Page 1440 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 11 August 1992
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Let me give some more recent quotes - because people might say that August last year is a bit of a problem. Let us look at the Canberra Times of 31 July. Once again, we are told that the only people we are trying to protect are our Tory mates, these big commercial landlords. What about the 70-year-old pensioner who has been hit with a $910.83 bill for land tax, even though she lives in the townhouse on which the tax has been charged? The people on the other side of this house try to convince everybody that they have a monopoly on social justice; but this is a 70-year-old pensioner, for heaven's sake, not a corporate apparatchik from this side of the house.
The Chief Minister, in a press statement issued last week, said that the Government would extend the current exemption available to people compulsorily transferred for employment reasons. I asked the Chief Minister, at question time this afternoon, how many people had appealed against the application of the tax - that is another thing we need to talk about - on the basis of absence for work-related reasons; that is, people who are compulsorily transferred out of Canberra by their company, or people who have to leave this town because they cannot find a job here but can find one in Adelaide. If you leave the kids in the house while you go and earn a dollar to feed them, what does this Government do? It slugs you for land tax. You apply to the commissioner, who has these incredible powers to override anything. He knocks you back because, he says, he cannot do it. That is what social justice is all about, we are told by this Government.
Land tax is an inequitable tax. That has been said by the Opposition - and we will continue to say it - by Mr Egan from the Opposition Labor Party in New South Wales, and by Mr Daryl Dixon. Hundreds and hundreds of people have written to the Opposition and to members opposite complaining that this land tax is based on legislation which is very shoddy, to say the least. The Chief Minister agrees that it is shoddy. But what does she do? She does not come into this house and move amendments to fix the legislation. She criticises the Opposition, though, for pointing out to her that the legislation is shoddy. It is no excuse to say, "Oh, we have had three or four or five or six letters over the past week or so". This legislation has been on the books for nearly 12 months. Does it take that long for people to realise that legislation is shoddy?
The point is that the Government has been made to look shallow. It has been made to look at its double standards by the community of the ACT because of their direct concern about what is happening to them on a day-to-day basis, by the very people this Government purports to represent. Secondly and more importantly, it has been made to look at its double standards by the Leader of the Opposition, who publicly expressed the views held by a number of people in this community. Only then did the Government back-pedal. It would not have known what to do had the people on this side of the house not told it what to do.
MRS GRASSBY (4.33): Madam Speaker, I know that there is only a short time remaining, but I would like to take the last few minutes to say that I have never heard so much hogwash in all my life. As the Chief Minister just said, the land tax is one per cent, and we just heard Mr De Domenico say that some of the rents have gone up by 15 per cent. I think people have failed to realise - and I know this because I have paid it in New South Wales - that you also get a Federal tax deduction for land tax. It is a cost incurred when you are receiving rent. As for the business, I hope people realise that you get the tax back. You also have your
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