Page 2462 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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argy-bargy about who is going to do it. In the end, I fear, what will happen is that the government will end up doing it, and they will do it far more expensively. It will be far more expensive than it would have been simply to remit part of this tax in recognition of those off-site works being delivered.
That second aspect is important also. It is a more technical aspect but it is an important aspect to ensure that what we have here is a fairer tax than what the government is proposing at the moment.
The combination of those two aspects, I think, is important. I think that they would not fix this legislation if they were passed but they would improve this legislation. They would make it a less bad piece of legislation. And make no mistake, this is a bad piece of legislation. It is bad because it does not deliver the one thing that it promised, which was certainty. I think when we look ahead to the reams of amendments that are going to be pushed through, which were delivered to us at 11 o’clock this morning or 11.30 this morning, that are going to be voted on en masse, in one block, we will see how little certainty there will be as a result of this legislation.
It fails the test of the one thing it promised, which was certainty. The more we look at it and at the more it has been changed, the less certainty it is providing. So this seeks to address that and seeks to stop the other really bad aspect of this tax and that is just what a massive hit it is on families who are looking to buy a unit in Canberra and on those who are renting a unit in Canberra. People who are buying or renting are about to have a monumental tax increase imposed on them. It is going to start on 1 July and it is progressively going to get worse and worse.
Unfortunately, I think we will be coming back to this place many times to try to fix this legislation, to try to improve this legislation. We should actually try to improve it now. We should actually try to fix it now before it does the damage, before we have to come here in six months time or in 12 months time or in two years time to fix what is a very bad tax. I commend my amendment to the Assembly, as it will improve what is on the table at the moment.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health, Minister for Industrial Relations and Treasurer) (5.51): The government will oppose this amendment as well. I think one thing the Leader of the Opposition failed to do in that address as an apologist for the property industry was to explain to the community why he believed that for the next five years the most generous subsidy should continue at the generous rate that it started as part of our transition arrangements and he should explain to the community why they do not get to see the return on the assets that have been granted to some in our community, but not all.
There is absolutely no justification for the remissions that have been outlined by the Leader of the Opposition in this amendment. This is not a new tax. So a new-tax approach cannot be used as the justification. These increases do not relate to change in policy and the increases do not relate to codification. They relate to rectifying or correcting a past practice of applying fixed fees. We have accepted that whilst the property industry have had it extremely good for the last number of years, with the anomaly that was identified in April last year, in order to move to the system that was
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