Willis Nicola; Parker DavidNICOLA WILLIS (National): I want to return to a line of questioning that other members have pursued which the Minister hasn't commented on in detail yet. I want to give him the opportunity to do so. It relates to exactly how these threshold amounts were chosen for this bill. I think the Minister has done a good job of explaining the principle that is applied which is that the minimum family tax threshold is adjusted to reflect the changes in the benefit rates and abatement thresholds to ensure that those families who are in work are always guaranteed to get more income than those families who are not in work. And in work" is defined as a single parent working at least 20 hours a week or both parents combined working 30 hours a week. What I have done is I have gone back and I have looked at instances in the past when we have made similar adjustments because of course each year the minimum family tax credit threshold has been adjusted to reflect these sorts of changes to benefit levels to the minimum wage and to abatement thresholds and this has been happening each year since 2006. But the rate at which those thresholds have changed has not been uniform; it has been dependent on other things that are of import.A particular recent example which it seems to me is relevant here is what we did in December last year which was—members will recall—when benefit levels were lifted $25 a week in what was then termed as a response due to COVID-19. Now at that time the threshold adjustment that occurred was actually significantly larger than that which we are debating in the Chamber tonight because at that time the threshold had been $27768—so a minimum payment of $534 a week—and in response to the $25 lift in the benefit it was lifted to $29432. So in that case what we saw was an increase in that threshold that amounted to $32 per week. Of course the adjustment we're debating tonight is rather less that that; it's $10 a week. What I am seeking to understand from the Minister—and what I think other members are trying to elicit—is why $10 is the amount. The context here of course is that we have had a Budget announced which we will have the opportunity to pore over in more detail in the coming days which on the tin says that it's increasing benefits by $50 a week. So intuitively it seems to me that if it's increasing benefits by significantly more than we did this time last year then you would then expect a corresponding significantly larger increase in these thresholds.The reason I ask this and the reason I think other members are asking for a little bit more elucidation on these calculations is that it is critical that we are not lessening the incentive for work. It may be that yes work still pays just more but it doesn't have as big a gap between work and benefits as in the past. If that is the case—obviously we're debating this bill under urgency; we haven't had a select committee process and there hasn't been the opportunity to seek detailed analysis from officials to do the accounting analysis of it—I would just invite the Minister to be utterly transparent about that and to explain the basis on which these calculations have been made.It's relevant because actually fundamentally what this bill is about tonight is incentives. It is about the thresholds at which we set income tax adjustment payments to make sure that those families who are slogging it out—who are having to pay petrol for the car having to organise childcare having to pay for lunch at the canteen instead of eating at home having to face all of those extra costs of working and putting their effort in—are actually getting more ahead than those who are not making those sacrifices. So my question to the Minister—and I just want to be very clear—is: how was the decision made to lift the threshold by what amounts to $10 a week when last year when we made these similar adjustments the amount was $32 a week? Why is there such a discrepancy in those two numbers in this case? If the Minister could explain that I would be most grateful.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): On a number of occasions I've already described how the threshold is calculated so I'm not going to repeat that. But in respect of why the calculation is different this year to last year it's because last year we changed the amount that someone on a benefit can earn before their benefit abates and that therefore changed the maximum amount that a person on a benefit after abatement could earn that had to be then reflected in the change to the minimum family tax credit so that a person who wasn't on a benefit would not be worse off."