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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 3053 ..

Mr Smyth: No. Your memory is failing you, Bill.

Mr Quinlan: He is still working out the difference between a budget and an appropriation bill.

MR WOOD: Yes. In 2002-03, the total tax collection was $592,822,000. How can you sustain your argument that this government is a high-taxing government. There were some variations; some taxes dropped-

Mr Smyth: What was the variation?

MR WOOD: You have written those down. There was some reduction because some taxes were eliminated under the GST: $37 million of the difference between 2000-01 and 2001-02 was the reduction for taxes which were replaced by GST revenue. The difference without the GST impact was $18 million. I think that the figures speak for themselves. Read those figures and put them into your consciousness; it is as simple as that.

Mr Smyth: What was the variation? Tell the Assembly what the minor variation was.

MR WOOD: That is the story.

Mr Smyth: Do you know what the minor variation was?

MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Smyth!

MR WOOD: Due to the GST. I just read it out to you.

MR SPEAKER: Mr Wood, direct your comments to the chair.

MR WOOD: Let's look at the impost on home owners. In 2002-03, rates income was $112 million, land tax was $40 million, conveyancing was $147 million-$299 million. Let's average out that conveyancing over all properties. For 120,000 properties at $299 million, taking into account all land tax, rates and conveyancing taxes, the average property tax on each ACT property was $2,400. That is just a statement of fact, contrary to what we are getting from the other side of the house, which is a lot of rhetoric, a lot of hyperbole and not very much fact at all.

I want to focus on the positives. I will do that quickly because I know that other people want to get into the debate. Let's look at some of the increased expenditure that we have brought about just in my areas of administration over a period of years: $6.87 million for disability services, $2.3 million for therapy services, $3 million for community housing, $3 million for affordable housing, $8.8 million new money for public housing to buy land assets, and $13 million for homelessness. That is the positive side of what taxes do for you and that is only a quick summary of some of the more significant ones. That was all new money. So the opposition's proposals here are just not supportable.

MS TUCKER (4.33): In the Public Accounts Committee we are actually looking at the question of the sustainability of our revenue base, which to a large extent overlaps with

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