Page 2335 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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it happen. There is no move from this government to self-sufficiency. There is no move from this government to genuinely diversify the ACT economy. The only move from this government is to put their hand deeper and deeper into the pockets of ACT residents, because that is all they know.
We only have to look at the taxation table on page 226 of budget paper 3 where we see payroll tax this year going up eight per cent, general rates going up 13 per cent, land tax going up 18 per cent. And so it goes on. Particularly, the fire and emergency services levy is going up 28 per cent. The only way out for this government, all they understand, is: if we take more, we can spend more. But they do not do a great deal to contribute to the wellbeing of the residents.
They obviously do not read their own charts on the cost of living and the impact of their budgets on Canberra families, because in all of these scenarios everybody gets hurt by this government. I suggest they do not even read their own charts. Look at, for instance, the sale of goods and services, page 238 of budget paper 3. Fees for regulatory services are up 20 per cent. The water abstraction charge is up six per cent. Parking fees are up 30 per cent. Patient fees are up 10 per cent. Sales are up seven per cent. And so it goes on.
This is a government addicted to revenue, and they will take it any way they can. You see that then in the other revenue table on page 245 where traffic infringement fines are going up 10 per cent; parking fines, a mammoth 32 per cent; and other fines are going up one per cent. So what you see is a government that are very good at collecting revenue, but they are perhaps less wise in what they do with it.
We now have the debacle of the payroll tax on genuine contractors. We find that the 1 July start went to 1 October, and I see in the government’s response that it is now 1 January next year. This has been a debacle of implementation of tax reform, because this Treasurer cannot get it right. What they should do is put it off to 1 July next year and say, “All right, we will go out and we will have a proper consultation with the community,” because clearly they had no idea of the effect. And we had the comment from the Treasurer during estimates that no, it was not the intention to affect take-home pays. That is what is happening. If there is an unintended consequence that you have not thought about, then you should go back and revisit.
I would ask Mr Rattenbury to go and read all the emails I know that his office has got—and I know a lot of them have come to me as a cc or directly to me with him cc-ed—where people are genuinely hurting because of this government’s poor ability to deliver tax reform.
We will see it in the land tax hikes too, where the explanation for the reason for the changes in land tax was that the burden is being carried by single-dwelling block owners and therefore somehow the unit owners are getting away with not paying their fair share. But of course the unit owners do not have the amenity of owning a single block and having that space. They choose to live that way because it is cheaper, which of course brings us to all the internal contradictions in this budget. You have got a government that say they want to get greater density so that they can support their capital metro project; yet you have got a series of taxes now and impediments to the densification of the city.
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