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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (1 September) . . Page.. 1619 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

"We want to impose a new tax based on how much you own". Personally, I am for the up-front and honest approach. If the Chief Minister and Treasurer and the Minister Assisting the Treasurer were prepared to put forward such a proposal in order to collect $10m, it would get far more favourable consideration from me because it is an up-front proposal rather than the backhanded, stealthy way in which they are attempting to do it now.

MS TUCKER: Mr Speaker, under standing order 47, I also wish to make a personal explanation.

MR SPEAKER: Well, that was not a personal explanation, but you can do that if you wish.

MS TUCKER: I believe I was misrepresented by the Chief Minister as well. I have my speech here and it is pretty clear what I said.

Mr Humphries: Mr Speaker, I am sorry, but it is the usual course in this place to make those statements after the debate is concluded rather than during it.

MS TUCKER: Mr Speaker, I understood that standing order 47 was appropriate at any stage.

Mr Humphries: Oh, standing order 47. Okay. That is not for a personal explanation. That is something different, but okay.

MS TUCKER: I am speaking under standing order 47.

Mr Humphries: Okay, that is fine.

MR SPEAKER: Proceed.

MS TUCKER: Basically, what I said was that one could think of rates as a more equitable and fairer way to do this. I did not say that it was exactly the right way to do it. What I said was that if the Government wanted a tax it should have looked at a tax that was applied to all home owners. That, considering the statistics, would have been considerably less for individual households as everyone would be contributing. What I was saying was that the actual essence of this was unfair and that there should be discussion and investigation. If the Government is insisting on raising this revenue through this particular method it should find a more equitable way of doing it.

I did not suggest that I had the answers at this point in time. It is the principle of equity that I was raising. I am happy to be involved in any debate about how we can raise revenue in the ACT. I think Greens, of all people and parties in this place, have consistently raised the need for that. It has been Mrs Carnell who has said many times in debate in this place, "The Greens and Michael Moore are the ones who will talk about raising taxes, but we will never do that". That came up many times in the last Assembly. It is really quite a nonsense for her to suggest that we would say that it is not necessary to have that debate. It is the debate and the discussion that we need, and that was the point of my speech.

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