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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (13 May) . . Page.. 1339 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

This is particularly a problem for people who have lived in the same house for an extended period, during which the rates have escalated quite substantially because of changes in land values in older areas of the city. Their rates are now way out of proportion to the incomes of people in retirement. People in retirement experience huge drops in their income and they simply cannot afford reasonably to pay rates that they are going to have to pay in some older areas of Canberra. That is what the rates concession is about. If you happen to live in a suburb where the rates are $2,000, and those suburbs exist, the concession you will be able to access if you are a new pensioner has dropped from about $1,000 to $250. That is a very significant change to your financial circumstances when you are talking about people in receipt of social security payments or service pensions.

Mr Speaker, I do not believe that that is a fair change, especially given the minimal impact in revenue terms, the known reluctance and the known impracticality of trying to persuade large numbers of pensioners to take up deferment schemes. It may be that the Council on the Ageing are willing to promote deferment schemes, it may be that the Revenue Office and the Government are willing to promote deferment schemes, but the reality is that many have tried before and failed, and pensioners simply will not take them up.

Mrs Carnell's other argument in support of this change was that the Council of Social Service had suggested it; therefore it must be a good thing and we should all vote for it. Mr Speaker, quite frankly, I would be more impressed about that argument coming from the Government if the Government took up a lot of the other suggestions of the Council of Social Service. The reality is that they have sifted through a list of however many recommendations, and they have said, "Here is a chance to go after some pensioners. We will take up this one. This one is no grief to us". If they took up all the other suggestions that the Council of Social Service made in order to ensure a balanced approach to collecting extra revenue, I would be impressed. I might not agree with everything they did, but I would at least be impressed by their consistency. But they have cherry-picked. They have taken the bits that they like. Then they have the gall to turn around and say, "The Council of Social Service and everybody else ought to be grateful because we have picked out this one suggestion from their submission".

Mr Speaker, I do not think that is a persuasive argument. I do not think it is an honest argument either. We all know that there are plenty of suggestions in the Council of Social Service submission which the Government has not picked up and which would have been a lot more equitable than going after rates paid by pensioners. We will be opposing this clause, and we will also be opposing clauses 12 and 15, which are part of the implementation of this arrangement.

MS TUCKER (6.19): The Greens will be supporting this Bill. As ACTCOSS have argued in their 1996-97 budget submission, the question of rebates raises a number of issues. I would like to read out some of these from their submission because it summarises these issues very well and explains basically why we will support this and will not support Mr Whitecross's amendment.

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