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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2258 ..

Debate resumed from 17 June 1997, on motion by Mrs Carnell:

That this Bill be agreed to in principle.

MR WHITECROSS (Leader of the Opposition) (8.18): Mr Speaker, Labor will be supporting this Bill. I hope that the Chief Minister was listening then. Labor will be supporting this Bill, which is a revenue measure. Just let me make that clear: Labor will be supporting this Bill and is satisfied that the Government has finally met the fairness test and its election commitment to introduce a new fair rates system. It took them three years, but they finally got there. This Bill is the culmination of a lot of work on rates over a number of years by the Assembly. I believe that the people of the ACT now have a rating system which is fair. The use of three-year rolling averages, as put forward by Labor in 1994 - - -

Mrs Carnell: And never implemented.

MR WHITECROSS: We did not get a chance, did we, Mrs Carnell? But we would have.

Mrs Carnell: You had five years.

MR WHITECROSS: You could have done it in 1995 and saved us a lot of trouble, but you did not. The use of three-year rolling averages, as put forward by Labor in 1994, will smooth large fluctuations in rates in the years to come. It is disappointing that the Government has taken three years to get it right. The Government have prevaricated for three years, despite their election commitment that they would introduce a new fair rating system and despite the $72,000 of taxpayers' money which they spent on a review to produce a report that they had no intention of implementing.

Labor could not allow this Government to break an election promise and continue to cap rates using 1994 land values. Labor could never support the approach of the Government, because it destroys the relationship between rate charges and land values and the concomitant notion of equity as between ratepayers and their ability to pay. This is the very foundation upon which the rates system in the ACT and in other places is based. Mr Speaker, I believe that it is an appropriate basis for collecting rates.

Labor supports the new rating system. The inclusion of Labor's proposal of three-year rolling averages will assist in smoothing out fluctuations in valuations and therefore in rates bills. Labor announced that we were going to do it. We would not have had over two years of prevarication on the issue. We would not have kept using out-of-date 1994 valuations, as this Government has done. A Labor government would not have ripped off Belconnen, Gungahlin and Weston Creek residents, as the Liberals have done through their mismanagement of this issue over the last two years. Inner North and Inner South residents are now paying for the Liberals' mismanagement of this issue. If this rating system had been introduced last year or in 1995 - indeed, as it could have been - they would not now be experiencing the sudden increases in their rates.

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