Page 2194 - Week 07 - Thursday, 6 June 1991
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premium; the matter can be dealt with financially by way of a variation to the land tax base. That has been the Chief Minister's proposition and defence. When I asked the Chief Minister what projections on revenue had been done and what adjustment was necessary for land tax, he said, "I do not know; I hope to have some figures next week". At best, all the Chief Minister could point to was the income for the last four years and project that.
Mr Speaker, I find it staggering that the Liberal leader and Chief Minister could persuade his Liberal dominated Cabinet to make such a fundamental change without sound financial information. We have long suspected that this is a government of bumbling amateurs. Mr Humphries' sorry record of financial ineptitude as he has lurched from budget blow-out to budget blow-out - $3m, $6m, $9m, $17m - amply shows this. There are 17 million reasons for suspecting that this Government does not know what it is doing. But it is inconceivable to anyone in this Territory that Cabinet would make a fundamental decision affecting the basis of leasehold in this Territory without doing any homework - none at all.
This is not just decision making on the run, Mr Speaker; this is adhockery advanced to an art form. Never before in this Territory or in any other State or Territory in Australia have we seen Cabinet take decisions of such great importance driven only by dogma, with an admission from the leader of the Government that the financial implications had not been considered because the background financial information had not been sought. "We are going to get that next week", he says. How can anyone have confidence in such a shambles?
What is the cost to the community of this proposed change? As I said, the Government does not know, because it has not done the figures. The figures for the last four years are instructive; they shed some light on the matter. The six lease extensions granted in the 1987-88 financial year, for example, netted $1.13m to the Territory, or about $189,000 per lease. Substantial sums of public money are involved. But there has been no projection as to how that will apply in the future, and no calculation of the number of leases in issue, the value of those sites and how that is likely to project into revenue over the next few years. It is just decision making on the run.
Mr Speaker, we must ask: Has there been a case demonstrated to abolish the lease premium? The answer is, clearly, that there has not been. There have been two comprehensive reviews on this question in the last few years. The first is the Langmore committee report of 1988 and the second is our own joint standing committee report on the planning package when the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee and the Conservation, Heritage and Environment Committee jointly looked at the proposed planning and land management legislation. Labor, I must say, agrees totally with the views of Mr Jensen and Dr
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