Page 3406 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 14 November 2007
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Mt Selwyn and it was Chief Minister’s talkback on the radio, and I heard a pensioner get on the phone and say, “How am I meant to pay these extra costs, Mr Stanhope, because my pension is not going up?” The Chief Minister waffled and he waxed and waned about WPI and CPI, and it made for interesting listening, because he really could not explain it to these people.
I am not talking about the fat cats here getting some great tax concession, as was implied in that fairly offensive and silly release put out today saying Mr Mulcahy wants a tax reduction. It is not me that I am concerned about; it is the people in Canberra—Dr Foskey, I agree with you—who are living from hand to mouth, people who are on fixed incomes, families that have broken up where you have got one breadwinner trying to raise kids. They are the people that these amounts of $130 actually mean a lot to, not people sitting in this place on six-figure incomes. When you lose touch with the ordinary people and what they want, then you ought to give the game away.
Mr Stanhope goes on about how we are a very low-taxing jurisdiction here. On 29 August, I pointed out in a question on notice that a budget table comparing the ACT to New South Wales failed to include the water abstraction charge; it failed to include the fire and emergency services levy; it failed to include the WPI increases or the utilities tax, and what did Mr Stanhope do? He said, “I’ll take that on notice.” Do you reckon I have heard anything back? Not a word; not a sausage. The government puts out these budget tables saying how wonderful things are here, but then it just selectively leaves out a whole raft of charges so that it can actually create a better spin on the situation.
Mr Stanhope pointed to the higher incomes and level of disposable income in the ACT. As Mrs Dunne has pointed out, that is a typical Labor left attitude, a typical socialist perspective. If somebody does well, punish them. They deserve to be taxed heavily because they can afford it. But the problem is that this mindset is one that fails to recognise that you are hurting a lot of ordinary and smaller people. I speak to many older people in Canberra; I go out every week and talk to groups of senior people, and I make an effort to talk to them and ask them about their circumstances. Time and time and time again the message I hear from these people is that, in many cases, they are asset rich and cash poor.
If you have bought a house or your husband or wife has passed away and you are still living in it, it may well be that it has increased substantially in value. I am sure when these people sell up, there will be a beneficiary or beneficiaries in their estates who will realise some of the benefit of capital gains over the years. But most people that I know who fit into this category want to pay their bills; they do not want to leave debts behind, but they do not have the income flow to support a high-spending, high-taxing government. What they would like to see is, in fact, some of these things handed back to the people
We are not asking that all taxation go out the door. It is arrant nonsense from Mr Stanhope when he keeps saying, “What? The Liberal party wants no services?” No, we do not say we want no services, but we certainly question some of the things. We have seen this swag of press releases pumped out in the last 24 hours—$205,000
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