Page 2600 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 25 September 2007
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This decision was made prior to the hearing but I was not aware that the decision had been made as the specific rate to be determined is not germane to my preparations for the administration of the initiative. I apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Well done to the Commissioner for ACT Revenue for the courage to write and then apologise. The Chief Minister sat there mute throughout the entire process, knowing that what a senior public servant was telling the committee was not correct. Perhaps the Chief Minister would like to come and explain. But there is another hook in the letter I got from the commissioner. He makes three points and says in point c:
as the Commissioner for ACT Revenue I have been asked to develop an administration system capable of implementing a changing interest rate based on a benchmark rate to be determined from time to time through a disallowable instrument.
There is a whole series of questions here: will there be certainty for first home buyers when they take on this concession? Will they know what their rate is? Will they know how long the rate will last? Will they know what the rate will be? What is the rate, how often will it vary and how will they be notified?
I see a lot of crocodile tears on this from the Chief Minister who wants to help people but, as has been pointed out so often by the opposition, he is busy “squeezing them until they bleed”, I think was the quote from the former Treasurer—squeezing hard as we cry our crocodile tears. We have a scheme where the rate has changed two or three times since it was announced; we are building a system to administer a scheme so that it can be modified at any time; and we have a Chief Minister who is absent from the Assembly yet again.
Presumably the history of this measure has much the same extent of preparation as was made for many of the ill-founded taxing proposals from the former Treasurer. You only have to look at things such as the city heart tax, the parking space tax and the loan security duty—all of which have been an absolute debacle in administration and, indeed, many of them were never passed by this Assembly or not followed up by the government because of that.
I also note that there appear to be more general concerns with the whole area of providing concessional duty. Members would be aware that there was an article in the Canberra Times about one individual who went to pay his $20 tax at the time only to find out that he had left it too long. I have had a flurry of activity to my office—I have written on a number of occasions now to the Chief Minister highlighting this—and one young couple has provided me with extensive details of their experience in buying a lease on a new block of land from this government. They are adamant that they did not know and were not told of the requirement to pay the concessional duty within 90 days.
We are talking about $20! Most people would reach into their pockets and find $20. These people were never given the opportunity until it was too late. They are now negotiating with the government, and I have written to the government about it as well, saying that it is appalling maladministration to travel from $20 to $3,000, $4,000 or
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