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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 156 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

Mr Whitecross himself said he thought it was actually a very good rating system, when it was introduced into the Assembly, at least in exposure draft form. The rating system this Government has introduced is an integrated package designed to provide a fair deal for all ratepayers. It was the result of extensive modelling of available data to minimise the variations from last year's bills. Any adjustment to one component, such as the valuation base, would necessitate an overhaul of all the other components - that is fairly obvious - to ensure that the best outcome is achieved for all ratepayers.

Mr Whitecross also said that the Government has ignored the instruction of the Assembly to have the 1997 valuation done. This is not correct, full stop. This is not correct. Mr Whitecross has consistently said that in the debate last year the Assembly called on the ACT Government to do a 1997 valuation. That is simply wrong. Members will recall that, in the debate last year on the rates matter, the Assembly said that the Government could not continue to use the 1994 valuation plus the CPI for 1997-98, and it asked the Government to come up with a new rating system. There has never been any specific requirement by the Assembly to conduct the 1997 valuation.

Mr Whitecross said time and time again that we were ignoring the direction of the Assembly from last year. That is a straight quote from him just a minute ago. The reality is that the direction of the Assembly last year, quite specifically, was that we could not use 1994 plus the CPI for another two years - a rating system that I still believe would achieve significantly fairer rates, and certainly more predictable rates, for everyone in Canberra; but far be it from me to reflect on a vote of the Assembly. The Government did exactly what the Assembly asked us to do by coming up with a new approach to rates - a new approach that Mr Whitecross and other members of the Assembly said they thought was a pretty good go at it.

The proposal not to use 1997 valuations was made to ease the transition to the new system. It ensured that the outcomes of the proposed new rating system were fully analysed and were available in December 1996, so that Assembly members and members of the community would have significant time to examine the new system. It also ensured an early introduction of the final Bill. An early decision of Assembly members on the new system would allow necessary transitional arrangements to be put in place in a timely and effective manner, including dissemination of information to ratepayers, staff training, system change, and printing the new assessment notices. In other words, we wanted to make sure that, when Assembly members voted on this new legislation, they could see quite categorically what it would do in the marketplace. They could look at suburbs and see what the ups and downs of the whole situation were. If we had decided to include 1997 valuations, that simply was not possible in December.

What is going to happen now, unfortunately, if the Assembly passes this direction, which I assume it will, is that we will not have 1997 valuations for approximately three months - that is how long it takes - and people will not know what this model will do in reality, on paper, until after they pass the Bill. That is something we did not think was terribly appropriate, because we wanted to make sure that all of the information was on the table before people had to vote and while they were still looking at the exposure draft.

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