Page 1834 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2006
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always between the ACT and New South Wales: “We are an island surrounded by New South Wales. It is absolutely imperative that our land tax, rates and arrangements be identical to those in New South Wales. The ACT is an island surrounded by New South Wales. It is imperative that our stamp duty regime be identical to that in New South Wales.”
But now, all of a sudden—because land tax in New South Wales is higher than in the ACT—the comparison is with Victoria. I guess we will traipse around Australia as the Liberal Party seeks some point of differentiation in relation to supposed lack of support for business in this territory.
The bottom line in relation to taxes and charges is that the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in its latest report on jurisdictional relativities, feels that the ACT, in a state and local government capacity, taxes at 11 per cent less than the national average. If you look at the rate of increase in taxes around Australia, you see that it has been less in the ACT than in other jurisdictions. That is what the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed as recently as March this year.
Overall, the level of taxes imposed in the ACT is not high. It is not high. You can of course pick out this tax or that tax and say, “Well, this particular tax is higher than the national average.” It may very well be. But there is a range of other taxes and charges that are considerably lower than in other places around Australia. Overall, we have a taxation regime that is essentially equivalent with the national average.
We can do this audit; we can go through and compare this tax with that tax. Then we need to do the rest. We need to go to the other side of the revenue expenditure picture—which is what this government has done—and we need to ask the question: how much do we spend on business in the context of national averages? How much do we spend on tourism in the context of national benchmarks? What do we discover in relation to tourism? It is that, until this budget, we have been expending on tourism at a rate 111 per cent above the national benchmark. Until this particular budget, we were expending the third highest amount in Australia per capita relatively on tourism. So here we have it: this impost is the highest in Australia.
If you want some completeness, if you want the true picture, if you want some understanding of the other side of the equation, just roll out your benchmarking on the level of expenditure by this government on business. Roll out your information on the level of expenditure by this government on tourism. And what do you say? You say, “This particular tax or that particular tax with a particular impost on business might be high.”
At what level does this government expend, and at what level has this government traditionally expended, on business in relation to tourism? Some 111 per cent above the national average—the third highest tourism spend by a jurisdiction on a relative basis in Australia. That is the level of commitment by this government to business—that level of expenditure. The fruits of it are there to see.
We have the strongest balance sheet. We have the strongest economy. We have the lowest unemployment. We have the highest participation rate. State final demand is
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