Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank you Mr Deputy Speaker, and take this opportunity to congratulate you on your elevation to the Speaker's panel. I thank the member for Shortland for bringing this motion to the House. I spoke to her about it in the chamber last week, following a number of bits of correspondence and phone calls to our office about this issue. This issue has arisen from a review by the Australian Taxation Office but has been brought about by a long history of court cases to consider the proper application of GST to different types of property. As the member for Shortland has correctly pointed out, back in 2000 the then Howard government successfully sought to have GST not applied to residences in mobile home parks.

Since then I think we all recognise that there has been a significant growth in that industry. I disagree with the comments from the member for Shortland that people bought into mobile or relocatable home parks on the basis that there was no GST on their site rent. I think people had far more salient reasons for purchasing in those parks than the fact that they would not have to pay GST. There are a lot of benefits in terms of the community that these parks create and the security these people feel, particularly if they are travelling regularly. People can lock up their homes and leave, knowing that their contents and their homes will be safe. It also allows them to live in a smaller property that does not take so much care and maintenance at a time in their lives when they want to enjoy retirement. They do not have to look after a big block of land and a big house. There are far more reasons for people going into mobile home parks than the fact that they do not have to pay GST on site fees.

When you look at the history of this matter you find that this review has been under consideration for some time now. The former assistant Treasurer, David Bradbury knew about it as well. The Australian tax office had a draft ruling to see whether residents in removable home parks, when they owned their own dwelling on a rented site, would be eligible for their 10 per cent GST.

As I said earlier, over the past couple of weeks my office has received many inquiries from residents at a number of the parks around the electorate. Over 100,000 Australians currently live in removable home dwellings in these parks and the majority of these people are pensioners on either the full or a part pension. It is also interesting to note that, with that, they receive rent assistance from Centrelink. So Centrelink treats these site fees as rent and provides people with rent assistance.

In Forde we have a number of these villages, such as Palm Lake Resorts, which has five different villages, and Little Gems, which has two. We also have Greenbank village resort, Claremont Resort, and River Glen at Bethania. In these resorts there are some 2½ thousand home sites and roughly 3,700 residents who would likely be affected by these changes.

We recognise that the majority of these residents, after the proposed changes—which will result in an increase of between $500 and $800 a year in their site fees as a result of the application of the GST—will face, in certain circumstances, financial hardship. We fully recognise and understand that. However, it is instructive to note that we have a member of the now opposition also talking about cost of living pressures for people, and yet, at the same time, failing to recognise the cost of living pressures that the former government heaped on the Australian community—in particular, on residents in mobile home parks who are also on fixed incomes.

The coalition has quite clearly stated that we are committed to reducing cost of living pressures and fighting for these people. Whilst we acknowledge that it does not fully offset the cost impacts here, one way that we as a government believe we can help people in Australia, particularly those living in these mobile home parks, to reduce their cost of living pressures is to remove the carbon tax. Reducing cost of living pressures on electricity and other essential items goes directly to the amount of money people have to spend every week. Does it take away from the desire to not see this draft ruling be continued through to implementation, which would probably be in the middle of next year? No, it does not. We do not want to see any additional cost pressures on those who are already struggling to make ends meet. And I want to make this very clear: the ATO has not yet made any firm decision on whether the ruling will apply; this is a draft ruling, and we have communicated our concerns to the Assistant Treasurer. We are also contacting the residents in the various parks to get them to put a submission to the tax office to ensure that their concerns are made known to the tax office in relation to this matter. The Taxation Office will, once these submissions close on 20 December, consider those various arguments and then make an informed decision.

So I fully appreciate and understand the concerns of the residents in these mobile home parks, and we will work as a government always to look to make the situation better for all Australians. As part of that, we will continue to fight for the residents in these parks to help protect their standard of living. But it is not only dealing with this GST matter; there are many other matters to deal with, in terms of getting rid of the carbon tax and reducing cost of living pressures more generally, that will benefit our residents in the various parks.

See this speech in context