Page 1233 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2016
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The government will not be supporting this motion today. They have no vision and no agenda when it comes to tax; they have no vision and no agenda when it comes to long-term infrastructure investment that makes a difference for better public transport. They just want to put more buses into crowded traffic. That is all they want to do, Madam Deputy Speaker. They just want the buses to be caught up with the general traffic. There is no bus priority of any significance in their package; none whatsoever. It is all about buses getting caught in the traffic. Do you really think people are going to use public transport in those circumstances? Of course they are not. So they have no vision and no agenda on that either.
This government does have that vision, does have that agenda, does have the commitment and the tenacity to follow it through, and that is why we will not be supporting this motion today.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.32): I will make a few remarks on this motion. I am glad that Mr Smyth has brought it forward today because it provides an opportunity to bust the myth that the Liberals appear to have been perpetuating in the community for quite some time, that is, the idea that rates are going up to pay for light rail. I know they are out there saying that in the community. They have written it on their brochures. It is simply dishonest. It does not reflect the current situation. We know that rates have been increasing and that has been because of the tax reforms that this government is putting in place. I will speak to that, because the Liberal Party’s political chicanery in trying to link rate changes with light rail is just another example of how they have so unfairly and inaccurately characterised this public transport reform for this city.
Mr Smyth knows full well that rates are changing in Canberra because the government is phasing out stamp duty and other inefficient taxes. This is a funding-neutral arrangement. What is taken from stamp duty and other taxes is being recouped by the government through rates. It is simply a shift in the way that the government raises revenue.
Given that the tenor of Mr Smyth’s motion is about the cost burden on Canberrans and the hardship they are facing through costs, I would like to talk a little bit about the relationship between costs and affordability and the government’s tax reforms that will phase out stamp duty. I gather that while I had to step out of the chamber the Chief Minister may have also referenced the recent New South Wales Council of Social Service, NCOSS—the equivalent to the ACT’s ACTCOSS—and New South Wales Business Chamber paper that they released recently. It jointly called for New South Wales to switch from stamp duty to a broadly-based land tax.
While I know that the Chief Minister spoke about this, I want to speak about it as well, because I think it is a very important point. It really undermines the case the Liberal Party have been making on this and it emphasises their lack of courage and their lack of vision in being willing to undertake serious tax reform that serious commentators in the community actually support.
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