Page 2591 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 7 August 2013
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
same. He is not weaning himself off conveyancing. Where will it come from? It is quite clear where it will come from. They will keep slugging the rates. What we have said is simply that we think tripling your rates is too high a bill to pay.
It is interesting that people are starting to quote CIE. Yes, CIE do a good job. But read the whole report. Selective quoting is pretty easy. The interesting thing that perhaps Mr Rattenbury does not know is that CIE offered to do some extra work for the committee. The three areas that were nominated were that we would look at risk issues associated with the capital metro, the ACT’s debt position and public sector workforce numbers in the ACT.
Here was an opportunity to get a report from an independent source to assist the committee. But, of course, that was not allowed to go ahead because the members of the government on the committee did not want that data. They did not want the risk issues associated with capital metro to be explored at all. If you are so certain that this project works, what are you afraid of and why will you not table the documents?
In regard to the ACT’s debt position, the proposition was that CIE would look at our debt to give us a better understanding of our exposure. But again, the members of the government did not want that data or detail or did not want the independent assessment. You have to ask yourself: why not? What are you afraid of? Then we asked about the workforce as well. They did not even want that. They did not want to know what was happening in the public sector in the ACT, perhaps because the Gillard-Rudd cuts had scared them so much.
It is well and good to quote the bits out of the CIE that suit you. But what the CIE report does is actually quote the similar numbers that are in the budget. It shows that the take on conveyancing remains at about 16.5 per cent of total own source taxation. So there you go. We are not weaning ourselves off it. Rates are going up. Rates are going up significantly. Yes, there have been some concessions at the lower end on stamp duty. But the take continues to be a consistent factor in this government’s forward estimates. So it is deceitful to say that you are abolishing stamp duty when it does not decrease in the budget documents at all.
This is an important motion and it is a test. It is a test that clearly Mr Rattenbury fails. There was a lot of self-justification. He says that there are two different reports: one from the Liberal Party, one from the others. There is not. There is a committee report. The Select Committee on Estimates passed that report. It was a report that was passed by a committee that consisted of two Labor members and two Liberal members. It says: do not have this debate. The government members could have stopped that and they chose not to. So the report stands and the report that stands comes from a committee that is bipartisan in its constitution.
We have the other report, of course, that I think the Canberra Times very gently but very mockingly called the “Love letter to the government”. “Here I am, Katy. Make me a minister. Here I am; I am on the backbench.” We know that the Chief Minister does not want a sixth minister, because she looks at her backbench and she probably just shudders. She could have had anyone in the backbench now. We are certainly in favour of a larger ministry. We understand the pressures that are there. The Leader of
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video