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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 160 ..

Mr Moore: Then apply it to the system. Do not do it on an ad hoc basis.

MR HUMPHRIES: That has a certain nice orderly ring about it: We cannot miss out a year because we want to know what the values were in 1997. That sounds very logical, and I think that if we were looking at a factor like that in isolation, that would be very persuasive; but we are not. We are offsetting against the fact that we do not propose to do a valuation in 1997 as a transition measure the fact that we are going to have to pull $400,000 out of other essential services to the community to pay for what is - - -

Mr Moore: No, you are not. That is not true, Gary. You cannot say that. We appropriated $400,000 to do this job.

MR SPEAKER: Order!

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I have to insist that that is true. That $400,000, if it were not being spent on the valuation, could be spent on something else.

Mr Moore: No; it is not that way round at all, and you know it. We appropriated $400,000 for this job, and you now want to spend it elsewhere.

MR HUMPHRIES: I concede that technically Mr Moore might be right. If the department has appropriated that money for the valuation already, then - - -

Mrs Carnell: No, we did not appropriate it for that; we appropriated money for every program.

Mr Moore: The law says you have to do it.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, let me conclude my remarks. If the valuation money was appropriated in that particular pot and cannot be used for something else, then Mr Moore would be right; but I would say to him: If that is the case, let us not spend the money on that valuation; let us pull it out of that pot and spend it on something the community wants and needs more than a totally unnecessary valuation. We lose $400,000 and we also end up having to wait until June this year before we can tell people what their rates are for this year. Incidentally, we also end up with a noticeably steeper increase for houses in North Canberra than would be the case otherwise. A lot of people get a small advantage relative to that total figure - a small amount of reduction of rates - as a result of Mr Moore's or the Labor Party's move; but people in North Canberra experience a large increase, or in some cases a significant increase at least.

Mr Moore: The problem is with your CPI system earlier.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, every government has adjusted the total rates take by the CPI. We are not the first government to have done that, and I suspect that we will not be the last.

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