Page 3691 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 13 September 2017
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I do not think it is fair because, quite frankly, the services that you require from the government while living in an apartment are considerably fewer than the services that you require while living in a house. It just does not stack up. It does not stack up that a 2,000 square metre block that has four or five units on it should have four or five times the rates. You still have the same amount of footpath out the front; you still have the same streetlight out the front; you still have the same road out the front—except you have five people paying the bills. It should not simply be multiplied five times, which is what the government and the Greens seem to be suggesting. It should not just be that the cost of a single dwelling should then be multiplied five times. That is, in effect, the principle that the government is putting forward.
Of course, the other thing that the government will cling to is this tax reform, that somehow, we are all better off because we are not paying insurance duty anymore. If you look at the components of this tax reform package—rates, land tax, stamp duty and insurance and, of course, you have the safer families levy and the fire levy in amongst the rates bills as well—in 2013 the total of all of these was $663 million; the total. Now, in 2017, the total is $928 million. That does not sound too tax-neutral to me.
If each of these were increasing at three per cent a year, it would be at $746 million as a total. Instead we are at $928 million for 2017. In 2013 stamp duty brought in $225 million. This year, it brought in $306 million. In 2013 rates brought in $291 million. This year, the figure is $444 million. In 2013 land tax brought in $69 million. This year, it brought in $110 million. So whilst there has been a saving of $45-odd million by way of the insurance levy, that has well and truly been gobbled up, and then some—hundreds of millions of dollars, in fact—by the combination of all the others.
This is not tax reform; this is just a tax hike. The government wants to make it complex and the Greens want to somehow make it look like it was inadvertent or there were unintended consequences. No, these are all intended consequences. This is exactly what the policy was meant to do. The policy was meant to squeeze Canberrans more. The policy was meant to triple people’s rates, and that is exactly what it is doing. And that is exactly what the Canberra Liberals said would happen back in 2012—exactly.
Those opposite, including the Greens, refuted the proposition. They said it was not so. When you consider in 2012 you had rates of $209 million and now it is $444 million, you can see that we are well on the way. For Reg and Naysin, getting a 50 per cent increase in their rates last year alone, I think they are in no doubt as to the consequences of Labor and the Greens’ tax reform.
There are so many other examples. Roger in Bruce contacted us. He lives in a single-level townhouse and he has an increase of 34 per cent, from $1,745 to $2,339 in this year alone—34 per cent in this year alone. Irena in Palmerston has a rates bill of $1,971—an increase, again, of around 30 per cent. Steven in Kambah lives in a strata villa and, again, it is another 33 per cent increase—$1,400 to $1,970. For David in Braddon, it has gone up from $2,150 to $2,700—a 25 per cent increase this year alone. These are the real consequences.
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