Page 2633 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 11 August 2015
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acknowledgement is great. With this particular one in Richardson, I submitted it at 2.59 pm on 16 January. At 2.59 pm I got an auto-response saying, “Thank you for your correspondence.” Just over an hour later I got a personalised message saying, “Dear Nicole, thank you for advising us of this issue.” But since 4.05 pm on 16 January 2015 I have heard nothing more about this particular issue. And that applies to the other 52 that are marked as escalated and three that are marked as forwarded to an SME. So it is excellent in theory, but it needs a bit of work to be done to improve the feedback to consumers.
MR WALL (Brindabella) (7.34): I am going to continue with some of the commentary that has been running from those opposite. Mr Barr himself has suggested that if you look at the Canberra Liberals opposition you get a good idea of what they are going to be like by looking at the federal parliament. He suggested that Mr Hanson is going to be a leader like Tony Abbott and Mr Smyth a Treasurer like Mr Hockey. That would make me a minister like Bruce Billson. That is something that I would be quite happy to be, because the one thing that you can bank on time and time again is that Liberals understand what it means to run a business and what needs to be done to make running a business a bit simpler.
Nothing illustrates this fact more than the federal budget this year compared to the territory budget. The federal budget introduced a modest tax cut for business—for companies across the country that are turning over $2 million a year. They introduced an instant asset write-off which means that businesses can have some confidence, go out, make a capital purchase that is going to benefit their business, and write it off in that financial year. These things boost confidence in the community and they boost confidence amongst the business sector. It is the business sector that drives wealth, opportunity and job creation. If you can boost confidence in that sector, you will boost confidence across the economy broadly.
To put that into context, let me contrast what a traditional Liberal government would deliver against what a Labor one will. This is what you get when you vote Labor. You get rates increases, as we have seen this year across the city. They are doing it very sneakily now; they are doing it in two ways. They are not just increasing the percentage that the calculations are based on, but also, as we have heard from Mr Smyth today, dramatically increasing the underlying property value—way in excess of what any real market value of that property would be. Businesses that I have dealt with locally have experienced some fairly horrendous rates. A Labor government delivers fee increases in licensing and registration. All types of licensing fees continue to increase under this government. It is a kick to confidence. That is what you get when you vote for Labor.
Let me touch on rates, which is a very important issue. It is one of the biggest revenue raisers that the territory has. Whilst we are embarking on Mr Barr’s taxation reform agenda, the impact of that needs to be measured. There was quite a fiery exchange in question time today as to what the true impact of this is. Reducing taxes is good, and should be encouraged so long as the unintended consequences do not outdo the good you are trying to achieve. By very incrementally reducing stamp duty, insurance duties and payroll taxes but rapidly escalating other taxes like land tax or rates, the impact is far in excess of the benefit that is being derived by slowly reducing the rate of other taxes.
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