Page 298 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 12 May 1992
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payment and collection is a burden both on business and on the Territory itself. It is a stupid tax. The abolition of payroll tax would significantly reduce employment costs and therefore create employment opportunities. We have heard about what the Liberal Party would do in relation to payroll tax.
Workers compensation is another impost. As I have said before in other debates, when the Liberal Party moved an amendment to the workers compensation legislation it was knocked back by the Government. That amendment would have more significantly reduced the cost. The other thing that perhaps a bit of vision might have revealed is that we should arrange for all our ACT statutory authorities and government business enterprises to buy their workers compensation cover through ACT private insurance instead of paying exorbitant rates through Comcare. I am told that if we read the budget papers we will see that there is a $11.1m allocation from Treasury into Comcare.
Turning now to residential land tax, as my colleague quite eloquently said before, there is a one per cent land tax on private residential properties. A Liberal government would abolish that tax because, as Mr Cornwell quite correctly said, it is not a tax on the wealthy. Let us see what Mr Daryl Dixon said. Mr Daryl Dixon, an eminent, well known and well respected commentator, said this in the Canberra Times on 18 August:
The land tax will be a very visible and tangible reason for not investing in Canberra residential real estate. Canberra needs more real estate investors, not fewer, because the lower the cost of housing and of rents, the more attractive the ACT will be as a place for doing business.
Madam Speaker, Ms Follett and her Government had an opportunity of setting the scene and creating vision for the future of the ACT. There was nothing said about the better management of ratepayers' tax dollars. Canberra ratepayers and taxpayers deserve and should demand value for every dollar they are asked to pay. Madam Speaker, I need not remind you that there is no excuse for not taking stock of the way we manage our Territory. Housing was something that Mr Cornwell put to this Assembly. An ACT Liberal government would separate the management of subsidised and not subsidised housing. There was nothing as visionary as that in the document - that I saw, anyway.
As you know, Madam Speaker, just before the Follett Labor Government took over, there were moves to corporatise ACTEW. It was not done willy-nilly. The experience was that the corporatisation of Totalcare Industries was very beneficial to the coffers of the ACT Treasury. Mr Westende talked about ACTION buses and what could be done there. There was a lot of hoo-ha during the election campaign about vehicle inspection services. There is nothing in this document that I saw about what is going to happen along those lines. The queues are still there, as we hear on the radio every morning. As for parks and gardens, there are 71 or 80-odd parks and gardens and engineering depots. Surely we do not need all of those. Nothing is said about that.
Madam Speaker, there was no vision because I do not think the Government over there has any. We should be actively marketing our talents, our resources and, most importantly, our people. That was what, perhaps, the Government had an opportunity to say; but, unfortunately, it did not say that.
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