Page 3455 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
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So there you have it, Madam Deputy Speaker. What you have got is not collecting the revenue, so you are $14 million short with $35 million lower than anticipated conveyancing duty. Perhaps not all of that is apportionable to the lease variation tax, but you have to appreciate that a lot of the activity that has been slow is due to the fact that this government has put a tax on housing at a time when many groups, whether it be Shelter, the Indigenous advisory board or the Youth Coalition, said, “Housing affordability is at an all-time low in the territory and has declined under this government.” What do they do in answer to that? They put another tax on housing, aided and abetted by their parliamentary colleagues, their parliamentary coalition members, the Greens. This is a disgrace, but the sad commentary on the imposition of this punitive tax in its redesigned form is that the market has spoken and will continue to speak about this tax.
One of the good outcomes in this year’s budget is the cost of living statement. People can now look at what their government is charging them. That is a great Liberal Party initiative. The Liberal Party actually cares about where people are and what it costs to live in this city. We are acutely aware, because of representations to us, that people are finding it difficult out there. Yes, we are living in a wealthy city. Yes, people do have higher than average incomes in the ACT. Yes, they do have higher than average charges as well. Everything is more expensive in the ACT, whether it be petrol or any of the things that are freighted into the ACT. Certainly housing is far more expensive than it should be in the ACT, because of the mismanagement of this economy, of these taxes, by this government and their Greens colleagues.
What do we find when we look at the cost of living, the estimated impact on households? There has been more than a $600 increase, a $641 increase, in the 2012-13 year—and more to come. They have not told the true story and they do not apportion everyday charges like parking, which is assiduously avoided.
We find in the report and in the expert’s report that the government could have done a better job of this. They could have given a fuller picture. They could have told a fuller story. But that would not help, because this is the government that is taxing the daylights out of people—indeed, Ted Quinlan said so appropriately, “Tax them till they bleed, but not until they die.”
Let me look at economic performance. We have concerns about the performance of the ACT economy. The Treasurer, in releasing the June quarter financial report, said:
State Final Demand … increased by 1.8 per cent … in original terms …
This is both a strange and a silly comment to make. It is strange because it is very old news; it is silly because no-one except the ACT Treasurer, who purports to have economics training and should know better, uses original data for state final demand. As the Treasurer should know, because I have told him often enough, the figures to use are the trend figures, as these provide the best longer term view of how the economy is performing and these are the figures suggested by the ABS to be the most accurate.
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