Page 4600 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 27 November 1990
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aimed at ensuring that developers do not get the benefit of profit rightfully accruing to the community - one of the points which I think Mr Moore was trying to make.
The Alliance Government has been able to consider these issues on a logical basis and has ensured that the financial returns to the community have been enhanced. Some elements of the local ALP have talked for years about the need to reform the administration of betterment tax. They did not do it, but we did. In the same way the Alliance Government was able to rationalise the administration of rental leases to ensure a more appropriate return to the community. This aspect of the leasehold system was a classic case of the community subsidising some sections of the business community unnecessarily. Yet the good socialists opposite merely talked about it; they did not do anything but talk. They did absolutely nothing about it.
Michael Moore has never even raised that issue, interestingly enough, although he tries to make a point once in a while. The level of Mr Moore's contribution to the debate has always been to make misleading allegations about particular transactions, all of which in the event can be adequately and properly explained. He has never ventured into the realm of sophisticated analysis of the system - I suspect, because that would involve some real work and would probably interfere with his travel plans.
I had the opportunity to examine earlier this afternoon a speech which Mr Moore made on the last occasion on which he raised this issue as an MPI. It is an old perennial that he raises from time to time. That was on 22 February this year and it occupies pages 487 to 492 of the Hansard for that week. The striking thing is that Mr Moore has made essentially the same speech today as he made in February. In fact I think he must have just brought out speech No. 74, dusted it off and had another go at it today. The only thing that has changed is that some of the cases he has referred to are new. My colleagues will respond to the specific cases raised by Mr Moore during this debate.
The basic point is that Mr Moore represents a Canberra which lives in the past, a Canberra when the NCDC made wise and benevolent decisions, when two-thirds of the work force were government employees, when nobody really knew or cared how much it cost to run the ACT, when nobody was really accountable for the expenditure of taxpayers' money, and when it was considered unnecessary to encourage private sector investment. That is history; it is the past. The Government has had to face some hard financial decisions and we are proud of the fact that we have been able to introduce some basic reforms to the leasehold system to provide greater efficiency, accountability and a better financial return to the community.
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