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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2327 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

about the common practice of advising tenants that priority transfer or allocation is dependent on repaying rent arrears, irrespective of any agreements entered into and contrary to the formal policy of ACT Housing.

The federal government's annual survey of customer satisfaction with public rental housing assistance for 1999 shows a worsening situation in the ACT. Customer service is listed as a strategic and operational priority for ACT Housing in the budget, but no resources are dedicated in the department to improve the culture.

I would now like to speak on the environment. The estimates process has not satisfied my concerns regarding this government's commitment to the environment. The maintenance of a healthy environment is an integral part of building social capital. Unfortunately, the government continues to give a low priority to environmental management, despite the rhetoric. We have had a lot of discussion about the finances, and I am still concerned that we see a decrease, despite the answers I received in estimates.

Less than 1 per cent of the budget expenditure goes into managing some 53 per cent of the ACT-that is, the area of Namadgi National Park and the other nature reserves-and less than 2 per cent of the budget is spent on managing Canberra's urban parks and open spaces.

In terms of building community confidence in the government's decisions on expenditure and revenue raising, I have to say again that it is a cynical exercise for the government to introduce charges such as the water abstraction charge and the pollutant loading fee, which they did and then just put the money into consolidated revenue. Mr Smyth assures me this is what always happens, and that they do no believe in hypothecation and so on. When you apply a water abstraction charge, it seems pretty reasonable for the community to think that it is going to have a direct relationship to the work and regulation of water. This is a fundamental issue concerning revenue raising and the role of government.

We have had a discussion in this place about taxes. Fierce competition appears to go on between the two major parties over not raising taxes and seeing taxes as evil, but we need to address the concerns of our community. If the government and the opposition are both saying taxes are bad, I do not know that that is doing a good service for the community. If you want the community to be willing to pay taxes, they have to have faith in how you spend the money.

There is a really big issue here. The government needs to realise that, if they do not appear to be credible to the community, there is little likelihood that the community will be willing to look at taxation. Yet surveys show clearly that if the community understands that the money they are paying in taxes will go to the things that they value, such as education and health, they are prepared to pay higher taxes.

Mr Moore has just walked in. Mr Moore is the only person in this chamber who has ever raised the need to address the issue of revenue in the same way. But I am now adding that I think there is an undermining of the community's confidence because of the way this government has raised revenue. Naturally, the regressive nature of revenue is also a very important aspect in discussing equity and justice in the community.

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