Page 3402 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 14 November 2007
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At the time of debate on the original bill, I noted that the regulatory impact statement was compiled by treasury without consulting DHCS, which is in charge of the concession program, and TAMS, which conducted a review of the utilities act and was at that time developing a climate change strategy. Treasury also did not see fit to consult with the Community Inclusion Board, which I would have thought would be an obvious stakeholder, especially given that it had recently completed a household debt project.
At the time of debate on the original bill, Mr Mulcahy said:
When you add up the increases of eight per cent in average unimproved values for residential properties and 19 per cent for commercial properties, significant increases in average land rates and the exorbitant costs incurred from the fire and emergency services levy, you can see how these new charges will impact Canberra property owners.
I note that Mr Mulcahy made no mention of skyrocketing property prices, which have added tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to the capital holdings of Canberra property owners, but I also note that he went on to recognise that there would be adverse impacts on renters as well.
The Greens have a national policy of using mandatory disclosure of building energy efficiency ratings to encourage the uptake of efficiency opportunities. Mandatory disclosure policies overseas have been successful in identifying efficiency opportunities and ensuring that there is a clear incentive to act on them. I commend the Greens policy to the government and the opposition next time they look to drafting new revenue-raising measures.
I will end my speech by echoing the Chief Minister’s sentiments in saying that the opposition does not seem to get it—most Canberrans do not want tax cuts when the alternative is increased spending on social infrastructure, climate change initiatives, education, transport and health. I acknowledge some of Mr Stefaniak’s points about the adverse effects of different types of taxes, so I look forward to seeing the social and environmental tax mix that the Liberals will presumably take to the next election.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (5.34): Mr Speaker, today we saw a new defence in the Treasurer’s preposterous defence of maintaining a tax in such prosperous times. We are a prosperous, well-off community, and the premise of the Stanhope government’s new taxing regime is that we should tax people at the rate of their disposable income. We heard this in the speech here today, and we heard it again in question time. This is a new maxim, and it means that Jon Stanhope has his hand in every voter’s pocket.
It is the mindset of the left that money in the economy should be given to the government. We saw it here today with Dr Foskey. I was taken aback a little to find that Dr Foskey is going to support this bill today, but my surprise was short lived when I realised that she really wants to substitute a more regressive taxation regime in its place, one that fails all the basic tests of taxation at the first hurdle—that is, simplicity. What Dr Foskey just explained to us would be an extraordinarily complex taxation system, which would be hard to measure and hard to administer.
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