Page 1575 - Week 05 - Thursday, 18 April 1991
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money is mobile. It has a completely free choice. It can not only choose between Canberra and Sydney or Melbourne - and we might even have an edge on Melbourne at the moment - I think it can choose between Australia and elsewhere.
We have seen the mobility of the capital markets. We see it in interest rates, we see what it means. And capital is mobile. Now, we used to have a town where everything was done by government and now we have a town where government is not going to provide things like office buildings, most entertainment facilities, et cetera, factories. These are going to be provided by the private investment community. And the security value of the land is vital. It just astounds me that we could leave legislation in place which leaves open the sequestration of all private commercial property in the town by a government deciding that 10 per cent is not a fair fee, that it should be 100 per cent. To leave the matter for debate around the percentage instead of the principle of whether private property means what it says, it seems to me confusing as to why we do it.
CARD has made very similar comments in relation to the hypothetical 10 per cent renewal fee possibly going up to 100 per cent. And, indeed, on the legislation as it stands, that is quite possible. Mrs Nolan and I, as the Liberal members of these committees, accepted that argument. We thought there was strong merit in those suggestions by both CARD and the MBA. It is especially relevant now that we have self-government; we have to look after ourselves. We no longer have the luxury of the Federal Government taking care of our needs as it did until recent years. We believe that this is recognised by most members of this Assembly, and we believe that business needs every encouragement to invest in Canberra to ensure a bright future for this city.
Non-residential leases can be treated differently from residential leases by means of betterment tax, land tax, rates and stamp duties, and we do not believe that it is appropriate to have in this legislation sections that differentiate between non-residential leases and residential leases when it comes to renewal of the lease.
In relation to another issue, that of betterment, all witnesses who appeared before the committees accepted the theory of betterment tax; they accepted it as a unique ACT tax, but they accepted it nonetheless. There are, of course, various comments in relation to what it should be. What I would say in relation to that is, of course, that betterment tax has to get the optimum amount of money in for government and also encourage the optimum amount of investment; it has to be balanced. Obviously, from time to time, whatever betterment tax is levied in legislation will have to be reviewed and altered, depending on the economic circumstances at the time.
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