Page 3891 - Week 12 - Thursday, 29 October 2015
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The Barr government is continuing to ignore the basic needs, as I have highlighted, of residents as they pursue things such as the tram folly. This is becoming increasingly evident to the voters of Tuggeranong, most of whom have made these views very clear to me. The story gets worse, though, if we take a look at commercial rates and the treatment of businesses in this town. In April this year I heard from a business owner in Fyshwick who was appalled at the increase in rates on his property. In the email that he sent to me on the issue he says:
Re our property in Newcastle St.
Between 2009 and 2013 our rates were consistently between six to seven thousand a quarter—
On an annual basis he was paying around $26,800 in that final year:
In 2014 it went to $8324 ($33296 p/a). In 2015 it is now $9227—
per quarter, and that equates to $36,908 per annum. Add to that the additional increases in the 2015-16 budget that have occurred since this letter and it is hard to rationalise why businesses would want to own their own property. For this business alone, Mr Assistant Speaker, that is a 35 per cent rate increase between the years of 2013 and 2015 on a single parcel of land.
This business also has additional storage facilities located around the corner in Barrier Street and the rates there have increased from 2012-13, where they were $3,627, to 2015 where they are $4,633. Again, that is a 28 per cent increase. It is almost $1,200 a month in increases. For a business, that is potentially the difference between creating a new job, giving someone a go and hiring them, or simply staying the course and doing a few extra hard yards yourself simply to try and make ends meet. The impost that the Barr government’s propensity—the Labor government; the Labor-Greens government—for relying on increasing fees, rates and charges, particularly coming from rate payers and businesses, is huge and clearly has a huge impact on the ACT as a whole.
I have raised in this place the issue of a family-run business based out in Hume that deals in firearms. Whilst they are a unique business and have a very niche market, their licensing costs increased near on 1,500 per cent when they went to renew this year. Coupled with the increases that they have had in rates over the previous years, on every angle this business’s costs are increasing far in excess of the CPI, the wage price index, or whatever measure you wish to apply to it.
The ACT government, ACT Labor, is reaching deeper and deeper into these people’s pockets, making them question, firstly, why they are in business in the ACT, why they continue to be in business in the ACT and what benefit there is for them to continue to take the risk—to risk their home, to risk their livelihood—to open their doors, to employ people, to create jobs and to create opportunities for other Canberrans in this city while they are struggling to make even a modest living for themselves. I think this gets overlooked far too often.
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