Page 375 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 4 March 2008
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We support the harmonisation of these measures for economic purposes, but we would also like to see harmonisation which brings about social and environmental benefits. On the one hand, we have a federal government working towards a national energy trading scheme, but on the other hand we have exemptions and fringe benefits regimes which actually encourage unnecessary car usage. Instead, we would like to see schemes that factor in greenhouse gas emissions and provide incentives for responsible choices to minimise those emissions.
It seems trite and repetitious to say, yet again, that greenhouse gas and climate change issues are not just about and for scientists and environmentalists. These are issues that all policy makers need to grapple with and integrate into their plans and strategies. But just when you might have assumed from government rhetoric and accepted scientific consensus that pretty much everyone had got the message that climate change was a huge and potentially devastating problem, along comes another reminder that things are not changing very fast at all, and that, as usual, business still rules in many areas of government policy.
I acknowledge that this immediate problem has been inherited by the Rudd government from its climate change denying predecessor, but what I would like, and I imagine most Canberrans would expect, is a commitment from the ACT government, as part of its climate change strategy, that it will lobby its counterparts in other states and federally to remove the madness of having large motor vehicles—large gas-guzzling motor vehicles, large greenhouse gas emitting motor vehicles—as part of so many people’s salary packages.
It should also lobby hard to remove the FBT car lease schemes, whereby the higher the vehicle’s mileage, the higher the allowance rate. We know from anecdotal evidence, as well as common sense, that this measure results in people driving as much as possible in order to qualify for the lower rates. I have even heard that some people put their cars’ wheels on rollers in the garage and run it for hours in order to get the cheaper rates or encourage their children to drive to Queensland for the weekend. The fact that these schemes still operate today is testament to the breadth and urgency of the action needed for this society and its governments to snap out of complacency and put words into actions in order to minimise the impact of what is increasingly looking like a looming economic and environmental disaster.
Given that through our payroll tax collections we are benefiting financially from these schemes, we should at least make a concerted effort to rectify the obvious faults in them. In fact, I note that our own ACT planning and environment committee had the same concern. They recommended, in their report on the inquiry into ACTION buses and the sustainable transport plan, as follows:
… that the ACT Government continue to seek an Australian Government review of the statutory formula for Fringe Benefits Tax concessions to remove the perverse incentive for increased kilometres of car travel, and/or to seek the extension of tax exemptions or other incentives to public transport users.
Those are their words, not mine. I note also today that MLAs, and no doubt members of the public service, got a letter indicating that they can increase their expenditure on
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