Page 2981 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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So we think that outlines a very clear strategy on the way forward to return the budget to surplus while still maintaining the capacity to increase government service delivery in key government priority areas.
The tax review will present some challenges and opportunities for the community. We intend that there will be a very comprehensive consultation process once that review is released. I am still expecting that review to be finished in August. In terms of fees and charges, taxes and charges, I would like to correct Mr Seselja’s entire 15-minute speech and the majority of the content of what he said. This budget does not include any new taxes. It is wrong to say that it does. I find it interesting that the Leader of the Opposition, who has been in this place now since 2004, has never once brought to this place legislation to amend the way rates are charged across the territory. He can come in here and spend 10 minutes and read out every suburb that has had a rate increase but I note that, as a legislator and as a leader of a party that obviously finds the way we levy our rates offensive, in the last seven years he has not seen it as a priority for him to come in and propose an alternative.
Therefore I must go to the fact that maybe he does not really think it is unfair the way they are levied but that, as land values rise, and rise considerably, and the rates, a proportion of which are based on the value of the land, increase with those land increases, he will use that as a political opportunity to run a line that it is the government outrageously increasing taxes when everybody in this place who understands how the legislation works understands that that is not the case. To run a line that rates have increased by 107 per cent and not put it in the context of how much land values have increased over the same period of time is simply disingenuous.
And I think that goes to the other issues around cost of living increases. Yes, we accept that there are pressures on families. In fact, I would say that there are pressures on Canberrans. The Liberal Party say they are the only party that stands up for Canberra families. We would argue that the Labor Party stands up for everybody. I am not entirely sure how the Liberal Party defines the families that they are representing. Maybe they are the same people that have been visited by the hundred volunteers and their free petrol as they drive around town; maybe it is the same families.
We accept that there are pressures, particularly in the area of rising utilities, and the impact that that has on families. I note that neither member of the opposition who is speaking has acknowledged that this budget includes the biggest single increase to concessions since self-government—$131 per household on top of the increase that we included last year, which was $20 plus CPI, $151 going to those 25,000 households that are eligible. So 25,000 households will be significantly better off from the passage of this budget when it occurs sometime tomorrow morning.
I note recommendation 35 from the estimates committee report. I went through every recommendation of the estimates report. I probably spent more time than most treasurers in the past have spent looking at the estimates report and formulating the government response. Where there were genuine areas where there was a good idea or something that we could develop further, the government agreed to it.
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