Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

of his old debating days and fill an hour with great ease. We will no doubt have traversed every individual’s bankruptcy application by the time we get through those. I might say for the benefit of the timekeepers that it is most unlikely that I will be speaking for 30 minutes let alone the 60 minutes that I have been given. So I do not think there is any need to worry about the technical problems we seem to be having in the chamber.

This bill relates to a specialised area. When I made the joke in passing with the member for Fisher that it might be hard to speak on it for such an extended time, that was not to downplay the importance of making some of these changes and ensuring that our insolvency and trustee system works properly and, of course, that the fees and charges are changed by virtue of this bill in an appropriate way.

The fees and charges that are made for ITSA services are currently contained in the Bankruptcy Act and in bankruptcy regulations. Under the proposed new framework that is part of this bill the fees and charges will be determined by the Attorney-General through legislative instrument. We believe that this is an appropriate change given that ITSA is moving to a cost recovery model of funding. But of course under any cost recovery model it is important to ensure that the fees and charges are set at a cost recovery point and do not increase. If we do not make sure that this is the case, we will find that what should be cost recovery becomes some type of backdoor tax.

The ITSA model for cost recovery, which we understand to have been developed in consultation with stakeholders, will involve a biennial review of fees and charges. Legislative instrument is an appropriately flexible method to ensure that the recommendations of these biennial reviews can be quickly adopted. The use of legislative instrument, importantly, still provides parliament with a mechanism to disallow any increase in fees, so it does not entail a substantial loss of scrutiny. I would like to take the opportunity in speaking in the chamber in this debate to encourage and invite insolvency practitioners, small businesses and other stakeholders to ensure that they contact us if they ever feel that ITSA’s fees and charges are spiralling out of control. We will be keen to take up this issue in this place at a later time, when each legislative instrument is before the parliament, if we find that ITSA, or the amount of fees and charges, is moving beyond cost recovery to something which is more aggressive.

It is of course one of parliament’s most ancient and important tasks to prevent unjustified imposts being imposed by the government. Labor are committed to our job of holding the government to account for any attempt at backdoor taxation. We are comfortable with the model that is proposed. We think that it is appropriate that the legislative instruments, obviously, will be disallowable in the parliament. And I use this opportunity to encourage people to come forward if they ever feel in the future that these fees and charges are getting out of sync with the cost recovery model. They should make sure that they talk to us and use the parliament and their representatives to ensure that these rates are being set at an appropriate level.

ITSA has been moving to a cost recovery process for several years now, and the details were included in the papers for the 2005-06 budget. Under the proposed funding model, the cost of some services will be recovered through a fee payable by the person receiving the service, while others will be paid through an industry levy. The bill will allow the following fees and charges to be set by the Attorney-General: fees to the official trustee for acting as trustee, controlling trustee or administrator; fees to the official receiver for exercising power at the request of a trustee; fees for access to bankruptcy documents by persons who are not creditors or debtors of a bankrupt; fees associated with registration as a registered trustee; fees relating to the National Personal Insolvency Index; and the rate at which realisation charge is payable. The realisation charge is a levy imposed on trustees. We understand that the government’s intention is to set this at a level high enough to cover the costs of the regulation of practitioners, investigations of bankruptcy fraud and administration of assetless estates. Certain services will remain wholly Commonwealth funded, including processing debtors’ petitions and debt agreement proposals.

As I mentioned earlier, the fees and charges will be subject to a review every two years or sooner if required. These reviews are to involve stakeholder consultation, and we urge the government to make sure that it continues to involve stakeholders in these processes. Labor supports the shift to cost recovery in this bill to enable that shift. However, we will keep a close eye on developments to ensure that we have cost recovery and no more. We look forward to working with the stakeholders to make sure that the government engages in genuine consultation and to hold the government to account for any unjustifiable increases if we are in that position in the future.

In addition to providing the framework for the transition to cost recovery, the bill also makes two other changes: a change in the period for payment of realisation charges and interest charges from twice yearly to annually, and amending provisions related to forms to allow greater use of electronic service delivery. These also seem to be sensible changes that will improve the operation of our bankruptcy system. For these reasons, Labor are pleased to offer our support for the bill.

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