Taxation and Related Legislation (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2026
[3.01 p.m.]
Ms BURNET (Clark) - Honourable Speaker, I rise to speak to the Taxation and Related Legislation (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill of 2026 and thank the Treasurer for bringing this to the House. I also thank the Treasury staff who have provided my office with a briefing to go through a lot of this.
We know that many of the amendments are technical, minor and largely administrative, but I want to speak to some of this bill. For those of you listening in, this is an unusual bill because it has not been formulated in the traditional way. Normally, the government would seek public submissions on the issues through a discussion paper, then they would release a draft bill for consultation then publish the submissions it receives, and then table the bill. But that hasn't happened with this bill. Instead, this was much more of a behind-closed-doors situation, for whatever reason that might be. So much so that no draft bill was released for public consultation.
In fact, the only consultation that appears to have occurred has been what the government calls targeted consultation, where it picks out who it wants to consult with. In this case it was the Law Society of Tasmania. The Law Society's comments have not been published so you can't go looking for them, but if you're listening along at home, they have now been provided to members after we asked the government to see them. I thank the government for that. I also thank the Treasury staff, as I said, and the department for the briefing on the bill.
My concern with this bill is that we are discussing pretty complicated tax regulation. It is legislation that is effectively bestowing financial benefits in some cases. The government calls it cutting red tape. That is one name for it. As the honourable shadow treasurer has suggested, there's red tape and there's red tape. There hasn't been a significant amount of redtape cutting.
But it can also be called, and perhaps more accurately so, an exemption from duty, from tax to a certain group of people, in circumstances where the public have not been given the opportunity to understand, nor have their say on those exemptions. While I readily accept that many of the reforms seem sensible and justifiable, there are some aspects of the bill that require more scrutiny and raise questions for the government.
The first is the 'yin and yang' of foreign investor duty exemptions. The shadow treasurer raised this in his second reading response. It was this government that introduced duties payable by foreign investors on dutiable transactions in 2018. It was an election commitment which the government told voters would help manage demand for property from foreign investors, level the housing affordability playing field and assist local buyers to remain competitive.
The exemption to this foreign investor levy or duty was introduced by this government back in 2022 to encourage foreign developers to make a significant contribution to the state's housing stock as the price for an exemption from the levy. That's all very well. At the time, the government decided that 50 residential dwellings was a reasonable price to extract from foreign investors in order to exempt them from the duties. It was what thenminister Michael Ferguson, called 'a reasonable contribution' to the state's housing supply. I'd like to hear the Treasurer's argument as to why that number of 50 dwellings is being reduced by 80 per cent.
I would also like to know from the Treasurer how many transactions attracted the foreign investor surcharge in 202526, and how many of those related to residential properties. Also, how many investors have met the criteria for exemption since the 2022 act commenced which imposed the exemption requirement of 50 new houses under section 30HC of the Duties Act?
The difficulty I have with this bill is that the Treasurer is mischaracterising the changes to the exemption from duties that apply to corporate restructures. The question I ask, and other MPs will be asking, is for whose benefit are we making these changes and giving out these exemptions? The exemption from the duties as they apply to corporate restructuring is covered in clauses 16 to 22. The Treasurer seeks to give the impression that it will be notforprofits who benefit, but I challenge that assertion.
If the benefit goes to notforprofits who own land or property across related corporate entities and want to reorganise their corporate structure, this might be a handful of community housing providers. Small, singleentity incorporated associations - your local community association, Neighbourhood Houses, which make up most of the notforprofits in Tasmania, have no corporate group to restructure and gain absolutely nothing from this change. So, I repeat the question: who does this actually benefit?
The reality is that by including establishing a corporate group as a qualifying purpose, the amendments to broaden exemptions from duty for corporate restructures will benefit any commercial group seeking to restructure. Those who stand to gain from these changes are property developers, resource companies, retail franchise groups, financial service groups and private equity-style holding structures.
Tax and corporate advisory firms who administer these exemptions for clients are also functional beneficiaries in the sense that a simpler, more predictable regime reduces their compliance burden and dispute risk with the commissioner.
These are the sorts of groups that have the ear of the government. We know that because we can see in the ministers' diary disclosures.
The flip side of the argument is that we need to stay competitive with other states. Too much red tape, as the minister puts it, or excessive duties and these corporations will take their business elsewhere. I get that, but let's be open and let's be honest about this.
What I also struggle with is the notion that in a budget crisis the government is making changes that are going to reduce its revenue base. That's why I'd like to know from the Treasurer what the impact of this bill will be to the budget. I expect this would have been modelled by Treasury and they would have prepared a budget impact statement, but we haven't been provided one. I would like to know, Treasurer, what the impact of these changes is on the budget and when can we see the modelling?
In summary, there are some concerning reforms in this bill, with unclear assertions from the Treasurer's second reading speech in which he lists your not for profits among those who will benefit when it is highly unlikely they will benefit from these amendments. There are some incentives that could improve supply of housing, but we don't know. But, on balance, there are some helpful changes that this bill seeks to introduce and, despite some of my misgivings, I shall be supporting this bill.