Northern Territory Second Reading Speeches

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REVENUE UNITS BILL 2009

Madam Speaker I move that the bill be now read a second time.

As part of Budget 2009-10, I advise that many of the fees and charges for government services have not been reviewed for years. These fee levels have been eroded by inflation and are well below the cost of providing the services associated with these fees.


The existing
Revenue Units Act established a scheme to allow for government fees and charges to be expressed as a number of revenue units rather than dollar amounts. The act was enacted to provide a simple process for maintaining the value of Territory fees and charges. This is similar to the penalty units scheme that has already been legislative for in the Northern Territory. However, the current Revenue Units Act does not provide for a simple, automated process for changing the monetary value of our revenue unit to take into account the affects of inflation.

The existing
Revenue Units Act commenced in May 2006, and the value of a revenue unit has not been reviewed since it was set at $1 in July 2006. The Revenue Units Bill will remedy this by providing for the automatic annual adjustment of the value of a revenue unit. The adjustment will be calculated on the movement in the Consumer Price Index for Darwin published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the four quarters of the calendar year immediately preceding the relevant financial year. Any adjustment to the value of a revenue unit will be declared in around March each year to apply for the following financial year. Where the monetary amount of a fee or charge expressed in the revenue units is not a multiple of $1, the amount will be rounded down to the nearest $1. A similar indexation mechanism was recently included in the Penalty Units legislation. Similar legislative fee indexation mechanisms also exist in Victoria and Tasmania.

The bill provides for the value of a revenue unit to remain at $1 until 30 June 2011. This is because the government is in the process of reviewing fee levels, as many have not been updated for many years. The review process will ensure that fees are updated to levels that better reflect the impact of inflation on the cost to government of providing these services. Any increase to these fees will apply from 1 January 2010. This will occur separately to this bill, for instance, by way of amending the regulations that prescribe the fee amounts and the gazettal of new fee levels. As part of this process, suitable fees and charges that have yet to be represented as a revenue unit will be converted to revenue units. The Revenue Units Bill replaces the current
Revenue Units Act, as Parliamentary Counsel considers this is a more practical than amending the current act.

Madam Speaker, I commend the bill to honourable members and table the explanatory statement to accompany the bill.


Debate adjourned.


 


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