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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 161 ..

The fraud in what Mr Whitecross has had to say is that, of course, we end up with a - - -

Mr Whitecross: Mr Speaker, is he allowed to say "fraud"?

MR HUMPHRIES: I will withdraw "fraud" and I will say that there is a sneaky element to what Mr Whitecross has had to say. He implies, by saying, "We are going to force people to get those lower valuations in place", that most people are actually going to get, on average, across the board, lower rates as a result of his move. Of course, they are not. Let us suppose, for argument's sake, that the valuation of everybody's house in Canberra had dropped by a uniform $10,000. What the Assembly would have to do would be to adjust the rate in the dollar so that everyone is paying what they were paying before in order that the total rates take remains the same, with an adjustment for the CPI. So, the suggestion that his move somehow saves the people some money is true in specific cases; but, across the board, it is not true. I think that is a most dishonest kind of argument.

Mr Speaker, we will argue - not just in this place, but in the broader public arena - that the Assembly is imposing an extremely wasteful $400,000 decision on the Government. It is totally unnecessary. There is no justification whatsoever advanced for this particular valuation to be made. We are going to have angry calls and angry letters from people who will not know what their rates are until quite late before the beginning of the new financial year. We intend to tell every one of those people who raise those problems with us exactly what the reason for those problems is.

Mr Moore: And we will tell them what the law said. The law said that you do them as soon as practicable after 1 January.

MR HUMPHRIES: They will not come and talk to you, Mr Moore; so, they will talk to us.

MR WHITECROSS (Leader of the Opposition) (5.47), in reply: Mr Speaker, there are a couple of issues which I have to address in closing this debate. Let me start by saying that Mrs Carnell has been caught out. In her own explanation of what she is doing here, Mrs Carnell admitted that she purposely did not do 1997 valuations because she was trying to manipulate the system to get a particular result which met her test of fairness. That is what she said. She also went on to describe it as a proposal not to use 1997 valuations to smooth the transition to the new rating system. That is what she said. Mr Speaker, why was manipulation necessary? Why was there a need to smooth the transition? There is one reason, and one reason only - because Mrs Carnell made the ill-judged decision to increase rates each year based on 1994 valuations plus the CPI. That was the cause of the problem. She chose not to use a fair valuation system in 1995 and not to use a fair valuation system in 1996. She got to 1997 and realised that she had created a monster for herself. So, she is trying to manipulate the rates again in 1997 to get herself out of the problems she created in 1995 and 1996. Mr Speaker, she has learnt nothing whatsoever from the debate last year about this issue. She is still in there manipulating the system instead of letting the valuations do the talking.

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