Page 690 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 22 February 2012
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The last part of the motion that we are being asked to note is about taxation here in the territory. The motion asserts that we have a lower proportion of tax to GSP than the national average. There are of course a number of factors that contribute to this, but I think the most important point to recognise is that we are a unique economy and that we should be focused on getting the settings right for us.
Recently I have talked about the importance of the Quinlan tax review. The Greens’ view is that we should all have the opportunity to evaluate the review and then be able to have an open, public debate, a conversation with the community, about how the ACT government should generate the revenue needed to provide the many services that the community expects and relies on.
Last week in the debate over the lease variation charge I talked about the benefits of being able to use government charges as levers for better practices and better outcomes for the community.
It is very important that the community knows what each of the parties in this place thinks about how revenue should be generated. The Greens have said that as much as possible we should be pricing in externalities and creating market settings to ensure we can respond to the challenges of climate change and peak oil while also ensuring that where possible we prevent government charges from distorting the efficient allocation of resources and allow initiative and enterprise in the market to respond to the challenges before us.
We need a green sustainable economy and we need a coordinated strategy for how to get there. This means we need more than a few incentive programs or concessions. We need to work out a plan for how we are going to have a prosperous economy that produces 40 per cent fewer greenhouse gas emissions in just eight years. Many of our fundamentals will have to change. We have to generate energy differently and use significantly less of it. We have to change the way we get around, where and how we build buildings, the public infrastructure we invest in, how we deal with our waste, and ensure that products and services that we want to export to the rest of the country, and indeed the world, will be competitive in a 21st century low carbon economy.
We are in a reasonably good position to be able to do this, but we really do not have time for tinkering at the edges. I very much hope that the government’s clean economy strategy, which is now only a month or so from completion, will consider all of these issues. We all want sustainable business activity and we should be encouraging people and supporting businesses that produce sustainable products and services. We should be valuing their ideas and enterprise and helping to foster a market for them here in the ACT and of course elsewhere.
Finally, the motion calls on us all to be measured in our language and ensure that we have robust evidence to support the claims that we make. The Greens agree with this sentiment and I am sure you are all aware that we are great supporters of evidence-based policy. The Greens are happy to make this commitment. We recognise the importance of business confidence in our community and very much see it as our role to create the settings that give businesses the confidence to invest in sustainable
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