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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2035 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

there were wild fluctuations in the rates people had to pay. The community outrage over that situation is the sort of community outrage that we can expect in the future. Even two years of the method that Mrs Carnell is talking about is going to cause a significant problem in the third or fourth years.

I know Mr Whitecross has flagged that he is going to introduce an amendment to the legislation that will limit this process to just this year. Personally, I do not think it goes far enough. I think the idea of the Government doing yet another year at 3 per cent is a cop-out that simply puts the problem off and will exacerbate it. It is not something that is just going to continue along and everybody is going to be happy with. It will exacerbate the problem. I say it is a cop-out because it is a failure on the part of the Government to face up to their responsibilities of making hard decisions on the best way to deal with rates. It is a decision that they simply have to make.

It is always awkward for members of the crossbenches who believe that it is appropriate to allow the Government to have their funding mechanisms when they see that what the Government is doing is clearly going to be of major disadvantage to the people of Canberra, that the Government is refusing to make hard decisions and that the Government is refusing to implement even their own promised policies, as Mr Whitecross pointed out. The temptation for us to vote against such legislation is, of course, quite great. In this case I will not be voting against it, because I believe that Mr Whitecross has at least suggested a solution that gives the Government another year to get their act together. The Government should be aware that this really is a totally unacceptable way of dealing with rates. It simply cannot go on. It is entirely unacceptable.

Mr Whitecross informed me of his amendment earlier today. I will be looking at it and listening to the debate on it. That perhaps provides a solution. At least it will allow the Government time to think about the mistake they are making - and it is a mistake this year as well - to take on the responsibility of government for which this Assembly appointed them and to come up with an appropriate system of revenue that does not have the element of a time bomb.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (10.48), in reply: Mr Speaker, I thank members for their support for the Bill, such as it is. Mr Speaker, I think the interesting question here is what is fair and what is not fair. Is the situation that we saw under the previous Government - where people ended up with 60 per cent increases in their rates one year, a 5 per cent decrease the next year and a 30 per cent increase the following year - fair? In fact, over a three-year period I think increases in residential rates were, on average, 30 per cent. Is that fair, Mr Speaker? Is it fair to have a system under which your residential rates depend on your commercial rates so that if the bottom falls out of the commercial sector then everybody in the residential sector, by the nature of the formula, has to pay more? Is that fair, Mr Speaker?

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