Page 806 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 April 2014
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LVC is the tax that Mr Barr says has no drag—the almost perfect tax that everybody agrees with. I sat in a room full of people earlier in the week and they did not agree with LVC because they know it is slowing down their projects. And he knows it is slowing down projects because they are now putting in a stimulus package and picking and choosing who will have some remission on LVC—and the same with the extension of time.
The government have failed in their fees, fines, charges and taxes structure. And it is a tax on the environment. I am surprised Mr Rattenbury supports it because the LVC is a tax on the environment. It stops density, it stops consolidation of the city and it forces greenfields development—unless that is the actual aim of the thing, so that they get more blocks to market: support the LDA, try and get the profit through that and say, “Well, it’s not our fault if employment doesn’t exist because we’ve squeezed the redevelopment market out of existence.”
We all know that the LVC has not delivered. It is Andrew Barr’s mining tax. It was a big promise, and you can see the decline in the revenues that it was proposed to bring over the years. It has never, in a quarter, except for the first quarter where there was a holdover from the previous system, delivered. And it will not deliver because it makes projects unviable.
That is why it is all well and good to have a stimulus package, but the truth is in the Chief Minister’s comments:
… I am not sitting here saying how many jobs it will create, how much it will deliver, because I think that is very, very hard to do.
That is because you have not done the right thing, and that is why we should have an inquiry under the Inquiries Act into the totality of the construction industry in the ACT, so that we do get to the bottom of what is driving the industry, we do fix the problems and we do acknowledge that there are problems in all of the sectors where unscrupulous companies, rogue builders and phoenix companies are doing damage to the industry’s reputation. But at the same time you have to question some of the practices of other stakeholders in this game.
It is an important industry. It is an important motion. It should be supported. I finish with what Mr Rattenbury said. He started by saying, “These are significant issues.” And he finished by saying, “There is clear recognition that something has to be done.” It would seem he agrees, but just cannot bring himself to investigate the government as he should. (Time expired)
MR WALL (Brindabella) (10.48): Mr Coe’s motion seeks to establish an inquiry into the territory’s building and construction sector—an inquiry that will examine all aspects of the sector from fees and charges paid to government through to rogue operators, workplace safety, land availability and the impact that regulatory controls are having.
Often when there is a debate in this place about the construction sector there is a focus on the large end of town—the commercial developers or the large corporate
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