2016-11-10
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — The Greens will not support this amendment. The government has argued that the intent of the original legislation was clear, and therefore all the bill really does is close a loophole. In fact the intent was not clear, as we now know, because if you read the court case that related to these particular sections, there was a great deal of confusion and contestation about the meaning of the sections as they appear right now, including words such as 'purpose' or 'solely'. In some ways it is almost impossible to discern the purpose of a subdivision when the subdivision creates land that is to be used for a road but also creates land that is to be then used for housing. It appears from some of the arguments that were made during the court case that the order in which certain subdivision steps were done might change the way the GAIC was actually created, so the original intended mechanics were not clear.
The question for us today is: what intent do we want to have now? I think we should move in the direction that the government's bill proposes. Mr Davis as much as said that he did not want to collect any more money from outer suburban housing development, whereas I do. I do want to collect more money from outer suburban housing development processes if it means that somewhere else in the taxation mix — for example, the purchase of a first home — the state has less need for funds. We should be collecting more tax from things that we are attempting to discourage — that is, suburban sprawl — and collecting less tax from things we are trying to encourage, such as the normal economic activity of land transfers and housing purchases and sales.
I think it is in the broader context that we need to consider what we are doing here. Forget all this argument about loopholes versus tax grabs versus different things that might have been going on in developers' minds when they developed the purpose for which they subdivide the land. Forget about what State Revenue Office Victoria (SROV) tried to argue in the court case, which was that you had to look at the whole plan of subdivision of the whole suburb in order to understand what the purpose of a particular subdivision was. Forget all that. Let us just make the law clear now. For that reason the Greens will be opposing the suggested amendments put forward by the Libs, which aim to basically gut the original purposes of this section of the bill.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — I do not think that is right. There have been excluded subdivisions where no money was collected as a result of a claim against section 201RF paragraphs (a) and (b). The subdivisions occurred but the subdivider went to the SRO and said, 'No, these subdivisions were for the purposes of 201RF(a) and (b), and therefore I do not owe you any money'. What Mr Rich-Phillips may be driving at was, how many times did that happen before someone got wise and appealed it to the court?
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — It is easy to answer because there were subdivisions, and they actually happened. Those subdivisions were deemed by the SRO to be excluded GAIC events because they were a subdivision of the type to be found in section 201RF(a) and (b), and the question we are all trying to find the answer to is, how many times did that happen prior to the court case and after 2010 when the provision was first brought into the act?
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — But it is the case that after this bill passes, which I believe it may, there will not be any more of those applications; those applications will never be made, so they will all fail in the future.
[Speech was interrupted.]
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — I have a somewhat related question that I flagged during my second-reading debate speech: the money collected from the growth areas infrastructure contribution goes into a special fund. It is two funds, actually. Can the minister tell us what the current balance of those two funds is, and also less any moneys that have been committed to projects but not yet handed over to those projects? So how much is in the fund, and then how much of that is available for future grants from the fund that have not already been committed to?
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