Page 2616 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Families are struggling each week or fortnight to fund the cost of food items in this country, thanks to the absence of a real competitive market in the major retailing area. We have put them to shame, because governments do not have competition in most areas and can impose these charges. I think many families will suffer. What happens when people do not have enough money to meet their costs?
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired.
MR MULCAHY: I would like to take my second 10 minutes.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Proceed.
MR MULCAHY: When people do not have enough money to cover their costs they have to make do with less, so they look at the areas of discretionary spending. For example, their kids may have to do without some entertainment on the weekend. It might even be some sports that they have to drop, or they may look at other occasions. In an environment where many households now have two incomes, they might normally get together or have a takeaway meal once a week. Those things are potentially going to face the chop.
You might say, “That is not the end of the world.” But the consequence of this is that households, by cutting back on their disposable income in those respects, may well find that there is further loss of employment. We have many young people in Canberra who are relying on employment in the fast food industry, hospitality, video stores, pubs and clubs around the territory. Indeed, there are many women who have managed to get employment that is child-friendly in the retail, hospitality and entertainment sectors. If we remove dollars from those areas and put them into the hands of government then, without a shadow of a doubt, people will suffer.
A federal politician I was talking to today said, “That is a good thing. It will slow down spending and keep inflation down.” It may well do but, frankly, my main focus is ensuring that people in this territory have good government at a reasonable cost. I think the reasonable cost issue has gone out the door. There have been substantial increases in charges. For a home owner with all the things loaded on, that could be, in many cases, somewhere within the 40 to 60 per cent mark.
If that is not enough, if you want to contest your rates assessment, you are potentially going to pay a $64 objection fee, unless it relates purely to land valuation, in which case a $20 fee applies. As most of us know, if you seriously want to object to your land valuation you will need to spend a lot more than $20 to get specialist advice. This punishment is guaranteed to be compounded in the coming years, courtesy of the government’s move to index its fees, levies and charges by the wage price index, abandoning the consumer price index which has served all other Australian government jurisdictions for many years. It is an extraordinary measure.
As the Chief Minister acknowledged yesterday, and as the government acknowledged in its response to the estimates report, over the next four years we are going to see a situation where that will reap in another $20 million from the Canberra taxpayer by a clever device—and that is all one can call it. It is a clever device to, in fact, bring up the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .