Please note: This is an extract from Hansard only. Hansard extracts are reproduced with permission from the Parliament of Tasmania.

LAND TAX RATING BILL (No. 2) 2000 (No. 79)

Second Reading

Mr LLEWELLYN (Lyons - Minister for Primary Industries, Water and Environment - 2R) - Mr Speaker, I move -

That the bill be now read the second time.

The Land Tax Rating Bill (No. 2) 2000 is the second piece of legislation in the package of legislation designed to modernise the arrangements for the imposition of land tax in Tasmania. Members have recently considered the Land Tax Bill 2000 which provides for a new act to replace the Land and Income Taxation Act 1910.

While th e Land Tax Act 2000 provides for the imposition of land tax from 1 January 2001, the rates of land tax will continue to be set in a separate Land Tax Rating Act. A new land tax rating act is required that is consistent with the provisions of the Land Tax Act 2000. This is the purpose of the bill currently before the House.

The rates of land tax were outside the scope of the rewrite of the land tax legislation. Consequently, the rates of land tax included in the bill remain unchanged to those that are applicable in 2000-01. Land tax only remains payable on land classified as general land. As under the previous acts, a nil rate of tax is set for principal residence land and primary production land, thereby effectively exempting such land from land tax.

Mr Speaker, I commend the bill to the House.

Mrs SWAN (Lyons) - Minister, can I commence by saying I am delighted you are able to adhere to the comments you make with regard to the rates of land tax remaining unchanged and of course in order to complete that particular undertaking that has been part of your second reading speech we know you have had withdrawn, or at least you have introduced a new bill and then will go on to discharge the offending bill which quite clearly had the effect of altering the tax rate by way of bracket creep, as we indicated to you by press release

Mr Groom - Caught out.

Mr Llewellyn - Caught out?

Mr Groom - Caught out badly.

Mrs SWAN - And as you realise, of course, you were well and truly caught out and had it not been for the demands of the business community, as we understand, we may indeed have been putting through a bill that would effectively change the tax rate arrangements for properties valued between $450 000 and $500 000, because, that was clearly the effect of the schedule at the back of the bill, as we clearly pointed out to you. So we have been proven to be right and I am delighted that we have been able to alert you in no uncertain terms to what was a very onerous change by way of bracket creep, in changing the arrangements that were applicable to that section of the schedule.

But the problem of course is that we have come to expect a deal of these things in recent times and since July of this year we have seen a number incidents that have cause us concern on this side of the Chamber and of course, as you are well aware, they have related to not only the arrangements that applied to the petrol rebate which, under the agreement that you had drawn up together with other States and the Commonwealth, you were applying with respect to petrol - and of course that particular subsidy was abolished - until with the RACT and the TACC we drew that once again to your attention.

Furthermore in the area of the diesel fuel rebate I drew to the attention of the Government the fact that that rebate applicable to vehicles onroad under four and a half tons had in fact been removed and the reasons given back were that there were to be changes in the administrative arrangements that I gather had been achieved and that had in fact been reinstalled on 1 August, which is my current understanding, but it seemed once again that this was another mechanism that was being chosen by the Government to seize some additional revenue. In this case, it was travelling, we estimated at the rate of $7 000 a day which was not an inconsiderable sum particularly when we have view of the fact that only a limited number of people in the State were paying for it.

I welcome the appearance of this bill which allows the minister to adhere to his second reading speech but it is of concern that a bill would in fact pass through the minister's hands and quite clearly through the Treasurer's hands and yet come in in that form. And I think what was even more worrying was the excuse making that was made on the other side of the House and the quite obvious irritation that was displayed in the press release put out by the Treasurer, with regard to the comments that I had made, seeking to draw your attention to what appeared to me to be a breach of your election promise with regard to not increasing the rate of tax in this State and I think that was, perhaps, the most concerning of all matters: that you chose to use a series of excuses rather than simply saying there was, in fact, a considerable drafting error that applied to the schedule at the back of the bill and that you were withdrawing it in order to make that change.

Around the House at that stage, of course, there was a view that it had been withdrawn to rectify some spelling mistakes, but when we look at the figures on the back of the schedule, that was obviously not the case because the reappearance of the bill quite clearly says to us that the changes have been in exactly the area that we nominated and the two last sections are now quite different from those that applied before and are now in fact addressing the issue of the bracket between $450 000 and $500 000. Notwithstanding, that is the effect of the bill and we quite clearly are going to agree with this particular arrangement. We are particularly pleased, of course, that we are not going to see land tax increases of what we estimated would be something in the order of 15 per cent at the upper end of the bracket and something in the order of 12 per cent at the lower end, which would have resulted in something in the order of $1 000 or $1 100 or more being paid annually in land tax in this particular area.

We will certainly be supporting this new and changed bill and look forward to the discharge of the other bill, but can I just express my concern, once again, that in being caught out, even though the Minister for Health may well feel irritated by it -

Mrs Jackson - Oh, it's not. Can't you take an honest mistake as being an honest mistake? Can't you take somebody's word that it was an honest mistake?

Mr Groom - Where?

Mrs Jackson - The figure which I told her.

Mrs SWAN - Mr Speaker, if I could simply say to the minister that the concern has been on this side of the Chamber, not that it was an honest mistake but simply that it was not declared to be an honest mistake and, had it been declared to be an honest mistake, the Opposition would have taken a very different view of it. It was the very fact that you chose not to treat it as an honest mistake -

Mrs Jackson - I did.

Mrs SWAN - that raised our ire and that was the very reason why we sought to draw it to your attention and went to press over the issue itself. We are quite forgiving when it comes to matters of obvious mistake where they are declared, but our problem was that it was not declared in that form at all and that was the reason for our irritation.

Mr Llewellyn - I did!

Mrs SWAN - The more so, I have to say, to be faced with the sort of press release that the Treasurer in this instance found it necessary to release himself -

Mrs Jackson - He gave you a bit of a serve, didn't he?

Mrs Swan - and hence we felt suitably irritated by it. And despite the minister's interjections or sotto voce interjections, Mr Speaker, I adhere to the point I make. Nonetheless, we agree with the bill and we will make some further comments to do with the -

Mrs Jackson - Sotto, what's that? I don't understand that. I never had piano lessons, what's sotto?

Mr Groom - Quiet please.

Mrs Swan - It is a little hard to address the issue at all, Mr Speaker, given the level of interjection that the minister insists on continuing with.

Mr SPEAKER - I would ask the honourable Minister for Primary Industries to cease interjecting and -

Mr Llewellyn - I never said a word, Mr Speaker!

Mr SPEAKER - You nearly did.

Mrs SWAN - Mr Speaker, just one issue which I did want to draw the minister representing the Treasurer's attention to, and it is the matter with regard to the exemption provisions that apply to principal residence and also to primary production, and I do note with interest that they are in the Land Tax Rating Bill and not in the Land Tax Bill itself. He may be able, in his response, to indicate to me why this is so, given that there are all the other general exemption provisions that are included in the Land Tax Bill itself, the legislation with which we have just dealt. I am interested in knowing whether that indicates a less certain view by the Government with respect to the exemption provisions that apply currently to principal residences and to primary production land, and why they have chosen to put that in the rating bill rather than under the formal requirements of the Land Tax Bill which I would have thought -

Mr Llewellyn - I thought I answered that before.

Mrs SWAN - You may well have done, Minister, but if you have you might draw it to my attention once again. I simply put that question and you may be able to answer that in your response.

Mr GROOM (Denison) - I would like to support my colleague, Mrs Swan, in her comments on this bill. It is an unusual situation when we have two bills on the very same matter before the House. We have the Land Tax Rating Bill 2000 and the Land Tax Rating Bill (No. 2) 2000. I have not known of a similar situation arising before, where a government's taxation bill has two parts - two competing pieces of legislation presently before the House. But I am not satisfied, frankly, with the answers given by the minister so far. I would like to minister to explain in detail exactly how this mistake came about. I would like to know exactly where the mistake occurred. I do not know whether the former minister and the present minister chatting away there before, interrupting my colleague -
Mrs Bladel - We weren't interrupting your colleague.

Mr GROOM - have thought about this. I do not know whether you are on the Printing Committee; I am on it and I cannot recall whether you are on it or not -

Mrs Jackson - Oh, well, it's your fault then.

Mr GROOM - We did discuss this very same issue some time ago when a bill came before the House where a whole paragraph had been left out and the Government was pleading, 'Oh, just an honest mistake'. We have a job to do here to make sure that the bills that come before this House are in the right form. It was only because of the efforts made by my colleague, Mrs Swan, and others on this side of the House that the House actually appreciated the fact that there was a change in the rates. Let us face it, to change the rates of taxation is a major matter. I am suspicious about this.

Mrs Bladel - What do you think is behind it?

Mr GROOM - I am normally a very forgiving person.

Mrs Jackson - Ha, ha. You're not really; you've got a nasty little streak in you and you know it.

Mr GROOM - I have not.

Mrs Jackson - Yes, you have.

Mrs Bladel - What do you think is behind it all?

Mr Llewellyn - This is righteous indignation again.

Mr GROOM - No, I am serious about this. I will go through what I mean here, because I would like to know where the error actually occurred.

Mr Llewellyn - I will tell you. I already have, but I will tell you again.

Mr GROOM - Thank you. I was not here when you said it. Did it occur in Treasury?

Mr Llewellyn - No.

Mr GROOM - Did it occur at the printing office - the Government Printer?

Mr Llewellyn - No, no - Parliamentary Counsel.

Mr GROOM - Parliamentary Counsel made the mistake! This is important. So you are alleging that Parliamentary Counsel made this error. But when you look at the document, to suggest it is a typographical error is a nonsense.

Mr Llewellyn - That's what it was.

Mr GROOM - It is a nonsense because there are five errors in the bill - five separate errors. They follow the sequence: $250 000 to $449 999, then it goes nice and neatly to $450 000 or more. The two scales follow precisely and it all fits together very neatly.

Mr Llewellyn - I'll explain how that comes out.

Mr GROOM - I hope that you will have, seriously, a full and proper explanation of this -

Mrs Bladel - We are thinking of a royal commission.

Mr GROOM - You can joke about it all you like, but I will tell you what, people have to be made aware of the fact that we do expect bills - especially taxation bills, but indeed all bills - to come to the House in proper form. If we become sloppy, careless, we do not care what happens in this place, where is it all going to finish up? We had a meeting of the Printing Committee -

Mr Llewellyn - You actually meet, do you?

Mrs Jackson - Did you? I was on that for years and we never met.

Mr GROOM - I think the Speaker may have attended the meeting; the former Clerk was there. The Deputy Clerk - I apologise - was present.

Mrs Bladel - Oh, so you make a mistake then. Was that deliberate? You said the former Clerk and now you changed it to the Deputy Clerk.

Mr GROOM - Now you are being quite stupid, frankly, Mrs Bladel.

Mrs Jackson - Well, we never know where it might end up if you make those sort of mistakes.

Mr GROOM - You are being quite stupid now about what is a serious matter. I am endeavouring to put a serious point. We had a meeting of this committee and we expressed concern and we conveyed a message to the Government Printer. I am pleased that it is not the Government Printer. You are alleging the error was made by the Parliamentary Counsel, the person who actually drafted the bill. I find that quite extraordinary -

Mr Cheek - So do I.

Mr GROOM - because parliamentary draftsmen are so precise about how they do their job, what instructions they get and so on.

Mr Llewellyn - Well, sit down and I'll explain it to you.

Mr GROOM - I am still suspicious about it. I hope you will remove that from my mind because of the number of errors and the way it quite neatly fits into place. If you are going to do this, maybe this is the way you would do it, or is there someone who is mischievous about this and they have tried to create some problem for you? I do not know what is going on here, but it is an unusual situation, frankly, to have a bill of this kind which is a taxation bill, imposing taxation on our community, to have these sorts of errors. And for the Government to just laugh it off, frankly, is not good enough.

We would like to know how this came about, especially a draftsman. I find that amazing that a parliamentary draftsman would produce such a faulty product. I have great respect for the Parliamentary Counsel and the people in that office, but to think that they produced this in, of all measures, a taxation bill. In my days as Treasurer and Premier, my understanding was Treasury itself checked these bills -

Mr Fry - That's right.

Mr GROOM - and they double checked and triple checked them, and they again have a first-class record of producing bills that have been accurately checked. How come that did not occur in this case and it was not picked up by the Treasury officers? How come that was not done? I know of cases where I know it has been read, reread and reread by different people to double check and make sure the product being produced by that department is an accurate one and is exactly what is intended. I just hope you can explain this to our satisfaction and I want to give you an opportunity now to do so. If you do not provide a proper explanation, then we will go into it in more detail during the Committee stage.

Mr SPEAKER - Does the minister require a Committee? Are you moving that we go into Committee?

Mr LLEWELLYN (Lyons - Minister for Primary Industries, Water and Environment) - No, I am closing the debate on the second reading, Mr Speaker.

Mr Cheek - Hang on - what's going on?

Mr LLEWELLYN - Mr Speaker, I got the call.

Mrs Jackson - He's got the call. You missed it. That's the second time he's done it.

Members interjecting.

Mr SPEAKER - Order.

Mr GROOM - Point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mr Cheek - One of the Clerks attracted my attention and I was talking to him.

Mr SPEAKER - Order, order!

Mrs Jackson - Come on. That's the second time he's done that and he should behave himself.

Mr SPEAKER - Order.

Mr GROOM - Mr Cheek has indicated he wished to speak and it was quite clear he wished to speak. I believe he should be given the chance to speak.

Mr SPEAKER - Order, order! The minister did get the call, but if the minister wishes to be gracious about the issue I would have no objection to him resuming his seat and allowing Mr Cheek to speak.

Mrs Jackson - You never did that for us - ever.

Mr SPEAKER - Mr Cheek has the call.

Mr CHEEK (Denison) - I thank the minister very much for that and no thanks to Mrs Jackson who apparently does not want to let me talk. It is very good to see you in the Chamber again when I am talking, I must say.

Mrs Jackson - I'm here on roster, unfortunately. You're always in here, you talk all the time.

Mr Rundle - He's got upgraded, he's going business class.

Mr CHEEK - Are you going to tell her I have been upgraded to business class, or will I?

Mrs Jackson - If he's being upgraded to business class, I'm going to protest because I'm not paying if he's been upgraded.

Mr Groom - What? You're not going?

Mr CHEEK - I thank the minister for allowing me to speak, and thank you too, Mr Speaker. The opportunity now is probably to get stuck into the minister but I do thank you anyway for that opportunity. This is beyond the realms of credibility, as my colleagues have pointed out, that somebody could make a so-called typo of this magnitude. You cannot expect people to swallow that because it is not as if coming out in the land tax scales you had $250 000 to $500 001, or $600 000 a typo, it is extremely precise in what it has. Everything is very precise in the way it is worked out to $4 449, $999.99 and then if that -

Mrs Jackson - This is what your colleague just said, you're just repeating yourself.

Mr CHEEK - was a typo, surely in the next line it would say $500 000 or more because it is only that that has been messed up but it is not. It is extremely precise. As I said -

Mrs Bladel - Waste time, go on.

Mr CHEEK - if that $4 499 had been $499 or if that had been a mistake there, that would have been different because then it would have said $500 000 in the next line but in fact it says $4 - I am sorry, I thought Mrs Jackson was going to cross the Floor. It actually says $450 000 or more, so, quite seriously, you cannot really take it that that was a mistake.

Mr Llewellyn - I'll give you a precise answer about it in a minute.

Mr CHEEK - I believe the State Government were trying to put this through in changing the land tax scales, that is the only possible conclusion you can come to -

Mr Llewellyn - No, no, no, not at all.

Mr CHEEK - because it is not a typo.

Mr Llewellyn - It is.

Mr CHEEK - It is a deliberate act. It is not only one line where you have the typo -

Mr Llewellyn - It started with a typo.

Mr CHEEK - Oh, it started with a typo.

Mr Groom - It started with a typo. How did it finish?

Mr CHEEK - It finished with an attempt to drag the wool over the Tasmanian taxpayers' eyes and get them to pay more land tax. The minister - or the State Government, I will not blame the minister directly - has a track record of trying to increase taxes wherever they can. We have seen the Hydro levy kept on, we have seen their attempt with fuel tax to maintain that, and it is a whole litany, the whole road is strewn with times when the Government has tried that.

In this land tax scale, I do not believe it was a typo, I have to put it on the record. I cannot accept that at all. Trying to call it a typo really does turn it into a farce because it is not a typo. The second line is a typo? It is not a typo, it is a deliberate attempt to put $450 000 in there, so I believe this would not have been picked up. You talk about the parliamentary draftspeople: they would not make a mistake like that. They have the land tax scale and if it is going to be the same they would do it from the last time. Why on earth would they change it? Why on earth would they make a change? They would have that there to read from the previous bill. If they made a mistake in the second last line, they would not have made a mistake in the last line; they would have picked it up. So I just believe it is sloppy incompetence or an attempt to put through an increase in land taxes. I really believe that and I cannot help but come to the conclusion it was the latter, to increase land tax by $2.5 million. We have the severest land tax in Australia and I just think that is a very flimsy and poor excuse that cannot be taken seriously. That is a very disappointing aspect.

The other thing is the minister has now left the original bill there so we now have Land Tax Rating Bill (No. 2) which confuses the issue -

Mr Llewellyn - I'm going to withdraw that.

Mr Groom - Why didn't you withdraw it before we debated this one?

Mr CHEEK - For everybody - it should have been withdrawn. Just because you went out on a limb and said that you were not going to withdraw the bill now, you have to do it this way which once again is an extremely deceitful exercise. Land tax, when you have the highest land tax rates in Australia - and I think it should be put on the record exactly what those are. I would like to read them out once again so that everybody knows, so there is no doubt about the land tax scales in Tasmania that Dr Crean tries to say are not really the highest in Australia.

On land value of $200 000 you have New South Wales paying $236; Victoria, $200; Queensland, nil; Western Australia, $420; South Australia, $525; Tasmania, $2 013 - that is a heck of a difference. Then you try to have us believe that you have not changed the tax scales. I just think everybody was looking for land tax relief - I have not finished yet, Mrs Jackson - everybody was looking for land tax relief and in fact they have not got anything at all. One of the main recommendations from the Fletcher Report was that land tax be reduced. That is the only thing that has not been picked up. It is taxing the business community around Hobart's credibility and taxing the credibility of the Government to have them believe that that was a typo. And it was only through them jumping up and down in a big way and actually phoning the Treasury and the minister and asking, 'What's going on? If you leave this like it is we are going to drop a huge bucket on you, Minister' that you backed down and did not let it go through.

If you were going to put it through, what gross incompetence that you would let the wrong land tax scale go through and that you would not pick it up immediately. It was set to go. It was the night before that the business community got onto you.

Mr Groom - It would've gone through probably.

Mr CHEEK - Yes, it would have gone through and you would have said, 'Whoops, we've passed something. Oh well, we'll just have to leave it there now. It was a typo but it's in our favour so we'll leave it'. I said previously that typos are becoming quite commonplace. In the Trust Bank sale we had a so-called typo coming from Treasury with an amount there that changed the equation of things quite dramatically. I think one of the newspapers ran a story based on that and when it got out into the public arena it was said it was a typo. The old typo comes in very handy. Typo might be all right, I suppose, for a novice computer operator or somebody who is making a typo but not for a government and not for people who should be checking things.

The minister has had this bill in front of him for a long period of time which he had after it was tabled and did not pick up that in the land tax rating bill the land tax scale was demonstrably wrong, what does that say about the minister representing the Treasurer; what does that say about the Treasurer himself, Dr Crean? What does it say about their credibility? It is not a complicated land tax scale; it just shows we pay the highest land tax in Australia. It is very clear cut. The bill itself - there is not much more to it than that, in very large units saying exactly what it is. It is a worry as to how it happened and I think the excuses are very flimsy.

Mr Llewellyn - You haven't heard me properly.

Mr CHEEK - It has been corrected now but I think the credibility of the Government has got to really take a dive on this because that is a huge mistake and cannot be explained away as a typo. I will give the minister an opportunity to explain it now; he said he can explain it but he will want to do a bit better than he did in the first round.

Mr Groom - Why wasn't it picked up?

Mr LLEWELLYN (Lyons - Minister for Primary Industries, Water and Environment) - There were a couple of issues that were raised by the member for Lyons, Mrs Swan. First of all she made some comments about the Government trying to promote a sleight of hand here, and that was something that the previous two speakers suggested as well, and I will explain the circumstances behind the error that occurred in the production of the legislation in a moment.

She also made a point that she believed that this was consistent with what had happened with the Government previously with regard to petrol subsidies and I want to make the point again with respect to that, that was certainly not the case.

Mrs Swan - How was it not the case?

Mr LLEWELLYN - I have made the point before that prior to 30 June 2000 -

Mr Cheek - That was a typo, too, was it?

Mr LLEWELLYN - the State provided a subsidy on the price of petrol of 1.95 cents per litre and 1.99 cents per litre for off-road diesel.

Mr Cheek - I must say the media didn't quite agree with your assessment of the situation.

Mrs Swan - I was actually speaking about on-road diesel.

Mr LLEWELLYN - With the introduction of the GST by the Commonwealth, the arrangement under which the Commonwealth provided the funds to Tasmania to pay the subsidy disappeared. Are you okay to date?

Mrs Swan - The agreement was to continue the subsidy.

Mr LLEWELLYN - Well, let me have a go; I let you have a go.

Under the GST arrangement, the Commonwealth assumed total responsible for providing subsidies on petrol and diesel.

Mrs Swan - For which you were given compensation.

Mr LLEWELLYN - There was a clear understanding under the intergovernmental agreement with the Commonwealth that this situation would occur and this responsibility is made clear by the fact the Commonwealth instituted retail subsidies of between 1 cent and 2 cents per litre for rural and remote areas from 1 July.

When it became clear that the Commonwealth had broken its promise that petrol would not rise as a result of the GST, Peter Costello reneged on the intergovernmental agreement by forcing the States to reimpose the State subsidies. That occurred on that basis and it was a clear reneging and subterfuge from the Commonwealth's point of view and the total cost to the Tasmanian taxpayers for this heavy-handed action -

Mr Groom - It's a very convenient argument.

Mr LLEWELLYN - by the Commonwealth Government -

Mr Cheek - So was the land tax Costello's fault too?

Mr LLEWELLYN - and then particularly by the Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, and the Prime Minister, John Howard, is $13 million worth of cost on the State.

Mr Groom - It's all Peter's fault. I reckon Peter was responsible for the car park.

Mrs Swan - And you get no compensatory factor for that at all, even though the minimum amount headed in.

Mrs Bladel - Just listen to the minister.

Mr LLEWELLYN - That is where the responsibility lies and that is where it remains, so do not try to -

Mrs Swan - It flies in the face of everything in the agreement.

Mr Groom - The evidence doesn't support you.

Mr LLEWELLYN - throw aspersions on the State Government in regard to that.

Mr Cheek - So whose responsibility was the land tax error?

Mr Groom - Peter's.

Mr LLEWELLYN - In regard to the second point that she made - the fact that the principal residence in primary production land is zero rated in the ratings bill and that that provision is not provided in the bill itself, that situation accords with the existing treatment of such land in the current Land Tax Bill and, during the public consultation phases that we had on that, there certainly were no submissions that were received suggesting that this was an inappropriate method to exempt such land.

Mrs Swan - It is a redraft of the whole bill.

Mr LLEWELLYN - The exemptions provisions in the Land Tax Bill are for specific groups of taxpayers where land tax assistance is provided rather than for entire land categories, but having said that, the Government certainly does not intend to reimpose land tax on principal residence or on primary production land.

Mr Groom - I'm pleased to hear that.

Mr LLEWELLYN - In any event to do so would require amending legislation to be presented to the House -

Mrs Swan - We understand that.

Mr LLEWELLYN - irrespective of whether such land is zero rated or exempt by some other mechanism.

Mr Groom - So you've given consideration to it?

Mr LLEWELLYN - So they are the two issues that were raised by the member -

Mr Groom - Who wrote this speech?

Mr Cheek - I'm glad you've ruled that out.

Mr LLEWELLYN - and if you can talk over the interjections from the other side, which often is difficult frankly, people being rude -

Mr Cheek - Oh no, you gave me a fair go, so I apologise.

Mr LLEWELLYN - Well, better than a fair go, I actually gave you a go.

Mr Cheek - I know you did; I put my thanks on the record.

Mr LLEWELLYN - Mr Speaker, the question with regard to the Land Tax Rating Bill that was introduced that had the error in it, the error was very simple. In a late draft which was with Parliamentary Counsel the table had been transcribed, $250 000 to $449 999.99 and on Parliamentary Counsel seeing that figure and seeing that it did not correspond with the $500 000 figure below made the assumption that the figure below was in error and corrected it -

Mr Groom - Wasn't there a figure below?

Mr Fry - That's getting worse.

Mr Cheek - How they could transcribe it as $449 000?

Mrs Swan - Of course there's a figure below.

Mr LLEWELLYN - Well, I am just telling you what actually was transcribed.

Mrs Swan - It's the second last category.

Mr LLEWELLYN - If you do not want to hear it, I will just sit down.

Mr Groom - It's not very plausible.

Mr LLEWELLYN - I have not finished - and so diligently then corrected what they believed was an error by changing the $500 000 to $450 000.

Mr Fry - If you look back at the previous one.

Mr Cheek - Boys' Own Annual stuff.

Mr LLEWELLYN - I admit from then on, with the final drafts, this issue was not picked up by either Parliamentary Counsel in the final stages or by Treasury officials, nor indeed by myself nor by the Treasurer.

Mr Cheek - It's a bit of a worry, being the Treasurer.

Mr LLEWELLYN - All I can say is that it was a legitimate mistake -

Mr Groom - Who accepted it?

Mr LLEWELLYN - and, yes, it was brought to our attention by the Chamber of Commerce.

Mrs Swan - A press release.

Mr Groom - Have you looked at the system to try to improve it, to try to prevent this sort of thing occurring in the future? It is a serious matter when you are dealing with taxation bills that impact on citizens. It is a serious point, David. I hope you understand our concerns.

Mr LLEWELLYN - Well, errors do crop up from time to time and you take all the steps you possibly can to try to avoid those legitimate errors. I am telling you what I understand to be the circumstances behind it and you can either take it or leave it but that is the story as far as the figure in the schedule is concerned. So, Mr Speaker, I commend the bill to the House.

Bill read the second time .