Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I would like to answer. I refer the honourable member to the fact that this draft ruling was made only on 30 October. Once the draft ruling was made, I decided that it was of such great importance, with it set to impact on so many residents and so many people who live within the Shortland electorate, that the appropriate place to discuss it was here in the parliament and that it was also appropriate that members work with their constituents to put in submissions to make sure that this ruling remains only a draft ruling and does not come into play. If the member had listened to my contribution to the debate, he would have heard that that was what I was talking about and he would have realised that this is a very important issue and one that needs to be addressed immediately by us here in this parliament. From today, we need to go back to our constituencies and we need to ensure, as I mentioned in my contribution to this debate, that those petitions that have been circulated around all the residential parks within our electorates are actually petitions that can be accepted by this parliament. We need to ensure that residents of parks within our electorates put in submissions to the tax office by 20 December.

I was very disappointed by part of the contributions by those on the other side. This is an issue that impacts on the lives of people, and it is not an issue that should be played with politically like the two speakers from the government tried to do.

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