Page 3417 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
The government and the Chief Minister in this area have not been able to provide sufficient detail to the community about what they can expect in years to come when it comes to their cost of living, and particularly with things like their rates, with the government’s changes. We certainly have asked questions of the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister was asked how households would be affected, what families are facing over the next five years, and what information families will have regarding the projected rates increases for their blocks.
The main response from the Chief Minister was that some of those, of course, are subject to future budget decisions. That appears at page 869 of the estimates of 26 June. We asked about rates. The Chief Minister also said:
Well, I have not had one request, other than from you, Mr Seselja, for any more detail than that.
When you have a government that have a record of raising costs for people, and they are planning on raising those costs even more in years to come, I think it is incumbent upon them to be open about that.
If you look at what happened when the GST was implemented, there was a lot of detail. It was taken to an election and there was a lot of detail put to the community about what it would mean. “Yes, it will mean that these prices will go up.” Some prices would go down, if they were subject to high rates of wholesale sales tax before that, and that was abolished. Other taxes were reduced, income tax went down and, of course, there were all sorts of discussions about whether or not GST would apply to various things, how it would impact on things when there were existing excises—alcohol and the like. There was detailed discussion and answers given by Peter Costello, John Howard and others in the lead-up to that.
If you are going to undertake changes to our tax system, you need to give the community as much detail as possible—not the propaganda that is coming in the letterboxes at the moment. That actually does not tell the truth. It says things that are plainly not true, and it hides most of the inconvenient facts at the back of the brochures or in the small print. I think that was disappointing.
We also asked the Chief Minister about the cost of living statement. The $9,000 in ACT government taxes and charges that an average family now faces is a massive amount. It is going up by $600 just in this year. And let us face it: with respect to this $9,000, for this average family that they have chosen—and I have commented on this on a number of occasions—whilst the income levels and the one full time and the one part time is fairly typical of many Canberra families, some of the other things they deliberately left out suggest that it is not a typical Canberra family, because this Canberra family has two cars but no-one pays for parking. There would not be many Canberra families with one full-time worker and one part-time worker, two cars, living in the suburbs, who are not paying for parking at some point. That was left out. They left out some of the taxes they pay, like the utilities tax, which you pay, of course, on things like your phone. So this is not a typical family.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video