Page 1329 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 April 2019
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There are real risks and real issues here which the government must contemplate very seriously to ensure that, as a result of this substantial piece of work and the goodwill with which it was conducted, we end up with a better rating system in the commercial sphere for the benefit of the people of the ACT.
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (10.16): I rise to make a few comments on this committee report and to echo the thanks of the chair, Mrs Dunne, to the other committee members for the supportive and collegial way in which we went about the inquiry and the production of the report. I also offer my thanks, especially to Dr Brian Lloyd as the secretary, to Danton Leary as a research officer and to Lydia Chung. Of course, I also thank all those witnesses and those who made submissions as part of the inquiry. This provided the committee with a large amount of information with which to come to the conclusions that it has.
I want to comment briefly on a couple of items that especially struck me during the inquiry. Firstly, the evidence provided to the committee showed that ratings factors are determined in budget cabinet. In other words, the ACT government determines the overall increase in revenue it seeks from rates in a given year and it determines ratings factors in the context of variations in the ACT property market.
There was no evidence available to the committee at the time of the inquiry as to how the government determines the quantum of revenue that it will derive from commercial rates. Of course, this is something that the committee looked at as closely as we could, based on the information that we had. Specifically, there were some items that struck me as quite difficult for particular commercial ratepayers.
One was an anomalous property in Fyshwick. A witness, in her submission and in appearing before the committee, expressed concern regarding the valuation and consequent rates impost for a separately titled parcel of land that was attached to her main commercial property. This was one where it very much appeared to the committee that there were anomalies that should be addressed by the government, and we urge that to take place.
There were also a number of other items relating to heritage, to mixed use properties and to vacant properties, some of which had been vacant for quite a number of years. On other properties there were issues with regard to the levying of retrospective rates. There were issues in respect of properties for commercial ratepayers with regard to a lack of transparency and an inability for them to prepare, budget and plan ahead because they do not know what is going on in the future with their ratings and what they will have to pay in the future.
As Mrs Dunne has already touched on, this impacts on the viability of their businesses and it runs the risk of sending businesses across the border, where the ratings burden is not as severe as it appears here. We did hear from witnesses—we could see this ourselves from previous budget papers—that the tax reform process was intended to be revenue neutral and cost neutral for individual businesses. Clearly, this has not been the case. Based on the many people we heard from—I think nearly 60 submissions—people were finding this very difficult to manage.
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