Page 1502 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 April 2013
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But let us look at the information the minister has just tabled. Remember that in this year this tax was meant to raise $23,484,000. And year-to-date, nine months to 4 April of the financial year, it has raised $7.3 million. It is a failure. It is meant to raise about—let us call it—$2 million a month. It is raising $800,000 a month. It is a failure. Mr Barr would expect that we would get to $19 million by the end of the year. He has downgraded it by $4 million. So what he is saying is that currently we are getting $800,000 a month from the lease variation tax; yet miraculously in April, May and June that is going to jump to about $4 million a month. We would all be amazed if it happens, none more so than I.
But there is his problem. The problem is in the numbers. Based on $800,000-odd a month times 12 months, it will pick up about $9.8 million—call it $10 million—less than half, probably about, call it, 40 per cent of what it was estimated to bring in. That is a failure of tax policy. To set a tax that does not achieve its objective, and now that we know that it is hypothecated to the urban improvement fund, Minister Barr can perhaps tell us, given this year that he has only raised year-to-date $7.3 million, and I am apportioning that out, pro rata-ing that out, to 12 months, maybe he will get $10 million. Yes, there is on page 203 the summary of the urban improvement program, $16.5 million this financial year. “So I’m going to raise $10 million, but I’m going to spend $16 million.”
Mr Barr: What about next financial year?
MR SMYTH: You can get up and explain your numbers.
MADAM SPEAKER: Stop interjecting. We will not have a discussion across the chamber. We have discussed this already, Mr Smyth.
MR SMYTH: But remember, it is in arrears. The minister has now explained that it is in arrears. For 2011-12, he only raised $8.7 million. But he has got $16.5 million in the budget, and that is why, Minister Rattenbury, we want a full explanation, we want all the documentation. And I note that you will not support it, as you do not. That is okay. You keep covering up for your colleagues in cabinet.
But what we have here is quite an interesting expose. And then we get the same old excuse:
… as at 4 April 2013, there were 82 applications in the system, totalling $15.411 million that has been determined but not paid over the past two years.
What does that tell you? You do not magically get a DA. You do not just wake up one morning and think, “I’m going to put a DA in,” and you go down to ACTPLA and you put your DA in and it magically gets approved. There are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars involved in putting a DA together and lodging it.
I lodge this magical DA—and apparently 82 have—and then they sit on them. What does it tell you? It tells you that they have gone to the bank with the approved DA and
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