Page 2910 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 6 August 2008
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suggestion that the ACT is a high taxing jurisdiction because the Liberal Party are now out there endorsing the level of taxation.
Here was the opportunity to knock $20 million off the taxation base and the Liberal Party said: “No, it’s okay, we don’t want to do that. We’re happy, we’re satisfied, we’ll live with the taxation rate and the level of revenue effort here.” I do thank the Liberal Party for their endorsement of the fire and emergency services levy, and I thank them for the implicit acknowledgement today that the government has got the level of taxation just about right. It has taken them four years to get there, but we do acknowledge and appreciate this last-minute acceptance by the Liberal Party that this government has got the level of taxation right in the ACT and that they are spurning Mr Mulcahy’s attempts to knock $20 million off the bottom of the budget.
As the Liberal Party quite rightly acknowledged today, the ACT is not a high taxing jurisdiction, and the Liberal Party is supported in its assessment that this is not a high taxing jurisdiction by data from the ABS and assessment by the Commonwealth Grants Commission, which indicate that ACT taxation levels are similar to those in the majority of other jurisdictions; we are pretty much in the middle of the pack. At the same time as delivering in the middle of the pack in relation to revenue effort, the government continues to deliver above-average levels of high-quality government services. The community continues to call for these services and the government continues to deliver them, while at the same time keeping its taxation effort in line with other jurisdictions and delivering prudent budget services.
In the context of government services and the overall taxation level, there is absolutely no case for the abolition of the fire and emergency services levy, as the Liberal Party have said today. But this is not the first time that we have seen a proposal such as this which we believe to be an irresponsible and untenable argument for the removal of the tax.
We ought to focus on the potential budget impacts of this proposal: $99 million in revenue over four years given up from the abolition of the fire levy and $73 million over four years from the abolition of the utilities network facilities tax. It would be interesting if we did throw in that proposal by the Liberal Party; even now they acknowledge it in foreshadowing that they will abolish the utilities network facilities tax; they have already undertaken to do that. They have also undertaken to include an untargeted stamp duty concession worth, I understand, from the opposition’s calculations, $122 million. So there is a commitment by the Liberal Party in this place over the four years to reduce stamp duty by $122 million, to reduce the utilities network tax by $73 million, totalling $195 million. This, of course, is against a budget surplus forecast of $244 million. This is interesting: in the context of the $200 million or more of recurrent initiatives that will impact on the budget that the Liberals have already foreshadowed, in the promises they have made—
Mr Mulcahy: Don’t forget the hospital beds.
MR STANHOPE: No, they are in there. This is just revenue forgone. The forecast budget surpluses over the next four years are $244 million. The Liberal Party proposes, through its untargeted stamp duty concessions, to forgo $122 million over the next four years. It proposes, through its decision to abolish the utilities network
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