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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (11 November) . . Page.. 3940 ..

MRS CARNELL: Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, it is very interesting to see where the BAD tax came from. It came from ACOSS. That is the story. Every time we have put forward any initiative to increase the amount of revenue that we raise here in the ACT, those opposite have rejected it every single time. Mr Berry is very good - and maybe Mr Corbell is too - at getting up and talking about what they do not support in terms of tax reform, in terms of tax levels, whether it be Federal or local. But we have not heard what they do support. We certainly have not seen them support anything here - not one thing - to increase our levels of revenue. Mr Berry has not indicated what he supports federally in terms of any tax reform that will happen in the future.

Mr Berry: I do not support a GST.

MRS CARNELL: There you go, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker; he does not support a GST. That is fine. What do you support? It is quite simple. The good thing about what the Council of Social Service is doing is that it is saying, "We need jobs. Therefore, we need to become more competitive. How will we do that?". Mr Berry is not doing that. I think that wonderful article by John Passant in the Canberra Times yesterday made very clear what Mr Berry supports. The actual quote from Mr Passant was:

Jobs are the issue, yet what program has the Leader of the Opposition in the ACT developed to cut unemployment?

When he was last in government, he did not appear to have many solutions to the problem. What new approaches has he offered? Nothing concrete so far.

He is still giving you "so far". Mr Passant then went on to quote a number of Labor Party policies. Maybe Mr Berry supports such wonderfully progressive approaches for the community as death duties and wealth taxes - and the list goes on.

Mr Corbell: They are not Labor Party policies.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, those certainly were issues that used to be in the Labor Party platform the last time I saw it. Maybe, if Mr Berry does not support anything else, that is the approach that he would take. But, again, he has not told anybody. So, maybe he would like to hop up and tell everybody whether he does support wealth taxes and death duties. That seems to me to be a pretty fair request. I have to say that I am sick of those opposite. I am sick of Mr Berry's harping on this tax situation, because he is simply wrong. He simply cannot come up with one thing that he can support - not one idea, not one way to raise one extra dollar to be able to spend it on all of the things they promise every single day. You know as well, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, that it is true.

The fact is that they have promised millions and millions of extra services, extra capital works in this town, and all they have managed to do is oppose every single revenue measure that we have put in place. As Mr Passant said, they have never indicated one new policy or one new approach. Can you take seriously anybody who takes that approach on such things as tax reform, on such things as jobs, on such things as the future of this country? Obviously not.

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