Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

By leave—I rise to take note of the response from the Director of Indirect Tax from the Australian Taxation Office on Taxation and Mobile Home Parks and the attachment to it and I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This motion that the Senate supported was in response to the Australian Greens' motion that called for the Australian Taxation Office to maintain the current GST arrangements on movable home estates and movable park homes. It is not often that I say thank you to the Australian Taxation Office. I would like to thank the Australian Taxation Office, because they have withdrawn the Australian Taxation Office ruling. It was a draft ruling looking at taking away the current arrangements on movable home estates and movable park homes. It was set to have a significant impact on about 100,000 Australians. These are mostly low-income Australians or pensioners who are living in movable park homes. The ruling would have significantly increased the fees that they had to pay and made it harder for them to make ends meet.

I do not often get to say thank you to the ATO and I do not often get to express my pleasure in this place that one of our motions was actually successful and we have had a good outcome. My office received a lot of correspondence about this particular issue and I know there are many Australians, including Western Australians who are living in the south-west in lifestyle villages and in mobile home parks, who would have been affected by this. I know they are very pleased because I had very positive feedback. I want to put that on the Senate record. Thank you.

Question agreed to.