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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2931 ..

the Treasurer. I think even the Treasurer was surprised at the Chief Minister’s comment, that the real reason the budget was going so well was because of the builders.

We have been saying for some time that the real reason the budget has been going so well is because of private enterprise, and what we have now from the Chief Minister is confirmation of that. But the problem for us is that there is a slow down. An article in the Canberra Times this morning points out that the clearance rate for auctions in Canberra over the past fortnight was 37 per cent. The average, I understand, for last year, was about 70 per cent, and it peaked some weekends at 95 per cent. Thirty-seven per cent clearance is very low for the ACT. Thirty-nine per cent in Sydney was recently described as “anaemic”. So 37 per cent is pretty poor. Although auctions account for only some 10 per cent of the residential property sales in the ACT, they are not a bad indicator of where we are going. As I have said, for the past two years the clearance rate has been running somewhere between 70 and 90 per cent. It does vary from weekend to weekend but it has been very strong, and now this is not the case.

You can understand why investors are nervous. They see a government that does not understand about investment; they see a government that does not understand that investors are not confident in the future and will not invest—they will pull back and wait and hope, and I think they would be hoping for a new government that is pro business. What this government cannot understand is why investors are nervous. They look at a government that is bringing in industrial manslaughter, union right of entry and generic portability of long service leave and sick leave; that has no interest in building on the city sister relationships; and that is foreshadowing tax increases. I think that is what is scaring people.

We have had a fabulous opportunity to go ahead, to reshape the direction, to build and secure a future for the ACT, and it has been squandered. It is the budget of lost opportunities. We have to work out what happens when it all comes off the boil. You only have to read the following from page 96 of budget paper 3:

The estimated outcome continues to remain flat in 2005-06 as expenditure growth outstrips revenue growth—

that would startle or scare any Treasurer or economist worth his salt—

improving in the 2006-07 forward year as revenue growth driven by taxes, fees and fines; grants and other own source revenue, exceeds expenditure growth.

The business community thought they had had a bit of a win in that the parking space tax had actually gone away. But it was buried. It was not levied in this year even though the two million bucks they expect to get from it is actually in the revenue this year. So the Treasurer can explain how he is going to use for recurrent purposes money he is not actually getting this year. That will be a good trick because if we all knew how to do that we would all be spending money we have not got and then not balancing the credit card.

The problem is that the parking space tax has been put off again and it is going to start in 2005-06. But, again, the detail has not been worked out. So we have had a whole year since the last budget where they did not know how to implement the parking tax and we are going to have to wait another year before they tell us how they are going to do so.

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