Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader (Tasmania)) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of Senator Cameron, I move the opposition amendment on sheet 8442:

  (1) Page 2 (after line 11), after clause 3, insert:

   4 Review of operation of amendments

  (1) The Minister must cause a review of the operation of the amendments made by Schedule 1 of this Act.

  (2) The review must start as soon as practicable after 2 years after Royal Assent.

  (3) The Minister must cause a written report about the review to be prepared.

  (4) The Minister must cause a copy of the report to be tabled in each House of the Parliament within 15 sitting days of that House after the day on which the report is given to the Minister.

  (5) The report is not a legislative instrument.

Labor is moving this amendment due to some relatively minor concerns about enforceability of measures in schedule 1. We believe a post-implementation review is warranted. Some stakeholders have raised concerns about defence provisions and strict liability for administrative penalties, including for people who may reasonably be in complete ignorance. Whereas criminal offences have overarching general defences for genuine mistakes, administrative civil penalties do not. However, in practice, the Commissioner of Taxation is only likely to impose civil penalties in genuinely gross cases. The Commissioner of Taxation has scope to remit penalties in cases of genuine mistakes.

Stakeholders have also raised concerns about the ATO's ability to enforce the provisions. The Treasury has said that the commissioner is presently undertaking live investigations into alleged sales suppression software. Neither Treasury nor the ATO have estimates on how prolific such software is. As Senator Cameron noted in his speech on this bill, the expansion of the TPRS and the rise of contractors and gig-economy work warrant greater inspection of the interaction effects of the measures of schedule 2.

As the amendment Labor is putting forward states, Labor would like a review of the operation of the amendments in this bill. The amendment requires:

(1) The Minister must cause a review of the operation of the amendments made by Schedule 1 of this Act.

(2) The review must start as soon as practicable after 2 years after Royal Assent.

(3) The Minister must cause a written report about the review to be prepared.

(4) The Minister must cause a copy of the report to be tabled in each House of the Parliament within 15 sitting days of that House after the day on which the report is given to the Minister.

(5) The report is not a legislative instrument.

This is a responsible amendment that strikes the right balance between evidence based policymaking transparency and ensuring that the measures before us are passed by parliament in a timely fashion.