Page 1283 - Week 05 - Thursday, 25 June 1992
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The community has a right to have a say and to discuss these matters before they are passed by this Assembly. It obviously is next to useless, unfortunately, to say that these Bills are being rushed through, because I have been saying it for 3 years and we have seen no change whatsoever. We made our point on Tuesday that we would ask the Government to understand that we think that there should be more time allowed for public discussion, community discussion, on these things. That has not helped. We have been doing that for three years.
There is really only one way to handle the matter, and that is to put in black and white, in fine print, that there is a minimum time in which a Bill can be introduced and passed in this Assembly, unless that Bill is first debated in this Assembly as an urgent Bill and that is agreed to by a majority of people in the Assembly. That is a separate debate. That is the difficulty. We should allow the people of the community to have a say. Someone in the community might be able to come up with better ideas. The key point is that governments should not willy-nilly increase rates and charges, with all good justification, as they always have, without public consultation beforehand.
MS FOLLETT (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (12.01), in reply: Madam Speaker, I would like to thank members for their comments on the Rates and Land Tax (Amendment) Bill and for their support where that applies. I would also like to thank those members who took advantage of my offer to have a briefing on this Bill, those members who put their own time into better informing themselves on the provisions of the Bill, and my officers who, of course, made the briefings available.
There is really very little to respond to; but I would like to comment first on Mr De Domenico's question about the rates increase being above the CPI, and, indeed, it is. The CPI being used is 3 per cent and, as Mr De Domenico rightly points out, I am raising the rates by an average of 5 per cent. That is being done in view of a number of factors, not the least of which is that we have reduced funding from the Commonwealth and in times of recession we have a much greater call on government services and government facilities.
There has been a conscious decision by the Government to get a slightly larger take from our rates Bill than might otherwise have been the case. In previous years I have increased the rates only by the CPI. Last year it was 4 per cent and that was the amount that the rates Bill increased by. That is, I think, in stark contrast to Mr Kaine's budget and his rates Bill back in the year when he was Treasurer. He actually increased the rates by over 16 per cent. So I believe that what we are doing this year is modest indeed. It is also the first year that the annual land revaluations have been in operation and that has tended to avoid the very large increases in the unimproved value of land. I should say, Madam Speaker, that this year, because there has been such a buoyant market in residential properties, there is quite an increase in the annual valuations and that, of course, is reflected in people's rates bills.
I would like to make a couple more comments before I formally close the debate. The first of these, Madam Speaker, relates to the issues that were raised by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee in regard to the Rates and Land Tax (Amendment) Bill. The Scrutiny of Bills Committee asked, first, why subclause 4(1) of the Bill has been backdated to have effect from April 1992. Madam Speaker, this is a
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