Page 1430 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 11 August 1992
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arrangements address, in my view, the vast majority of the problems that have been raised with me by constituents who find themselves liable for this tax. Clearly, because it is a relatively new extension to the taxing regime in the ACT, not everyone is going to be happy with it. Of course they are not. People who find themselves liable for a tax on their investments for which they were not previously liable are not going to be happy; but I believe that the way this tax operates is socially just, equitable and efficient. Members opposite are kidding themselves if they think they can criticise the Government, or the administration, as Mr Kaine is doing, on its handling of the land tax matter. Their arguments are hollow, they lack substance, and I do not believe that they have even convinced themselves on this question.
MR MOORE (3.47): When the land tax was originally introduced, I chose to support the Bill, primarily on the basis that it is a tax on land investment rather than on productivity. Almost every other tax that is levied in the ACT, whether it be sales tax, income tax or whatever, almost always can be seen as a tax on productivity, on producing, on working. A land tax is a tax on speculation in property.
When we talk about residential land tax, we are often dealing with people who have decided that one of the best forms of superannuation they might be able to use is a solid investment in residential property, so that they will not be on the pension, so that they will not be a burden to society from a financial point of view. That is a very admirable perspective. However, it is still a perspective that takes into account only some people, and it is that investment - if you like, putting away their nest egg - that can be taxed. Would not Australia be far better off if people who wanted to make that kind of investment invested in productive enterprises? I think that is an important issue to raise.
There are a couple of things I would like to clarify. Like Mr Kaine, I do not have any conflict of interest in this respect. Secondly, I found particularly churlish the interjections of the Labor Party and the comments of the Chief Minister about how Mr Humphries voted on this issue when the matter came up in the last Assembly. As those members who were here will recall, that occurred because the Residents Rally had decided that they would get some mileage out of opposing this form of taxation and that it might somehow or other help them to get elected. They had done a little bit of a bounce from one view to another, which we had perceived to be a quite common and normal experience.
I made my position on land tax quite clear, and it continues to be the same. I support a land tax. As the Chief Minister pointed out, no revenue raising measure is going to make everybody happy. There are going to be some people who are terribly disappointed about it. We have a sector of the community who keep saying that payroll tax should be eliminated, that it is a tax on productivity. That is their argument, largely. There is also a sector of the community that says that land tax should be eliminated. I imagine that there are many people in the community who think income tax should be removed as well. There are some members of the community who think sales tax should be removed and other members of the community who think we should put sales tax on everything. That will probably be decided at the next Federal election. The point I am making is that there are always going to be some people who are unhappy about this sort of taxation.
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