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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1871 ..

MS TUCKER

The definition of "long-term owner"means the person who owned the land on 1 July that year and had owned the land throughout the previous year. This is in itself a very broad definition and will cover many more people than the person Mr Quinlan said inspired this bill. Interestingly, the majority of submitters to the committee were of the view that the bill could have negative social and economic impacts, particularly on economically disadvantaged people, in that it will create a disincentive to move.

Very little economic modelling was provided to the committee, but what is clear is that the gap between rates will be ever widening and therefore a bigger factor in a decision to move or not. That gives a lot of strength to the argument of there being a disincentive created. The question that then has to be asked is: what is the impact of there being a disincentive to move? That is the substance of most of the submissions that came to the committee, which I refer members to if they want to see the detail.

It was clear that the government had not really thought the proposal through. In the course of the inquiry it acknowledged some of the issues that were being raised through the committee and, in response, proposed to have exemptions in the system. But, because this proposal itself was made on the run, no costings are available for the administration of such a system and no rigorous process has been applied to determining exactly what those exemptions should be. We now have a list, provided by government, but I am concerned because we did not see any real discussion about the environmental impact of this rates proposal.

I asked if it had been through the Office of Sustainability, and at the time Mr Quinlan did not know. Later, in another forum with the Public Accounts Committee, I was informed that everything does in fact go through the Office of Sustainability but it had not been picked up in particular and the office cannot do that anyway. It is an interesting example of what the role of the Office of Sustainability is here and also of how we are still a long way from integrating those concerns into the decision making of government. They are certainly not integrated across all of government.

There are environmental concerns with this proposal, which are related to the fact that, if there is a disincentive for people to move, particularly from a big house to a smaller house, then there has been an impact on the supply of housing. That is a problem for social reasons, taking "environmental"in the broader sense, as defined under the Commissioner for the Environment Act, of "social"and "ecological". There are implications and there are also ecological concerns because all sorts of issues come out if you keep people staying in larger houses than are necessary.

We looked at different rates systems, and it was interesting to see that an environmental component is levied in the rates in Newcastle, Eurobodalla, Wollongong and Noosa. That is another aspect of a potential rating system that we could explore much more.

Community comment on the whole did not advocate a particular best rating system over another, but there was agreement from a number of submitters that a rating system where rates are calculated using the improved value of the property is more equitable. Basing a rates system on the calculation of improved values takes into account the value of the building structure on a home owner's parcel of land and is more closely linked to an individual's income and capacity to pay their rates.

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