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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (1 September) . . Page.. 1603 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

This Bill is designed to raise $10m - $11m if you include stamp duty. It has been rationalised as paying for emergency services, specifically fire services. It should be made clear that this is simply misleading labelling. Misinformation has become the hallmark of the Carnell Government. This money is not paying for an increase in emergency services. The measure is a tax - no more, no less - and it is an unfairly applied tax. That is our primary objection to it. It is the inequity of the tax. The money they expect to raise from this Bill goes to Consolidated Revenue, not into extra services. There is no evidence of even one extra firehose. This immediately begs the question, which has been asked by very many people who have contacted my office: "Have we not already paid our taxes or our rates?". It is a very valid question, one which the Government has to answer without the charade of the claim that the levy is to provide emergency services. So much for clever!

Where the Government is most culpable is in its complete and utter lack of consultation with either the industry or the people of Canberra. The lack of consultation or even contact with the peak insurance body - the Insurance Council of Australia - was never more evident than when, during estimates, the Chief Minister, the Under Treasurer and the chief executive of the Chief Minister's Department assured us that the ICA was misleading us about the fact that South Australia and Western Australia were abandoning insurance-based levies.

Mr Speaker, at the estimates hearings I was able to table a press release from the South Australian Government saying - surprise, surprise! - that they were abandoning the levy, that the insurance-based system leads to a situation where pensioners who insure their homes are subsidising uninsured businesses who enjoy the same use of emergency services when the need arises. They said they realise that this levy is an inequitable tax - an obsolete tax - that will be abolished. To compound their embarrassment I also have a letter from the Western Australian Emergency Services Minister - Mr Humphries's counterpart - in which he describes his own review of this form of taxation. It reads:

The purpose of the review was to seek to remove long standing anomalies and inequities with this funding approach that has generally been agreed as no longer appropriate to the operation of good public policy in today's climate.

I would say that is fairly unequivocal, clear enough for even this Government to mentally assimilate. It is also important to point out that this is not coming from lobby groups with special interests, but from a government - a Liberal government - seeing the light. To say this Government do not do their homework, do not consult, is an understatement. However, they did grudgingly accept Queensland had abandoned the insurance-based levy. They got rid of it years ago. I understand Victoria and New South Wales are looking for ways to also do away with the tax.

The lack of consultation is an unfortunate characteristic of this Government. The list of examples is growing. In fact, I have to report to the Assembly that I have been informed by several people who have rung that they phoned the Chief Minister's office to either ask questions about the levy or to simply register their disappointment and all were fobbed off, being told, "The decision has been made". That is all these people got: "The decision has been made and that is all you need to know". That sort of comment is totally inconsistent with the phoney image of openness and willingness to consult that has been peddled by the Government's publicity machine.

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