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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-05-13 Daily Xml
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Payroll Tax

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (15:10): My question is to the Treasurer. Will the government raise the threshold for payroll tax at the upcoming state budget; if not, why not? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr TELFER: An overwhelming number of respondents to the South Australian Chamber of Business survey stated that payroll tax was a significant constraint on employment and productivity.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer, Minister for Defence and Space Industries, Minister for Police) (15:10): I am familiar with the advocacy of the SA Business Chamber, Mr Speaker. The SA Business Chamber—or Business SA, as most people have been familiar with it—has been advocating for payroll tax changes since payroll tax was introduced, and that will not change, regardless of the payroll tax tax-free threshold. It will not change regardless of the payroll tax rate. It is expected that a chamber of commerce will always advocate for their members paying a lower tax burden. That is very orthodox.

However, as I explained to the house just previously, not only is South Australia regarded as the best place in the nation to do business, not only are we regarded as having the best payroll tax regime in the nation, we are also in a period of historically low unemployment and, of course, correspondingly high employment levels—966,000 employees, I think—and the bulk of the jobs that have been created since the last state election are full-time jobs, not part-time jobs or casual jobs but full-time jobs. There is less youth unemployment, there is less underemployment.

So when you are running at historically low levels of unemployment, when you are running at record levels of employment, when you have got the best payroll tax regime in the nation—as conferred on you by a national body of the standing of the Business Council of Australia—when you are the lowest-taxing state on the mainland and, overall, the best place in the nation to do business, while I hear the call from the chamber—

Mr Telfer interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The member for Flinders said, 'Well why is business calling for this?' We have known, in the labour movement, that business will always call for a reduction in the burdens that it faces in the community. It does not matter what those burdens are, they will always seek a reduction of them: they will seek a minimisation of wage increases and they will seek a reduction in their tax burden. That is well understood; that has been orthodox in the Australian polity for more than a century, and we would not expect any different.

However, the evidence is clear, across those five different points I have made, that payroll tax is not throttling businesses here in South Australia from taking on more employees. South Australia has the highest number of job vacancies per capita in the nation; there are still businesses wanting to employ a further 20,000 additional workers in our state, according to the latest job vacancy data.

Mr Telfer interjecting:

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The member interjects; 'Well, that data set is not supporting my argument so I'll jump onto the participation rate. I'll keep clutching at different figures until I can find something that sounds like a credible argument.' We have amongst the best-performing economy in the nation, we are the best placed in the nation to do business, we have the lowest tax burden of any state on the mainland, we have the best payroll tax regime in the nation, we have the most number of people in jobs in the state's history, and we have amongst the lowest unemployment rate ever recorded in the state. If the member for Flinders doesn't think that is enough, I am looking forward to his election platform, because we haven't seen one yet.

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