If lawyers ever needed reminding of the intimate link between government policy activity and legal work, the arrival of the Federal Labor government in Canberra in 2007 has certainly provided some powerful examples. Elected on the back of a perceived electorate backlash against the Howard government’s WorkChoices, the Rudd government immediately went to work to implement an employment and IR agenda of its own. The rest, as they say, is history and it is a rare law firm that has not seen a boost to employment and IR workflows. ALB has covered this pattern in previous editions, with stories such as Thomson Playford Cutlers doubling the size of its workplace relations practice over the past year.

Tax lawyers started 2009 wondering if their own version of workflow nirvana was just around the corner – or to be more precise, nirvana for private practice lawyers and nightmare for in-house lawyers. The release of the much-anticipated Henry Review was due and there was a general expectation of root and branch reform of the nation’s taxation laws.

Things did not exactly go to plan. For reasons best known to itself, the government delayed the release of the report till April 2010. The reform agenda subsequently foreshadowed by the government has left most commentators bemused. HopgoodGanim taxation and revenue special counsel Damian O'Connor summed up the general sentiment when he described the reform measures known thus far as a series of “headline tax issues” rather than the fundamental reforms which had been widely expected.

But what is missing in breadth is compensated by sheer controversy and the turmoil surrounding the resources super profits tax is causing companies to turn to their lawyers for help. Blake Dawson partner Duncan Baxter told ALB that RSPT-related work – advice to boards on tactics for managing the RSPT and participation in the consultation process – has seen his already busy team approaching full capacity. He frankly conceded that if the government had, in addition to the RSPT, implemented the Henry recommendations to anything near their full extent, this would have put a tremendous strain on the team’s resources. “It’s an unusual tax,” he said of the RSPT. “Conventional tax advice is a piece of the puzzle, but then there is the economic impact and looking at how it shifts the balance of risk between the miner and [government].”

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