Page 2303 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 22 June 2011
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We need to emphasise that we are dealing with the cost of living for households here. Many people assume that the consumer price index equates to the cost of living for households. That is not correct. As the Australian Bureau of Statistics quite rightly notes, CPI is not a measure of the cost of living. In its bulletin 6640, on pages 3 and 4, what it actually goes on to say is:
Although the CPI is also commonly referred to as a measure of changes in purchasing power or a cost-of-living index, in an economic context these terms are not strictly interchangeable …
It says that if you really want to measure the cost of living, “Such a measure would include items like income tax and interest payments”. It continues:
A true cost-of-living index, among other things, would need to be concerned with changes in standards of living and with the substitutions …
That is what we are suggesting. There are datasets out there that would help us inform this debate and not rely just on CPI. That is why it is so important that this motion go through unamended today.
Again, in her document, the Chief Minister tries to say—I think her amendment is a confusion of both mischief and poor analysis—that somehow the government’s revenue has eroded and that is why you use a percentage instead of real terms. But let us go to another ABS document, State statistical bulletin 2011, which came out on 1 June, luckily enough for all of us, this year. This is the most up-to-date information we can gather.
In 2005-06, for general government sector taxation per revenue at the state level, the ACT came second, at $2,376 per head. It came second by $147, but it was still 11 per cent higher than the national average. Let us go to 2006-07. We topped the billing then. Average taxation revenue per capita was $2,724. We have pipped WA by $18, but it was 17 per cent higher than the national average. This is territory government taxation. In 2007-08, we were still number one. The gap blew out to 20 per cent above the national average, and we were simply $65 above the next competitor, WA. In 2008-09, we were 24 per cent above the national average and $339 ahead of the next, number two, which was WA. And in 2009-10, we were out 28 per cent above the national average and higher than WA by $353.
So there is some disingenuousness in this—that somehow the government is poor, that its revenue base is declining, when the taxation per capita, the pressure this government exerts every day on the people of the ACT, has gone up. And it has gone up from $2,376 per head in 2005-06 to $3,107 in 2009-10. That is the legacy and record of this government on taxation. (Time expired.)
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services and Minister for Police and Emergency Services): (4.47): The hypocrisy of those opposite when it comes to their purported care for those on low incomes is just mind-boggling—particularly Mr Smyth. This is the man who, as minister, sold the Narrabundah long-
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