Page 2309 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 5 June 2013
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that they were going to triple in a decade; we never said that. How many of these were printed, do you think? I think it was in the hundreds of thousands that were printed. They were distributed to every household in Canberra—in some cases, more than once. In fact, they featured in Labor Party advertising as they circled them and said it was not true. They were lying, Mr Assistant Speaker. Their ads were lying. They looked people in the eye and they said, “Your rates won’t triple under Labor.” We said they would. We used their own documents. They said that that was a lie. It turns out that the new story after the election is, “But you said it would happen in three or four years.” Well, we did not. We actually used the Quinlan review. It was in our documents. And now it turns out that rates will triple in that time.
The other big piece of deceit from the Labor Party at that election, of course, is that Katy Gallagher looked people in the eye and said that she was going to abolish their stamp duty. She said, “Vote for me and I’ll abolish your stamp duty.” Did you say that in your ads? You did. She did not say, “I will abolish stamp duty if I get re-elected five times. If I am re-elected five times I will abolish your stamp duty.” How honest was that, Mr Assistant Speaker? I seek to table this document because it fundamentally disproves what the Chief Minister was just saying in her speech.
Leave granted.
MR SESELJA: I table the following paper:
“Our plan for better local services and lower rates & charges”—Canberra Liberals’ election brochure.
This document disproves what the Chief Minister was just saying. It shows that their whole election campaign, in fact, was based on a lie. They claimed rates would not triple, and they will. We see that now in the budget. We see that as a result of this year’s budget. She now tries to claim that we were saying all sorts of things which we were not saying, which this document shows. She says, “Oh, no, you were hiding it.” We put out hundreds of thousands of documents with the government’s own numbers. They said that was a lie. They used an ad to say that it was a lie. These are the facts.
The facts are that if you abolish $350 million worth of taxes and move them over to rates, which at the start of the process were collecting around $170 million in taxes—you add $350 million and $170 million and you get around about $510 million—it is around about triple where you started. These are the fundamental mathematics. This is what the Quinlan review found. The Chief Minister, who still, in her heart of hearts, believes somehow that she is honest, has again been shown not to be honest, not to be telling the truth. We see it again today. We saw it in her speech and we saw it in her ads.
The flipside, of course, is that they tried to sell to the community that you could have the gains of tax reform but none of the pain. She said, “Oh, no, it’s off in the never-never when rates will triple”—it turns out that was not true—“but we’re going to deliver you no stamp duty.” No stamp duty was the impression she was giving. People would have thought, from what the Chief Minister said in those ads, that they would actually see no stamp duty if they voted Labor at the election. It turns out they will have to wait about 20 years, if that is ever delivered. They will have to go through five
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