Page 1084 - Week 06 - Thursday, 27 July 1989
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It is a major mistake on the Government's part, Mr Speaker, for it to omit any mention of measures to assist private home buyers, given the serious state in which home buyers and the housing industry find themselves. This perhaps is not unexpected from a government which has no policy on private home ownership. Nevertheless, some minor gestures, such as waiving stamp duty for first home buyers, would have been greatly appreciated by both potential home buyers and the industry. In today's world, I regard this, Mr Speaker, as a most important omission.
On the revenue side, the imposition of increased taxes and rates on the business sector seems to me to be counterproductive for two reasons, and Mr Duby raised this question at question time. Firstly, it represents a disincentive to the private sector, on which, like it or not, the Government must rely for growth both in jobs and in the revenue base. Secondly, all such imposts must inevitably be passed on to the consumer - the individual and the householder - in the final analysis. For the Chief Minister to suggest that businesses that are already in financial trouble are somehow going to accept these additional imposts and not pass them on to the customers is naive, to say the least.
Another initiative that the Government should take is to encourage people living in government houses who can afford to buy them to do so. The proceeds could then be used to acquire additional houses, if needed - and I have asked that question before - to house people genuinely in need of public housing; to undertake other new initiatives to enhance the private sector, thereby increasing tomorrow's job opportunities and revenue raising potential, and I do not mean, Mr Speaker, financing publicly funded women's enterprises; and, thirdly, to offset the effects of the impending withdrawal of Commonwealth spending in the ACT.
Reductions in cost to the taxpayer can also be achieved by identifying tasks to be contracted out to private contractors. One of these, Mr Speaker, is the provision of reticulation facilities for electricity, which could be done better and more efficiently by private enterprise than it is currently.
There are problems also arising from the omission of certain financial transactions from the budget. The most obvious is that details of the community development fund are simply not included in the budget. Thus, annual revenues approaching $10m are not accounted for, and community groups relying on the CDF for their funding will perhaps be bewildered by this fact. Those organisations not yet favoured by being admitted to the list of CDF beneficiaries will be even more bemused. The absence of CDF funding from the budget presumably denies them the basis for any input by way of community consultation, since it is not part of the budgetary process.
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