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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (1 September) . . Page.. 1605 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

In future, sectional taxes linked to user-pays rules will be imposed. These will be discriminatory but as that is a difficult word to spell, it should not be used.

As already announced, those carrying fire insurance will pay a tax additional to stamp duty already charged. This will pay for counselling firemen who inadvertently attend fires at uninsured premises.

There will also be a tax on the cost of tickets to any music, theatre, art or craft event to fund the electrified fence being erected so that cultural lobby groups cannot annoy members of the Assembly. Pensioners will also be levied for their excessive use of the ACTION bus service, the income providing needed tyre recaps.

Other sectional taxes will be advised after Assembly Members have been levied to pay for spin doctors to work up rhetoric justifying the imposts. It should be noted that no levies whatever will attach to government-approved sporting events, tourist attractions and bottom-line seminars.

That is indicative of a growing feeling out there in the community about the way the Government is badgering and passing on taxes. This letter is one of many written to the paper protesting about the insurance levy and several other issues relating to Floriade, the bus service, car registration, Feel the Power - to name a few - but it deserved a bit of an airing. The effect of the policy measure at hand is that there will be a number of people who simply do not insure. This is something that the Government has scoffed at at times, but I have had numerous calls from people who have said they will not be able to afford insurance policies: Mr Cameron from Giralang; Mr and Mrs McLean from Fadden; Bruce and Gail Watson from Wanniassa; Mr Marmon from Scullin; Mr Lambert from Garran; Ms Grothoff from Ngunnawal; Mrs Gordon from Banks; Mr Wilson from Kaleen; Mrs Vincent from Curtin who is on what used to be called an invalid pension; et cetera. Many of these people are on pensions of one sort or another and are struggling. A fair proportion of them will simply not insure.

Mr Humphries: That is what you think.

MR QUINLAN: That is what they have said. If you are going to add a levy, the price goes up.

Mr Humphries: By how much though?

MR QUINLAN: You put something on top, the price goes up.

Mr Humphries: Yes, by how much? You do not know.

MR QUINLAN: You did not know either and you - - -

Mr Humphries: They do not know either. It will go up by less than it did in New South Wales.

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