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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2037 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

The Government has legislated for two years rather than one because people in Canberra are experiencing very difficult times. A lot of people are facing redundancies, and a lot of small businesses in this city are doing it very tough - and there are those who would like them to do it even tougher. A lot of people are really facing an enormous amount of insecurity. One of the fairest things that we could do was to give them some confidence about what was going to happen to their rates bills over the next two years. We thought that was a fair and just thing to do. If this Assembly chooses not to do that, that is up to the Assembly. That is fine. We did it not for any other reason whatsoever than to give people in a city that is going through an enormous amount of turmoil - an enormous number of people are really wondering what their future holds - some confidence at least about their homes.

If those opposite are interested in such things as fairness, equity and social justice, they would support that approach under the circumstances, but it would appear that they are interested only when it suits them. One thing is very sure, Mr Speaker: People like to be able to plan for major expenses in their lives such as their rates bills. We have given them an opportunity to do that. If this Assembly chooses to go down a different path, that is fine.

One thing we have to remind members of the Assembly of is that land prices are not varying dramatically at this stage. Certainly there is some reduction right across the board but, as we know, because of our approach to unimproved capital value, a couple of sales in one particular suburb can cause a huge skewing of the unimproved capital value of land.

I think even the previous Government looked at a rolling average approach to stop those sorts of things occurring. That is an approach that could be taken. The market is stagnant; therefore, nothing dramatic is happening to it, except maybe a slight slide. That is not an acceptable situation but it does mean that right at this moment there are not the sorts of problems that Mr Moore is talking about. There are not incredible increases in the price of land to cause the skewing, the huge inequity, that Mr Moore was talking about. That would occur if we had high levels of inflation and land prices were going up very quickly. That is not happening in the sort of market we have now. What Mr Moore said might have been right a few years ago. It certainly is not right in the current market.

This Government is still looking at the information we have and is getting more information on the sorts of approaches we can take in the future. I think it is also important for the Assembly to know that a large number of municipalities in Australia actually use the CPI as their standard way of rating. That is the way they work each year. Others use rentable value; others use improved capital value; others use unimproved capital value. Some use a mixture of all of the above. There is simply no standard way of doing it.

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