Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting on Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, but you want to send more. That is my point. On the one hand, you argue waste and, on the other hand, you want to add to it. That is totally inconsistent. There are budget updates that will mean the information on the tax receipt will differ depending on when taxpayers receive their assessment. Something printed on paper today or just after the budget obviously may not reflect the precise circumstances tomorrow. With the way we are going in this chamber, with the opposition opposing just about everything, the notice going out to taxpayers will be inaccurate. It will not reflect what is in the budget papers because, on current performance, the opposition is opposed to almost everything in the budget. So it is not going to be accurate when it is printed and sent out.

The proposal also does not accurately reflect the significant contributions that other taxes or charges such as business tax make to funding welfare, health, schools, highways, environment projects, consular services or defending our country. I would like to see, if we were going down this path, specific categories covering financial regulation, for example. I could find out where some of my tax dollars go by looking at the APRA and ASIC budget in the budget papers. I think for many people in the community that would be a perfectly valid item of expenditure on this document that the opposition is proposing and I am sure there are lots of other perspectives of budget information. The point is, of course, that you can obtain this information in the public domain if you wish.

I have touched on cost and complexity for the ATO. This is probably the brainchild of the shadow Treasurer, Mr Hockey. I notice he has had a fair bit to say on financial regulation recently, but I would be very cautious about any of Mr Hockey’s adventures into disclosure documentation if I were the opposition. Most people have forgotten, in the fullness of time and history, but Mr Hockey was the master who designed the Financial Services Reform Act, and what a disclosure mess that resulted in—incomprehensible documents on disclosure under the FSR for financial consumers of 50 to 100 pages that no-one could read or understand, including some of the participants in the financial sector, including Mr Hockey. It was one of the most extraordinarily expensive red tape exercises in Australian history. So we should be very cautious about adopting suggestions from the current shadow Treasurer, Mr Hockey, when it comes to disclosure.

Aside from cost and complexity, there would be some legal implications in providing the information in the manner which is suggested. There are other issues, such as if taxpayers were not satisfied with the published allocation—published, I might add, in a fairly unsophisticated format, on a single piece of paper. I do not know how you would get all that on a single piece of paper. It would be pretty small writing, I would think. The writing would be smaller than on the sheet of amendments, in order to get the explanation and all the figures down. I doubt you would get it on a single piece of paper. Putting aside the fact that it would be physically difficult to read, there are significant resource implications. The amendments would also result in an extra document in circulation displaying the tax file numbers of PAYG taxpayers. That raises security concerns. It is not a good idea to have documents with tax file numbers on them circulated in this way. It is important to try and minimise that. I know it has to happen, but it is important to minimise that.

The reality is that there is no policy substance to these amendments. We do not accept that the amendments are appropriate, we do not accept that we are in a set of circumstances where they are necessary, and I would ask the Senate to not support them.