Page 2097 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 5 June 2019
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the country. Whilst many Canberrans agree with this policy, they struggle with the hip pocket pressures it places on them.
This is a government that is out of touch. It is out of touch with those in the suburbs who are seeing their bills creeping up and out of touch with those who are doing it the toughest. This year’s budget offers no respite and no reprieve. This year’s budget sees home owners shouldering the burden of Labor’s financial mismanagement once again. Rates are increasing by up to 11 per cent for home owners, forcing them to tighten their belts even more. They are $400 a year or more for many home owners across the ACT, and there is nothing extra in return.
Where underlying costs for property increase, they tend to be passed on. Rents typically, at their next renewal, will be seen to be increasing, as property owners have no choice but to pass those costs on, further adding pressure to the many who have been priced out of the home ownership aspiration in this city and have been forced to live in rental accommodation because there is no offer of home ownership in this territory.
The Chief Minister is quick to try and suggest that a whole series of taxes have been reduced and things are getting better for people. When you look at the raw numbers, the raw numbers do not lie. In 2011-12 the budget was suggesting that rates would raise $209 million, stamp duty $267 million and land tax $114 million, a total revenue from those sources of about $592 million. Fast forward eight years, eight budgets later. Rates are up to $599 million, stamp duty $264 million and land tax $150 million, bringing the total to over $1 billion. This, as the Treasurer has said on many occasions, is a revenue-neutral taxation shift. We have had an increase of over $400 million in the taxation take and he continues to claim that these policy shifts are revenue neutral. This is the kind of deceit portrayed by the banks in Australia. We had a royal commission to get to the bottom of that. This is an equivalent monumental furphy. Home owners and residents across Canberra are being forced to bear this continued taxation increase.
We are hearing that stamp duty is being phased out. It is worth noting that there is a really nice line in the 2011-12 budget which says that stamp duty should be abolished over a 10 to 20-year period. We are the best part of 10 years in and stamp duty has only gone down by $3 million in revenue terms—only $3 million less than what it was almost a decade ago. But stamp duty in the ACT is not all that much better than it is in some of the other states. The average house price in the ACT for 2018 is listed at around $670,000. If you are lucky enough to be able to afford $670,000 to buy a home, you will be paying more stamp duty in the ACT than you would be if you were buying it in Queensland. And $670,000 in most parts of Queensland goes a hell of a lot further than it does here in the ACT. So there is little benefit from the taxation reforms that the Chief Minister has implemented thus far other than to inflict pain and suffering and price many Canberrans out of the housing market.
We have been lucky in this city to see the growth that we have. People that are coming to Canberra are coming here because they have been priced out of other markets such as Sydney and Melbourne. Whilst we have had the benefit of those people seeing Canberra as an opportunity, we are failing to take note of those who are
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