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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2419 ..

MR SMYTH

There seems to be a trend, when the government does not get its way, for it to throw up its hands and say, "We're not going to do any more work; we'll go back to where we were."We heard that threat from Mr Corbell on the DV 200, where it was this or nothing, and we now seem to be having from the Treasurer the same sort of fit: "If I can't have my way, we'll go back to where we were."

That is a poor attitude for the government to have. There is more work to do. If the inequities in the existing system-it is called the "1996 system"-were such that it was so desperate to move away from that system that it went to an interim system before coming up with the government's new rating system, you would logically have to ask the government why it wants to go back to a system that it was so desperate to get away from. The answer is that either its policy locker is empty or it does not have the wit to come up with a different system.

We believe that what we should do is maintain the interim system. Since the last rate notices went out under the old system, we have had an interim system that has changed the way we look at rates. It is now a system where all residents now pay CPI. My concern is that the large increases in unimproved value, exacerbated by the government's shift from system A to system B back to system A because we cannot have system C, will mean that people will now pay very large increases.

I do not think that is the way we should be going about fiscal policy. The government seems to be saying it will not do anything between now and the next election to address what was such a pressing need before the last election. The problem that was perceived to exist is now exacerbated by this delay and by something that none of us believed would have continued as strongly as it has-the Canberra property market, which seems still to go from strength to strength.

Until the government does the work that the public accounts committee has suggested it do, surely it would be better for the interim system to remain in place. Otherwise, we are going to go from system A, system B, system A to system U-four different variations in four years. The amendments that have been circulated in my name leave the interim system in place.

This will force the government to do some work, which is no bad thing. They have not done the work to date to justify the need for change; nor have they been able to justify the system that they have put forward. What we saw, particularly in the inquiry that was undertaken into the proposed new rates system, was the inability of the Treasurer to answer very simple questions like: "How will the concessions work? What concessions will there be? Where is your proof? Where is your evidence? Where's the modelling?"We went through that debate last week, so I will not go back to it in great detail except to say that it is now time for the Treasurer to do some work.

If the previous system was so bad that we had to move away from it quickly by implementing the interim system, why would you want to go back to it? That is a question the Treasurer has to answer. And, if the interim system is so poor that you do not want to continue to use it for at least another year, why was it implemented in the first place? That is also a question that the Treasurer has to answer.

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