Page 1079 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 March 2013
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Madam Acting Speaker, it is ironic what this mob are doing. Maybe they are just being a little bit twitchy about it. They know that and they say, “Oops, we had better try. While we are talking about our carbon emissions and all our progressive policies, let us just give a little bit of a nod and a wink to pretend that we care about this basic amenity that needs to be delivered.”
Economic development is the next point raised—“support the diversification of our private sector”. This might be something that Mr Smyth has had something to say about over the last few years. Again, from those opposite we see very little to support the private sector. In fact, after 12 years we have seen that, for the first time since 1988, private sector employment has slipped below the level of public sector employment. What we see from this mob opposite is a shrinking of the private sector in the ACT at the expense of the public sector. That appeals to the progressives. That appeals if you are a socialist. It is about the nanny state; it is about big government; it is about government getting into your life. It is not about encouraging the private sector. We know that. This is dead bang straight in accordance with the progressive policies that they espouse.
The tax settings that they have to encourage diversification are very few. And the tax reforms that they do espouse when they talk about abolishing taxes are simply about transferring taxes from one place to another and putting them on commercial rate bills. There are things like the lease variation charge: we have seen a stifling of development, particularly small development, in this town as a result of things like the lease variation charge.
The motion moves on to tax reform—the famous tax reform that this government put in the budget and implemented before taking it to the election. We know that this government is abolishing $350 million worth of taxes and transferring that to residential rates. We know that you simply cannot do that unless you triple the rates revenue. It is impossible to do. We asked for the documentation. We asked for the evidence. We said, “Show us how you do that. Where is the magic pudding? How do you get rid of all these rates and charges? Things like stamp duty—how do you get rid of all that, $350 million worth—without then tripling rates revenue? If it is a nil sum gain, if this is not going to actually be raising any more tax, how do you do that?” Those opposite look blank. They are refusing to engage in this debate because they cannot answer that question. The reality is that if you want to get rid of those other taxes you must triple the rates revenue.
In the 2012-13 year alone, we have seen businesses have their rates increase by 100 per cent. This actually came out on 666 radio. I was asked the question “Has this gone up?” I said, “Yes; we have seen some rates go up by 100 per cent.” Andrew Barr said, “No, that is not true.” We were able to provide the evidence. He said, “Oh, you meant commercial rates.” I assure you that, for the struggling businesses out there, having your rates go up 100 per cent in a year is not good news. And we have seen residential rates go up by about 25 per cent on a large number of properties.
The motion goes on to tertiary education. We all support our tertiary education system here. One thing that is noted in Dr Bourke’s motion is the University of Canberra
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