Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to the Acting Prime Minister and goes to yesterday’s private members’ business debate on my motion with regard to the treatment of compensation payments from state and federal governments to ground water users in New South Wales as taxable income. At the end of the debate there was bipartisan support for these payments to be treated as the loss of a capital asset and taxed under the capital gains arrangements, not as income. Acting Prime Minister, given that this precedent is critical in terms of natural resource policy, where entitlements are removed or reduced for the environmental and/or public good, will the government now act to correct the anomaly in the tax act so that the full amount of compensation for the loss of a capital asset will flow on to benefit not only those in receipt of the payment but also the communities which support them?

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