Page 2406 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 7 August 1990
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remain Government property. The community will reap all the benefits from any sales of these sites and there is no need or justification for any additional betterment charge. The planning and preferred use will be determined before the sites are sold at their new full market value.
Mr Moore: The sites will not be sold because the schools will not close.
MR KAINE: You really are remarkable people. You are prepared to see all those school sites sitting there empty in a few years' time with no students in them, yet you still will not sell them. What a bunch of ratbags! Talk about whacky!
The proposed imposition of such a tax also raises grave questions as to its legality. In the first instance the tax may amount to the acquisition of property without a proper legal basis and may be invalid by reason of section 23(1) of the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Act 1988. I advise the Opposition to check that possibility. Mr would-be practising lawyer Mr Connolly might revert to the self-government Act and see whether or not the proposal is illegal.
Mr Connolly: Mr teacher of constitutional law, I can tell you that there is no difficulty with the acquisition of property.
MR KAINE: Just let us see if your proposal is illegal, Mr Connolly, but perhaps your understanding of the law does not go far enough to understand that it might be illegal. Additionally, any such tax would have to be retrospective in operation. It would have to be selective and it would have to be discriminatory. I know the Labor Party does not care about those things but it would have to confront them. For example, if some of the school sites were to be developed for aged persons units, does it intend to levy the tax to the owners of the units? No doubt the original developers would be long gone before Labor could even attempt to introduce the tax, even if it had the guts to do it when the time came, which it would not, and even if it were legal. Mr Acting Speaker, the Opposition and its whacky party have not thought this thing through at all; they do not understand any of the ramifications of it. The proposal demonstrates that they are prepared to seize on any half-baked idea and will do or say anything to avoid facing up to the hard decisions that have to be made in connection with the ACT.
Mr Acting Speaker, let me make one last point about this matter. This Assembly has faced great difficulty in establishing credibility for itself and self-government for the ACT. The process has been exacerbated by the - - -
Members interjected.
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