Page 2974 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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and the future of discussion. Again the tax review, I hope, will have significant recommendations about the way we tax land. There certainly are a number of significant reforms available to us, and the most obvious of those is the Henry review recommendation to move to a fixed land tax instead of the transaction-based duty that currently exists. There are a number of benefits that could flow from this and I think shifting to a model that recognises that we have a very finite resource that should be allocated as efficiently as possible has a number of very strong attractions.
Briefly on the lease variation charge, the Greens are of course pleased that the revenue forecasts have proven correct, although I leave it open to the Treasurer to ensure whether that will be met or not. We do have an additional $10Â million because of rectification and it now appears that not only has there not been a decline in activity, given the rectified charges, but a fairer amount is being paid on the development rights being granted by the community. We do of course see real potential for the new scheme and the other outcomes that it now has the capacity to deliver due to the amendments.
On financial management, one particular item of interest will be the new gateway reviews. These reviews have been used by the commonwealth finance department for some time now and I understand that the plan is to replicate much of the commonwealth process. I think there is a general consensus on the merits of gateway evaluations and risk assessments. I hope that they can form an important part of the comprehensive assessment framework for the ACT, and we look forward to seeing how these can be integrated with other assessments.
I am not entirely sure from the government’s response to the estimates report whether they anticipate that the reviews will be operational and can be done on the new office building. It certainly would be a good test for the process and a very useful additional analysis.
I would like to address now the issue of efficiency dividends. These are a standard mechanism and are given some consideration in the ACIL Tasman report. The observation the report makes is that global efficiency dividends do not consider the relative position of agencies, and this has been demonstrated in the ACT over the last year. The Greens do acknowledge the position that has been taken in regard to the education directorate as a response to this concern and we make the more general observation that we will increasingly need to be more discerning between agencies when applying an efficiency dividend.
This particularly applies to smaller agencies. The Greens are concerned about agencies such as the Human Rights Commission, which is subject to a level of efficiency dividend that is normally applied to large agencies. And this is, of course, because they are housed within JACS. But we do not believe that that is the right application. Although they are housed within JACS, they are a small agency and therefore it is a greater load that they have to bear. This does raise a range of issues that are probably best left for debate another day but it is a very important issue to raise.
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