Page 2030 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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... that tenants should be placed, as nearly as possible, on the same footing as owner occupiers. They should be neither advantaged or disadvantaged by the new water charging policies;
Then ACTCOSS goes into a whole series of methods by which that might be done. Those methods are incredibly complicated because the system that ACTEW has proposed is incredibly complicated, and it need not be. ACTEW should plan a long-term strategy to deal with this issue.
There is a series of unanswered questions about the equity issue. Has the Minister, or ACTEW, worked out how those living in corporate housing will be metered? Will they have to pay for separate meters to be installed? Will they have to pay extra to have these meters read? What about tenants? Will landlords be compelled to reduce their rent to the tune of $87 a year to compensate for the so-called free limit of water allowed now? Will tenants be charged connection/disconnection fees for water as they are for electricity every time they move house? If not, how will you police who has used what water and who is responsible for the payments?
These are the things that ACTEW just simply has not thought out. When we go away on holidays, what safeguard will we have to protect our water from theft by neighbours? Does this mean that we will have a new definition for water police? What safeguards are going to be put in place to stop landlords taking bond money from tenants for not watering their lawns and gardens? Will those on low incomes with a larger than average group of dependants be given assistance for their water costs? How will pensioners who are in bodies corporate be given their 50 per cent rebate when there is only one meter per block of units? This issue of water rebates will be dealt with later today when we deal with a Bill introduced by the Chief Minister, and I shall come to that later.
How does ACTEW handle its media campaign? It says that everybody is going to be a winner. In our briefing we heard that all ordinary people are going to be winners out of this, but it is going to be cost neutral. They cannot have it both ways. Somebody has to be the loser. What did ACTEW do? They set up a hotline. They said to ordinary people, "Phone in. Find out what it is going to cost you". That is a very good strategy, because about 80 to 90 per cent of people who phone in are going to find that it is going to cost them less. If it is going to cost less for almost everybody, how are ACTEW going to manage to keep it cost neutral? The answer is that, obviously, somebody has to pay.
In our briefings, we said, "Who is going to pay?". We were told, "It is the big users who are going to pay. It is going to be users like Federal Parliament House and perhaps the universities". That is great. I have no problem at all with those big users paying into ACT coffers, because it is so hard to find a way to tax them anyway. But who is the main big user that is going to have to pay? Who is the biggest user that is really going to pay? It is DELP and it is the Department of Education. It is Mr Wood's department that is going to transfer a stack of money across to ACTEW. ACTEW have put up this proposal that is going to take funds out of one section of government to make their business operation work so as to make everybody feel better. Then, of course, they are going to put the $20m into government.
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