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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 152 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

another example of a government not wanting to make hard decisions. The Government was happy to tinker at the edges of the rates system, with no clear objective in mind. As with health, Mrs Carnell thought rates was a very easy political point in opposition, but in government she found it hard to deliver on her rhetoric. The community deserved better.

Last year I moved an amendment to the 1996 Rates and Land Tax (Amendment) Bill to ensure that the Government could cap rates for only one more year, using 1994 values, and had then to produce a new rates system with up-to-date values. The precise amendment I moved was to delete a proposal by Mrs Carnell to exempt her from doing 1997 valuations. That is the amendment Mrs Carnell ignored. The amendment was intended to send a very clear message about the need to deliver a fairer rates system. The Labor Opposition and the crossbenchers were very critical last year of the Government's attempt to continue to use 1994 valuations. They were outdated; they were unfair; they did not take account of the significant changes in values, not just in absolute values but in relative values, in different areas of Canberra.

The Government, in pursuing a policy of using 1994 valuations, was directly threatening the basic principles underlying our rating system - that rates should be fair and that they should be based on current values. Labor's amendment was not just about ensuring that the Government kept its promise; it was about delivering a fair rates system. It was designed to ensure that the Government did not continue to use out-of-date valuations. By deleting 1997 as a special relevant date, the Commissioner for Revenue, under section 8 of the Act relating to automatic revaluations, was obliged to commission a revaluation of all parcels of land in the Territory from 1 January 1997. During the debate in June, the Labor Opposition and the crossbenchers all criticised the Government's attempt to get out of that responsibility. In fact, I said:

We do not want a continuation of this nonsense position where indefinitely into the future we levy rates on the basis of what people's values were on 1 January 1994. It is an absurd position.

It is clear from the debate that the Assembly told the Government it could not continue to levy rates using out-of-date valuations. But what did the Government do? Obviously, what is said in the Assembly, and amendments that are passed to Acts of parliament have no bearing on the Government's decisions. What is codified in the legislation is of no consequence to this Government if they happen to disagree with it. The Chief Minister has yet again tried to get out of using up-to-date valuations.

The exposure draft, which we will be debating in the Assembly tomorrow, was released in December. The Chief Minister has finally, belatedly, delivered on her promise to produce a new rating system. But nowhere in the supporting explanatory documents on the new rating system presented in the Assembly is there any mention about not doing 1997 valuations. Nowhere in Mrs Carnell's speech is there any mention of retrospective legislation to get the Government out of levying 1997 valuations. The fact that the Government proposed to use 1994 valuations was only in the fine print of a table. What actually appeared was retrospective legislation to condone a decision that would have to have been made at the direction of the Chief Minister not long after the rates debate last June.

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