Page 2295 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 15 September 1992
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I admit that even the payment by instalment of these rates and now the land tax will place a burden on people with fixed incomes, but at least it will enable them to plan. However, any instalment plan that imposes a penalty charge is to be rejected, as Mr Kaine said, as punitive and, I add, because it is also totally inconsistent. Why charge an interest penalty payment of land tax by quarterly instalments when no interest penalty is charged on payment of rates by quarterly instalments? Perhaps you would like to answer that, Chief Minister, in due course. As you know, you obtain a discount for early payment of total rates, yet it is not proposed to offer this discount for early payment of total land tax. In fact they are going to reverse it; there will be a penalty applied for quarterly payment of your land tax. Why? I repeat: It is simply another revenue raising tax and it has been directed against a section of the community that this Government, the ALP, fears - that is the word - because they are people who seek to look after themselves by becoming financially independent.
I would suggest that in political terms this land tax really is the politics of hate, the politics of envy. There is an interesting comparison we can draw. Our friends over there, our good old Canberra China-Cuba, will perhaps appreciate this reference. It is almost as if they are taking a page out of Stalin's book in his treatment of the kulaks. These were reasonably prosperous, certainly upwardly mobile farmers in the Soviet Union. In about the 1930s Stalin got rather fed up with this lot because they were independent - they had their own little plots of ground - and he destroyed them on the basis that this did not fit his socialist concept. I suggest to you that this is the sort of thing that the Labor Party is trying to do to these people who at least are trying to look after themselves in their old age by investing in some rented properties.
I believe that I have fair justification in making this claim. I will give you two examples. Firstly, the Government's own interpretation of the eligibility for land tax, I believe, should apply to any property that is tenanted and that, of course, includes the letting of rooms in a family home, or perhaps granny flats or something of this nature.
Ms Follett: It does not apply.
MR CORNWELL: Exactly, Chief Minister; that is the point I am making. Secondly, in your quest for revenue, you are biased by your neglect of Housing Trust properties. We have discussed this before. I have discussed this aspect of land tax, but I would like to draw members' attention to the revenue potential that at the moment is being forgone.
Mr Connolly: So the Government should pay tax to itself?
Mr Kaine: No, your tenants should, like they do everywhere else.
MR CORNWELL: That is right. I would like, firstly, to draw members' attention to the revenue potential that is forgone by the Housing Trust, that Mr Connolly quite kindly provided to me in answer to question No. 115. He advised me that in 1991-92 there was $4.4m outstanding in arrears from Housing Trust properties, including - - -
Mr Berry: What would you do?
Mr Connolly: Throw them all out into the streets.
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