Page 2634 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 11 August 2015
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Let me point to some examples. A local business that has a modest commercial unit in Mitchell saw a rate increase from last year to this year of near on 50 per cent—a 50 per cent increase in one year. They have gone from about the $1,800 mark to in excess of $3,000. That is not a modest increase; that is close to price gouging. That is a fairly excessive price increase. The impact that then has on business and investment confidence is detrimental and the flow-on effect is seen throughout the entire community.
Another business has experienced some horrendous fee increases. There was an article that I helped the Canberra Times with at the weekend about this one. It is Shooters Wholesale, a great local business, family run for over 50 years here in the ACT. They specialise in selling new firearms and trading in second-hand ones, but they also rebuild, manufacture and do restoration for collectors, hobbyists and enthusiasts alike. One very small part of their business is selling a propellant powder which causes an explosion to fire a bullet for some enthusiasts who like to make their own ammunition. With the licences that they are required to keep under the ACT government rules, they need three separate licences. This goes to red tape as well. They need a licence to buy the product; they need a licence to store the product; and they need another licence to sell the product—three licences. Three years ago, the cost of those licences was around $470, under $500, per year. Fast-forward three years to 2015. When the proprietor of this business went to Access Canberra to renew their licence on another three-year basis, the fees went up from just under $500 to—not $600, not $1,000, not $2,000, not $5,000, but in excess of $7,000. We are talking about a 1,500 per cent increase in fees over three years.
The implications that has for a local business that does that for a very small market are exponential. When people are buying on price, as they always do in retail, when a product that is supplied locally by a business that employs nine local people is substantially dearer than a product that is bought across the border in New South Wales or on the internet, the sale leaves the territory and goes interstate. The very dangerous aspect in this instance is that when you lose that sale in the ACT you also lose the audit trail of who is buying these types of products.
There are other ways in which this government is doing wrong by business. We have seen in this budget not just the increase in pay parking rates, but the expansion of pay parking to week nights and also the introduction of pay parking on weekends. Businesses in the CBD are already doing it tough. We have seen the redevelopment on Bunda Street which saw the street closed and manipulated in a way that saw a reduction in traffic and a massive downturn in trade for those businesses. God only can imagine what light rail is going to do to the city. We have now got the increase of pay parking in the city on weekends. At the same time, we are talking about closing one of the largest open-air car parks in the city in order to build light rail. That is yet another hit to the business community at a time when they need supporting, not punishing.
Red tape reduction is always an area that gets bandied about; it is a bit of a political football. Everyone uses it, but what does it actually mean and what is this government actually delivering when it comes to reducing red tape, the administrative and
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