Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. It relates to a question I asked on 7 December last year and the Prime Minister’s follow-up answer in writing on 22 December regarding the taxation of adjustment payments paid to ground water users in the Namoi Valley, wherein he confirmed that the Commonwealth is going to treat as income for taxation purposes any payments received by irrigators from the joint irrigator-state-Commonwealth funded program, even though the payment is for the loss of a capital asset. Prime Minister, given that another grant from the Namoi Valley structural adjustment program given to some Namoi Valley ground water irrigators in the Carrol area near Gunnedah has not been subject to taxation, even though both adjustment programs are to alleviate the same problem and assist irrigators to adjust to reductions in ground water allocations, and given the confused position that many irrigators and their accountants find themselves in, could you please explain and release for public scrutiny the methodology used to establish the different taxation regimes for these two structural adjustment programs?

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