Page 3450 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
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more and more and more? We saw the latest figures, did we not, Mr Smyth, which showed the false economy of jacking up taxes on one type of property in the ridiculous way this government has. The actual revenue is not what they had anticipated. In fact, Mr Smyth has just handed me the figures, and we warned of this. We warned that if you set the tax too high, you will actually do yourself out of money.
They are actually back now to where they were before they increased the taxes in terms of revenue. I think there were years in the past when the tax was at a lower rate and they were getting around $8 million. So it is false economy. Imagine the flow-on to conveyancing. This does not tell us how much we have lost in conveyancing. So they have actually lost money as a result of this tax. There is a shortfall of nearly $14 million. They expected $22 million and raised $8.7 million. Talk about a bad tax. It raises the price of a unit. It is a tax on units. It is a tax on homebuyers. It is a tax on renters. It is a tax on jobs, and it does not even bring in the revenue expected; in fact it has brought in only one-third of the revenue expected.
Of course, there will be flow-on effects, but they will not actually quantify those for us. As we suggested, if there is less activity in the unit sector, then you are going to get a lot less revenue through conveyancing. No doubt, millions of dollars, perhaps tens of millions of dollars, have been lost as a result of setting the tax too high. It is just another example of how this government does things.
We will not be supporting this line, just as we will not be supporting the budget as a whole. We do not believe that a budget that places these kinds of burdens on families is worthy of our support. It places these kinds of burdens in all sorts of ways, particularly around the family home. That is what we are seeing from this government. Come 20 October people will be looking at these kinds of issues as they consider their vote. They will be looking at the tax burden and the cost burden that has been placed on them by this Labor-Greens alliance over the last four years and by this Labor government over the last 11 years. They will be asking themselves whether they will be able to afford another four years. Many tens of thousands of families in Canberra will not be able to afford more of this. They will not be able to afford another four years of this Labor-Greens alliance.
We certainly will not be supporting this particular line, and we do not support the direction of this government, which is to tax homeowners and properties—squeeze them until they bleed, not quite until they die. We do not support that approach, which has been put out there by the former Treasurer and endorsed by this Treasurer and by this Chief Minister.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (8.00): Obviously the biggest issue in regard to the Treasury in this year’s budget is tax reform. Let me say from the outset that the Greens support the proposed taxation changes. The economics are in; the results are very clear. Stamp duty and the insurance levy are inefficient taxes and should be removed. Removing the insurance levy is the easier question, because it is a smaller tax. Removing stamp duty, which contributes about 25 per cent of our own-source revenue, will of course have a much greater impact.
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