have been done eons ago,' yet they produce a bill which is 'miscellaneous', which is intended to deceive people in terms of what is actually within the legislation, and it is disappointing in the extreme that our standards of drafting legislation would fall so low that it would come to that.

Deputy Speaker, I am sure you are familiar with it, but it was my first time today reading the book by Helen Xanthaki called Drafting Legislation: Art and Technology of Rules for Regulation. It is a good piece of work.

Members interjecting:

Mr PICTON: It does. It actually has a section on the short title.

Ms Stinson: Excellent. What does it say? I have not read it. Tell me all about it.

Mr PICTON: I am disappointed to hear—

Ms Stinson: I know; I am going to have to get across it.

Mr PICTON: I am disappointed to hear that the member Badcoe has not read this book but I will make sure that I get a copy for her, because I think it is instructive for all members of parliament, I think it is instructive for all of us to actually look at what is the research, what is the procedure, how have we come to this point in our parliament and our traditions and making sure that the laws, in this case that the Premier has introduced, reflect that. The first sentence of the section of the short title says:

Short titles are the heading of the legislative text. Their task is to offer an agreed means by which to index and cite the legislative text.

It goes on to say:

Irrespective of where the short title is in the text, it is drafted to express the name by which the law is to be known, without puns and sloganeering. As a result, the title must be short, to the point, accurate, unique and distinctive, so that it cannot be confused with other titles.

Let's break down those key requirements that Helen Xanthaki has set. The first point was that it must be short. Well, I am willing to concede to the Premier in his bill here about land tax aggregation that this is a relatively short title. I think we can give it a tick—it is a tick there. The second point is that it is to the point. Well, I think that is a big fat question mark there.

Ms Stinson: Maybe a cross; maybe a fail.

Mr PICTON: That is right—maybe, as the member for Badcoe is suggesting, it could even be a cross because the title of this being a miscellaneous amendment bill does not go to the point of what is being dealt with here. The point is aggregation, the point is raising extra revenue. The point is that this is a $60 million hit on the taxpayers of South Australia if this bill is passed—that is the point. You do not get that point from the word 'miscellaneous', that does not come out at all. I think I am convinced; I think that is a cross for the point.

The next point that is raised is 'accurate'. Is 'miscellaneous' accurate? I would have to say that it is not accurate to say that this is miscellaneous. I would not want to repeat what we have already heard, but I think the member for Lee has outlined the dictionary definition of 'miscellaneous' and clearly that definition does not meet the contents of this legislation. Clearly, there is a difference between 'miscellaneous', which is your jumble of odds and sods things.

Ms Stinson: Your kludge.

Mr PICTON: Your kludge, as the member for Badcoe says. That does not equal what is in this legislation. This legislation is a significant change for our taxation arrangements, which will impact thousands and thousands of people and is already hitting our economy in South Australia.

The next point is that it is unique. I do not think the word 'miscellaneous' makes it at all unique. There have been a number of pieces of legislation that have been introduced that have the word 'miscellaneous' in them, and I have spoken about a number of them in this house. By and large, a lot of them were miscellaneous: the Criminal Procedure (Miscellaneous) Amendment Act, the Public Finance and Audit (Miscellaneous) Amendment Act, the Criminal Assets Confiscation (Miscellaneous) Amendment Act, just to name a few. A lot of them were miscellaneous and I think do meet that threshold. Clearly, that is not the case here and clearly it is not unique, because we have all these other acts that refer to miscellaneous amendments. So it is not unique and I think it fails that requirement.

Is it distinctive? I do not think it is distinctive at all. If you called it 'the land tax aggregation bill', that would have been distinctive. If you called it what I think would be more accurate, the land tax increase bill, that would be accurate. The last point is that it cannot be confused with other titles. I think that clearly it can. Clearly, this can be confused with a range of other titles that the government have introduced over their two years—a large number of odds and sods legislation—and it could be confused with a large number of actual miscellaneous legislation over the years that has been introduced in relation to land tax or other taxation measures. So I do not believe you can refer to this as not being able to be confused with other titles.

My question to the Attorney-General is: has she read Drafting Legislation: Art and Technology of Rules for Regulation by Helen Xanthaki, and does she think that her drafting, or the Premier's drafting, meet each criteria that has been set?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: The only thing I think I can add is to inform the member that I have not drafted this bill or the title. I think now for the fourth time, this has been a draft of the parliamentary counsel, its most senior member, Ms Travers, who has been able to assist me and other members many times over a distinguished career as a parliamentary draftsperson. I would have to say that I would take her recommendations over any other amateur draftsman sitting around this chamber. In any event, it is open for members, should they wish to present an argument for any different title, to present an amendment.

The bill has been on the table for 14 days, so I invite members to remember that that is the opportunity they have to do that, if they wish to. In specific answer to the question, no, I have not read the reported text that the member has quoted from. I have no doubt that Ms Travers, in listening to the matter, will have noted it. She may wish to peruse it. I am satisfied that she is an experienced professional and a very competent draftsperson. I have every confidence in what she has presented to us. As I see, it has similarly been precedented in other drafts of land tax amendment bills. The last one I noticed was in 2010 by Mr Foley.

Mr PICTON: This disappoints me, for a number of reasons. Firstly, it disappoints me that the Attorney-General—

Ms COOK: I draw the attention of the Chair to the state of the house.

A quorum having been formed:

Mr PICTON: As I was saying before I was interrupted, I was very disappointed with what the Attorney-General has had to say in response to my concerns. They were well-researched concerns. They were clearly things that the Attorney-General has not looked into. She clearly has not researched this matter. I am also a bit disappointed that she was trying to suggest that I was in some way disparaging parliamentary counsel and Ms Travers, who do an excellent job. In fact, I was trying to defend the work they do, and I think I took back any negative comments made about them in the past. This is just the sort of thing we have come to expect from the Attorney-General, unfortunately.

I think the most disappointing thing of all is that not only did she say that she had not read this book and not only did she suggest that she had no interest in investigating this matter any further but she also dismissed the points that were being raised—not by me; these are not my points—and disparaged people in the chamber as amateur draftspeople. This is by Helen Xanthaki, who is an expert on parliamentary drafting. In fact, she wrote the book Drafting Legislation: Art and Technology of Rules for Regulation. There is a whole expertise in terms of how these things are drafted.

What concerns me is that this has been a politically motivated exercise in terms of this bill. I am very concerned that this is not what parliamentary counsel originally came up with. I am concerned that it was a political directive to call this the 'miscellaneous' bill, either as a directive or as a significant suggestion to parliamentary counsel that that is what the government wanted. I would like to hear the Premier answer some of these questions.

Either the Attorney-General or the Premier can outline what meetings were held to discuss this, when it was first discussed, when the first drafting of this legislation was originally made, whether this was the original title in the original draft that was provided and whether there had been any discussions prior to that original draft, in fact, about what the title would be with any minister, any ministerial staff member across the government or any spin doctor in any agency.

Looking at the rest of this piece of legislation, there is no way I would believe that parliamentary counsel would label this as 'miscellaneous'. There is no way you could look at it and suggest that this is a miscellaneous piece of legislation. As I was saying, if you look at the book by Ms Xanthaki, the criteria that are set are that it has to be short, to the point, accurate, unique and distinctive, and not be able to be confused. Almost all of them it fails, except being short. It then goes on to say, and I am hoping to educate the Attorney-General here because she clearly has not read this book: 'In order to fulfil these qualities, the language of the title must be consistent with the content of the act.'

What an indictment upon this drafting. It is an indictment upon the drafting because it could not be further from the truth. This drafting of miscellaneous is not consistent with the content of the act. The content of the act is significant. The content of the act is achieving one very significant thing, which is a change to aggregation, a big change that is going to impact thousands of people that we have heard about. People are in tears about this matter. People are in significant distress because of this, and to call it miscellaneous is, as I said, an insult to them. In no way is it consistent with the content of the act, as has been said in this book. It then goes on to say:

The need to be brief does not justify abbreviations. In order to achieve their goal successfully, the short title is drafted at the very end of the drafting process.

That is also a very interesting question and one I hope the Attorney-General can outline. At what stage was this short title drafted? Clearly we have evidence here, and clearly we have the precedent that the short title should be drafted at the end of the process. It should be drafted at the end, no doubt because what you want to do is make sure that the title reflects the content you have ended up putting in the legislation.

What I fear is that the reverse was true here, that 'miscellaneous' was defined right at the beginning, rather than at the end, and that that was done as a political decision, as a political manoeuvre, to make this appear more palatable, to make it appear less offensive and something that people should not pay much attention to. That is a very clear statement in this section on short titles. It goes on to say:

Short titles include the year of introduction into parliament in the case of a bill, or enactment in the case of an act, e.g., the Justice and Security Act 2013. It is common practice to add explanatory words in brackets to the short title.

Why did that not happen here? We have brackets and we have one word, but is not explanatory of what is going on in this bill whatsoever. Why was this precedent not followed to add explanatory words in brackets to the short title? It could have been 'land tax (aggregation)'. It could have been 'land tax (increase)'. It could have been 'tack on trust arrangements'. It could have been any number of things that this government could have drafted that could have gone in place of what is currently in there in miscellaneous. So clearly there is another area in which the accepted practice of drafting short titles has not been followed in this. In terms of the explanatory words in brackets, it says:

This is helpful when the drafter attempts to distinguish between various statutes on the same topic: in this case the specific aspect of the statute will be added in brackets, such as Trusts (Capital and Income) Act 2013; or when the Act applies to a specific geographical area only: in this case the statute’s short title will have the geographical area in brackets, such as High Hedges (Scotland) Act 2013—

which I am sure is a very interesting piece of legislation.

This is another indictment upon what the government has done here. Here it is very clearly saying that you need these words to distinguish between other statutes on the same topic. The Attorney-General has outlined already that there was a previous Land Tax (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill. By her own words, she has gone against what is in here because this should have been very clearly distinguishable from those miscellaneous bills in the past, which were actually miscellaneous, unlike this one.

The example that is given here could not be more apt in terms of what we are discussing. The example given was the Trusts (Capital and Income) Act 2013. Of course, there is a lot of discussion about trusts here. It was not the Trusts (Miscellaneous) Act 2013; it was the Trusts (Capital and Income) Act 2013. Why was not that approach raised here? Why was a similar approach not instigated in terms of this legislation?

I do hope that the Attorney-General can find herself time to read this in its entirety. Mr Chair, you will be disappointed to know I have not read it all word for word, so there is more for the Attorney-General to read. But I think it raises some significant questions for her in terms of: what was the process the government went through when they drafted this? Were there instructions to parliamentary counsel? When were those instructions given? Were there instructions about the title? Did they follow the precedent here, where it says that the title should be developed at the end of the drafting process so that you can properly account for what is in the content of the bill rather than misleading people, as this government is attempting to do here in this legislation?

There are a number of key people who, when it comes to the drafting of titles, have published a lot of work. One of the Australian researchers on this topic is a Mr Graeme Orr. He has written a number of papers, and I have looked at a few of them. One of the papers he wrote and I have read is from Papers on Parliament No. 46 from December 2006. It was an article called 'Government advertising: parliament and political equality', but he did talk about titles of legislation.

As I said before, there is clearly an issue of the politicisation of titles of legislation. It can either be because we have an issue where the government is trying to trump something up, or it can be an issue where they are trying to dampen it down. Here, we have the dampening down, but I think what Graeme Orr is saying is that there is a number of issues where they are trumping it up. In both cases, there is clearly an issue where it is a politicisation of what should be an accurate drafting process. What we are not trying to do here is draft something that is best politically for the government in terms of the title. We are trying to actually draft something that is accurate, that is going to describe the legislation appropriately. What Graeme Orr says is: 'We live in an age of the permanent campaign and government by PR.'

I believe that would stand for public relations. He continues:

Not all aspects of this are bad for democracy: government responsiveness to opinion-polling can be a valuable form of democratic accountability. But to give a picturesque example of how spin-doctoring corrodes valuable distinctions, consider the spate of commonwealth bills with sloganeering titles in recent years.

He goes on to list a number of examples. If I decide to make a third contribution, I will make it to this in more detail, but I hope that the Attorney-General in her answer can outline answers to my questions in terms of what the process was. What public servants were involved? What political staffers were involved? What ministers were involved? At what process was that discussion of the name started? Did it happen, as Ms Xanthaki said, at the end of the process or did it happen at the start of the process? Was there ever any discussion about an alternative name or was the government insistent upon this name and instructed that way?

The CHAIR: Attorney, given the hour—

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: I will be brief. In response to the matters he has raised, I refer the member to the first three questions and answers I provided to the member for West Torrens at the commencement of the committee.

The Hon. A. PICCOLO: Sorry, Chair. I did not hear a word the Attorney said. Could she repeat what she said, please?

The CHAIR: Yes, just repeat it. Attorney, before you continue, I am going to invite you to move that the committee report progress, as well as respond to that.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: I refer the member and all members of the committee to the first three answers to the questions of the member for West Torrens in response to the matters raised by the member for Kaurna. I now move that we report progress.

Progress reported; committee to sit again.


At 23:52 the house adjourned until Thursday 31 October 2019 at 11:00.

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