Page 2497 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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Ms Gallagher: That is what it is—an explanatory memorandum. It explains it.
MR SMYTH: Well, stand up without the notes and explain what it is about. You cannot do it because it does not make—
Ms Gallagher: Yes, you can. It is what people have to pay.
MR SMYTH: You can? All right, I will wait for you at the end of this to stand up and make an explanation. The explanation is that you go to the explanatory memorandum. That is good; that is really good.
But the problem here is that at the outset it was said that this was about certainty. This is not certain. We will have lines drawn on the map. You will have people facing each other across the street who paid different rates of tax for exactly the same thing. That is not certainty. It is certainly not equitable. Both of these parties talk all the time about fairness and equity. The problem is that, for the homebuyer, for the potential, existing home seller, for the potential new homebuyer and for the renter there is no certainty in this.
If the government have the data then they should table the data. If the government do not have the data on the effects of this tax—and we have had it from Mr Barr now; at least we got one honest comment, that it will affect the market and the market will adjust. We got the comment that it will affect a small number. I would like to know what the small number is, because these are not things that have been admitted by the Treasurer at any time. Points to Mr Barr for at least having the honesty in acknowledging that all taxes have an effect. It is something that the Treasurer has not been willing to admit. And that is unfortunate, because we all know that they do. We all know that they have an effect. Just the fact that it rises up to about $20 million or $25 million, that is money out of the market. There is $20 million worth of effect; that could be quite a substantial effect in some quarters.
The problem with this is that it is poor process. The problem with this is that it is now leading to uncertain outcomes. If you have uncertain outcomes, you have the potential for corruption. This is Wollongong-style development—Labor government, Wollongong-style development. And we all know what happened over the last four or five years in New South Wales under this sort of system.
Land is one of our few assets. We can only sell it once. It can be redeveloped many times over a period of time but we need to get it right if we are to achieve the social objectives, the environmental objectives and the community objectives that we all speak about. We all talk about density. We all talk about sustainability. But this is not an act that will lead to that. These amendments will not lead to that. This will lead to greater uncertainty, potentially corruption, and members should reject these amendments this evening.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (9.25): It is a pleasure to be voting against a tax increase, because that is what the Canberra Liberals are all about. We are about returning money to the citizens. We are about getting citizens choice. We are about actually
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