Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

We have just received the government amendments—it was an exercise tracking them down. As I understand the minister, the self-managed super funds and related parties, the stuff you are seeking to excise, cover the amendment we were seeking to move. The other relates to a technical amendment. We have had no opportunity to consider these amendments that have been moved, but we will take them on face value as they have been described. We will not oppose them and, hopefully, there might be some reciprocity and the government will embrace our amendments when they are moved—but I will not hold out for that.

I acknowledge that the government has embraced one of the coalition's amendments dealing with the self-managed superannuation funds. The government now seems to have accepted our evidence that it has been hard to identify what the actual mischief is that the measure seeks to address, and there were some practical concerns about how you would gain access to the relevant expertise to meet the market principle or the valuation principle. We certainly welcome that excision from this bill.

Question agreed to.

by leave—I move opposition amendments (1), (3) and (4) circulated in the name of my friend and colleague the member for North Sydney:

(1) Clause 2, pages 2 and 3 (table items 6 to 14), omit the table items.

(3) Schedule 5, page 31 (line 1) to page 53 (line 13), omit the Schedule.

(4) Schedule 6, page 54 (line 1) to page 65 (line 11), omit the Schedule.

It is good to see that the amendment the coalition put forward in relation to the self-managed super funds and related parties has now been embraced by the government, and we welcome that. So there is no need for us to move our amendment (2). Amendments (1), (3) and (4) deal with the other schedules that I had identified on behalf of the coalition as containing some concerns. Schedule 7 of the bill makes miscellaneous amendments to taxation laws and almost all of them relate to the mining tax. That is not the real issue of our concern. Our concern focuses on schedules 5 and 6. These schedules seek to implement the government's loss carry-back tax expenditure initiative. That initiative, as we canvassed in the debate, was linked to the government's failed mining tax. We all know that the mining tax has hardly raised anything near the funding that was anticipated. In my earlier address, I explained the diminishing returns from the mining tax and the significant impact that the negotiated arrangements the Prime Minister entered into have had on the robustness of the budget position.

The government spent all of that forecast revenue they thought they would raise but that did not arrive, and then some, on various expenditure measures, including loss carry-back from what was supposed to be the revenue stream from the mining tax. This measure will cost the budget $700 million over the forward estimates with next to no offsetting revenue. The government simply cannot afford to continue adding to the $192 billion in accumulated deficits over the last four years, with another large deficit likely in 2012-13.

In my earlier address, I pointed to some of the concerns about the very limited reach of this measure and how the government has been grotesquely overselling this measure. Many tax and small business advisory experts have pointed out that only a fraction of the small business community is structured as companies and fewer still are in any position to derive any benefit from this measure. On that basis and on the unaffordability of it when contrasted with the revenue stream that is supposed to finance it, I commend the opposition amendments which excise those schedules from the bill. We have circulated the amendments and I hope the Assistant Treasurer will see merit in what we are putting forward—as he did with our reasoned proposition around the self-managed superannuation funds.

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