Page 2342 - Week 08 - Thursday, 7 June 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
of revenue. In fact, there are numbers of other revenue sources which are available to the Government.
Mr Humphries: Well, what are they? Tell us, please.
MS FOLLETT: In fact, the Government has taken one today. Mr Speaker, I respond to you and not to Mr Humphries' constant interjections. It has taken one today with regard to the land tax.
What we are looking at in this Bill as a whole today is the question of balance. The fact is that the Liberal Government opposite has come down very much against the average ACT householder. It has imposed a very large hike in rates on average ACT households. On the question of imposing land tax, on the other hand, it has not gone nearly as far as other governments have. Land tax, on the whole, is imposed on businesses - the Government's friends, its supporters, the people who are mounting an ad campaign to support the current Government and the PRB.
Mr Speaker, it is very clear to me where this Government's loyalties lie, and it is clearly not with the average Canberran. It has hit the people with this enormous rates slug and yet, by comparison, it has looked after the business sector very well. So, as I say in response to Mr Humphries' remarks about revenue, it is a question of balance. We, on the Labor side of this Assembly, will always weigh the needs and the interests of ordinary Canberra people much more highly. We would certainly weigh our own election commitments and our own integrity much more highly than the current Government appears to do.
Mr Speaker, I would say again that the amendments that I am proposing are for increases in the rates which would be in line with CPI, and I commend them to the Assembly. We have had a number of interjections - it seems as if nobody will address the situation in any sort of informed way - about the revaluation exercise that took place over the previous three years before we came into government last year. It is a fact that, as a result of that revaluation, some people's rates increased. But, of course, what has completely escaped the members opposite is the fact that, as a result of that revaluation, the rates in a large number of areas of Canberra actually fell - areas in Tuggeranong and Belconnen, in particular. Mr Duby, of course, has not sought to comment on that.
It is also a fact that, following that revaluation exercise, I actually dropped the rate in the dollar at which rates are levied in order to ensure that overall the rise in the rates take would not be above CPI. I kept my election promise, and I went to considerable trouble to do so. Therefore, I do not appreciate Mr Duby's constant badmouthing and harassment of me across the chamber.
He has not got a clue what he is talking about on these matters. He is a churlish and ill-mannered man. With his
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .