Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2421 ..

MS DUNDAS

correlated with property values, will not be enough to help these people. Working people on low incomes need a concession scheme if they are to be able to keep their homes.

The current rates concession scheme only applies to pensioners, and concessions are limited to a 50 per cent concession or $250 per property, whichever is the lesser. This concession does not go far to reducing a rates bill in the inner south or inner north. Once this bill passes, many of the people the bill is designed to help will still be struggling. Of course, that would have been equally true under the old bill, and a new pattern of inequities would also have been introduced. But I am trying to make the point here that work on the concession system in relation to rates is urgently needed.

A threshold of 30 per cent of household income going to housing costs could be the basis for a concession scheme. Alternatively, the scheme could be based on a measure that divides household income by the number of people supported by that income. I have not had the time or the resources to find a position on the most effective eligibility criteria, but I believe that this work could and should be done and I hope it is something the Treasurer will be looking at in the near future.

I am willing to support this bill because it does not have the worst flaws of the original bill. It does not create arbitrary differentials in rates bills between neighbours. It does not punish people who are forced to move house due to a relationship breakdown or those who need to move to a larger or smaller house following a change in household size or job situation.

Moving house and the events often triggering a move bring huge financial strains. Hitting those households with a higher rates bill than better-off neighbours would not have been fair. It would also have had a detrimental impact on people who are trying to enter the market. Young people, who so many people claim are our future, would have had a much worse situation trying to get into a housing market that is already under much stress and is over inflated.

The government developed a rating proposal without consulting the community or business. The system was criticised by both ACTCOSS and the Property Council, among many others. I am relieved that the bill was defeated last week and that the government has returned to the original system for the interim.

I agree that we cannot continue to just say that rates will increase by CPI, which is what we have been doing for the last year, because we will reach a point where we need to go to a new system, as hopefully the work is being done in Treasury to develop and perhaps rethink the system. If we then go back to property values that have been increasing astronomically and say that they will be the basis of our rates scheme, when CPI has been increasing at a much lesser rate, we will have reached a point where it would have been quite difficult to reconcile the two figures.

I believe this is a more stable interim measure; I see it as an interim measure. I do hope that the work is being done, specifically on the concession scheme. This morning I have just put forward a few ideas, and I hope that the people in Treasury, who have the time, the inclination and the resources, can spend more time looking at these ideas than did my office.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .