Page 3387 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 14 November 2007
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from the tax, of course, contributes to the provision of important services to the community, and these services can only be maintained if financial resources permit. Perhaps those opposite would like—and I hope they do—during the course of this debate to take the opportunity to indicate just which services they would remove or reduce as a result of this loss of revenue. For example, a loss as proposed by Mr Mulcahy and the Liberal Party today of $17 million a year in revenue equates to a reduction of 3,500 patients that could be treated in our hospitals. There is a simple equation.
The Liberal Party today proposes to remove a revenue measure which brings to the territory in revenue just on $17 million a year, which equates to 3,500 inpatient services in our public hospitals. The Liberal Party are expressing today quite firmly their philosophical approach to service delivery in suggesting that they believe that the people of Canberra are prepared today to give up the capacity to provide 3,500 occasions of inpatient service in our hospitals.
The other aspect of this debate, of course—and we will hear much about this, I have no doubt, from the opposition—is the opposition’s claims that we are overtaxed and that we are a high-taxing jurisdiction. That is simply not the case; that is simply not the fact. There is no set of statistics or information the Liberal Party can bring to this debate today which illustrates or shows or demonstrates that we are a high-taxing jurisdiction. In fact, the first of the challenges I lay down to the Liberal Party today in the context of this debate or this proposal by them to cut $16.9 million from our annual revenues is to show us the basis in terms of national comparisons.
Show us the national comparisons, the information that you have available to you, that demonstrates that our taxation regime, the level of rates and charges levied within the ACT, is out of step with the nation, particularly having regard to average levels of income within the territory. The ACT has a prosperous, well-off community with average disposable incomes miles higher than the national average and a taxation regime that is, essentially, reflective of the median position within Australia.
Our taxation effort of state and local government, when we combine the two because of the combined levels of government here within the territory, are essentially the same as New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. Our levels of taxation are, in fact, less than in South Australia and the Northern Territory, despite the fact that our average disposable income is far higher than in any of those jurisdictions. We tax and charge at the same rate as the large jurisdictions, and we tax less than the smaller jurisdictions.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that combined state and local taxation in the ACT per capita is eight per cent lower than the per capita average of all the states and territories. If the Liberal Party has got information that is contrary to that, then it would be appropriate if they presented it today. But the advice available to me and the advice produced to me by treasury on the basis of information that has been obtained from the Australian Bureau of Statistics is that combined state and local taxation in the ACT per capita is eight per cent lower than the per capita average of all the states and territories. That is in a circumstance where average disposal incomes in the ACT probably exceed the national average by about the same amount.
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