Page 1439 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 11 August 1992
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We are asking them to pay us money one year in advance when they will not have any income one year in advance. Is that a fair situation? If we want some of the money they receive from rental property, is it not reasonable to say, "When you get it, we will have it", or at the very least, "We would like to take it three months before you get it"?
MR DE DOMENICO (4.27): Madam Speaker, it is my job purely and simply to sum up what has been said this afternoon. First of all, I compliment Mr Stevenson for the very concise ideas he put forward. I welcome his contribution to this debate. Mr Connolly and others on the Government side of the Assembly tend to knock, knock, knock people who attempt to look after themselves. Reality tells me that it may be easier for someone to invest in Queanbeyan, where the threshold is $165,000, than to invest in the ACT, where the threshold is nothing; and in fact that is what happens.
If anyone doubts what various people think about the imposition of land taxes and the whole concept of land taxes, let me quote from the Sydney Morning Herald of 18 February 1992. This is not a right-wing apparatchik of the Liberal Party or a so-called landowner or whatever; I quote an ALP spokesman in New South Wales, Mr Michael Egan, who I think is in the same faction as the Chief Minister. The article says, "Mr Egan described land tax as a crippling burden for thousands of small investors". He went on to say, "Land tax is a direct tax on housing and on small business". Let us get it straight. It is not only people on this side of the house who consider land tax to be "a crippling burden".
Mrs Grassby: It is only oppositions that do it.
MR DE DOMENICO: It is only oppositions, Mrs Grassby says. One wonders, therefore, whether Mrs Grassby will disalign herself from the comments made by Mr Egan. Is there no answer from Mrs Grassby? Okay.
Mrs Grassby: I disalign myself from him because I think he is wrong.
MR DE DOMENICO: You disalign yourself from him. Thank you, Mrs Grassby. Let us listen to some other prominent people in the community. Mr Egan perhaps is not worthy of being listened to. I tend to agree with Mrs Grassby, by the way. No-one has heard of Mr Egan. Let us see what Daryl Dixon said. Daryl Dixon, as you know, is a well-respected economist and commentator in the media and elsewhere in this town, and someone who has the respect of people from both sides of the house, I dare say. In the Canberra Times of 18 August 1991 he said:
For the Government to try to justify the tax on the grounds that the landlord will get a tax deduction for the land-tax payment is an attempt at blatant deceit -
I emphasise that -
because the persons paying the tax will be the tenants.
We keep hearing from this Government that they have a monopoly on social justice. Where is the monopoly on social justice when it is the tenants, quite rightly, that are going to be paying this tax? Ironically, Mr Connolly, who is not here, made grandiose statements about Liberals and Tories on this side of the house. He did not mention the fact that there had been 15 per cent increases in some rents for the people that can least afford it.
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