Page 1167 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 30 May 2007
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expect too much. You have unreasonably high expectations of levels of service.” And, of course, we got the tax increases—but we do not get the improvements to service.
We see a city with deteriorating services but coming at a higher and higher cost to individual families and households generally across the territory. These increases to rates are going to continue at a rapid rate under the government’s new policy to index rates to the wage price index instead of the more commonly and appropriately used consumer price index. The wage price index is usually an index of prosperity. It is interesting that there is not a single member of the government in the chamber at this time, other than you, Mr Speaker; we are glad to see you here. The wage price index is usually an index of prosperity—an index that the Howard government is working hard to raise through increases in real wages. But now it will be used by the ACT government as a club with which to beat ratepayers over the head. This is a perfect example of the disparity in thinking between the Australian government and the ACT government and the disparity in their economic approaches.
The Australian Liberal government, through sound economic management and important workplace reforms, has managed to increase real wages by a massive amount over the last decade—and the best that the ACT Labor government can do is to use this to figure out a new way to tax people more. Despite some $50 million-odd that has been taken out of the wages, out of the pay packets, of people around Australia by the ACTU to fund that lavish television campaign that no political party could match, and to promote disinformation about a threat to people’s employment and to their children and grandchildren, the truth is that things have never been so good. People in the workplace know that they do not have to put up with unacceptable conditions, particularly in this climate of buoyant employment and a critical shortage of people to fill jobs. Indeed, it is very much a seller’s market.
This motion calls on the ACT government to seek to reduce nuisance taxes. Every time we see more and more revenue come into the territory and we question the tax measures, Mr Stanhope says, “The Liberal Party is going to do away with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.” What we are saying to this government is: rein in the tax imposition that you keep throwing onto the people of Canberra.
How is it that we need all these taxes and that when a heap more money than expected comes in we are told that those taxes still cannot be reduced or got rid of? I know why that is happening. It is because this ACT government want to have a war chest to try and buy back their lost ground with the community in 2008 and hope that they can recover from the terrible position in which they are now held by the people of Canberra.
I have said publicly before that state and territory Labor governments, including those opposite, are guilty of the greatest hoax of our time. The introduction of the GST was supposed to be accompanied by the abolition of local inefficient taxes. The states and territories have taken a very literal interpretation of the IGA, the intergovernmental agreement. They are slowly getting rid of those taxes itemised in the agreement but at a much faster rate are introducing new local taxes to replace them. I detailed yesterday just how much more the ACT government is receiving this year because of the GST—$82 million more than we would have received under the old system—yet the ACT government is still finding it necessary to tax us more and more.
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