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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2420 ..
MR SMYTH
(continuing):The government continues to insist that there are flaws in the 1996 rating system. I understand from the chief of Hansard that all members present at the time voted for it as being the best and most equitable system that you could put together in a very difficult area-that of rating. Given the number of systems that exist around the world, the question is: when will the government do the work that it should have done in the first place? None of us know, because the Treasurer won't tell us. He simply says we will go back to the old system. This roller-coaster effect is indicative of the government's slipshod approach to policy. They will try to ram something through. "If we can't ram something through, well, we'll throw up our hands and go home."
The amendments are done on the advice of the parliamentary draftsmen. They believe this is the best way to maintain the interim system, as I call it, and members will be aware that that expires on 1 July 2003. These amendments, if moved and accepted by the Assembly, will move this forward another year, until 1 July 2004. That will give the government plenty of time to do the work they should have done, before they introduce their interim system and their new rates system, which was so comprehensively rejected by this Assembly.
MS DUNDAS
(12.56 am): I would like to talk about rates and land tax. The debate about the equity of proposed changes to the ACT's property rating system has raged loudly in this community. It is the issue that has generated most of the calls to my office in recent months, and I have been contacted by many home owners who are currently struggling to pay their rates bill and by people who feared that they would be prevented from moving house because of the new rating system that the government had proposed.From the outset I have agreed with the government that there are many people who may be forced to sell their homes and move because their rates have become unaffordable. However, I did not agree that the government's proposed rating system was going to provide relief to a significant proportion of these people who are struggling.
Worse still, the government's proposed system would have given cheaper rates to many people who are both cash rich and asset rich-to those very people who can afford to contribute more to ACT services and should be making this contribution as part of this community. Money that is not collected from rates would have to be collected through other taxes.
The bill that we are now debating, introduced by the government following the defeat of the original rates bill last week, returns us to the rating system that operated under the last government. I am disappointed that this government has failed to make any attempt to revisit the inadequate concession scheme that currently operates. But I am willing to support this bill because it is less unjust than the government proposal that preceded it.
The affordable housing task force report documented many cases of acute housing stress among home owners. Of the 9,200 households in housing stress, 44 per cent of them were either purchasing their home or owned it outright. Shifting to a CPI increase, whether or not that CPI increase is associated with a rates bill directly
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