Page 1605 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 19 May 1993
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We need some form of wealth tax. Probate is not on unless it's done on a uniform national basis.
The only other area is land tax ...
It's one of the most likely forms of tax to ensure taxing the wealthy instead of taxing employment.
Does the Treasurer agree with that and, if so, is a hike in land tax one of the options that are available to her this year to help balance the budget?
MS FOLLETT: I guess that there was a question in there somewhere, Madam Speaker. I am not sure what it was.
Mr Kaine: It was a fairly straight question. Are you going to up your land tax?
MADAM SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Kaine. Ms Follett has the floor.
MS FOLLETT: Mr Kaine ought to know what the options are in looking at budgets for the ACT. Indeed, I am aware that he has produced one budget - not very successfully, but he has at least gone through the motions on one occasion. Mr Kaine ought to be aware that in facing the kind of budget gap that the ACT has at the moment there are, in theory, several ways of approaching it. Those ways, of course, include reducing your expenditure, increasing your revenue, utilising borrowings, or some combination of those three. That is the way you do it when you are faced with a reducing quantity of funds available to continue with the same services which the community requires. Those are the options.
Madam Speaker, I think that Mr Kaine is aware of that and is equally aware that at this point I am not about to tell him, or indeed anybody, what exactly I might do in the context of the budget which I will bring down in September. The prime reason for that - and I would have thought Mr Kaine was aware of that also - is that I am in the process of consulting, not least on the issue of the Grants Commission report which I reported to this Assembly about last week.
Madam Speaker, to anybody who has read both the Grants Commission report and my statement on it, it would be clear, I would have thought, that some action was required in order to ameliorate the effect of that Grants Commission report on the Territory.
Mr Kaine: Tell us what you are going to do. That is the question.
MS FOLLETT: If Mr Kaine would stop interrupting me and recall what was in that statement - - -
Mr Kaine: If you would answer the question.
MADAM SPEAKER: Order!
MS FOLLETT: Thank you, Madam Speaker. If he would recall what was in that statement, he would know that what I am putting to the Federal Government is a regime aimed at ameliorating the effects of the Grants Commission's latest report. That regime which I have put to them involves, instead of the ACT taking
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