Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition will be supporting new schedules 12 and 13 to this bill. For those of us who follow these things closely, it appears that these were schedules 3 and 4 of Tax Law Amendment (2008 Measures No. 3) Bill. A couple of those schedules of the bill—schedule 1 on shareholder and unit holder rights and schedule 2 on restriction of GST refunds and time limits for recovery and refund of indirect tax—will be referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Economics for inquiry. We of course recognise that the government may wish to expedite passage of these schedules, which are supported, and they do have some time critical aspects to them. Therefore they have been put in the No. 2 bill. We think that both of them are very sensible measures. The income tax treatment of rent assistance paid to Austudy recipients and income tax treatment of the carer adjustment payment have our full support.