Page 2245 - Week 06 - Thursday, 6 June 2019
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Greens support this overall shift from stamp duty to rates but want rates and land tax to stay fair while reforms continue over the next 10 to 20 years. We also understand the broad range of both state and municipal level services that the ACT has to provide through our taxes.
The Greens see a review of tax reform as essential to ensuring that economic needs are properly balanced with fairness, and we strongly support the government’s current review, to be completed before next year’s budget.
This budget includes a change to residential tax rates to maintain a fairer balance between houses and units. We see this as an interim measure, while the broader review is completed. We have suggested that rates should be based on property value rather than land value, making rates fairer for all members of our community. The review will test the fairness and benefits of a large number of options and help to clarify the best way forward.
As the first party in the ACT with a formal reconciliation action plan, the Greens appreciate that we must all make better efforts to hear local knowledge, and share new science, with the original inhabitants of this land. Around Australia we are hearing calls for treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and the Greens agree that it is time for us to listen and that such treaties should be part of our future. But we also acknowledge the need to heal many outstanding injustices and redouble our efforts to close the gaps. We need to engage with local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members as we work together in a spirit of respect and we must empower them to contribute to and lead culturally appropriate solutions.
I hope and trust that the many initiatives we as a government have committed to in this budget are seen as steps in that journey and that in time we can come together to achieve our shared goals.
In 2016 the Greens led a platform of justice reform to address the growing number of people entering the criminal justice system. We strongly believe in justice reinvestment—diverting funds from prison expansions to supporting people through smarter, more sympathetic and cost-effective approaches to improving criminal justice outcomes, leading to reduced crime, improved public safety and stronger communities.
The parliamentary agreement includes a commitment to reducing recidivism by 25 per cent by 2025. Meeting this target will certainly be a challenge, but we all know that we cannot keep building larger and larger prisons in the hope that this will slow imprisonment rates. I am pleased that building communities, not prisons, is now a government priority for both the Greens and Labor, and I am both proud and excited to see funding for our nation-leading justice reinvestment strategy in this budget.
We have already committed to ruling out an expansion of the AMC high security campus—an Australian first, providing more supported housing options for people on bail and exiting detention, establishing a family-centric support model for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families in contact with the justice system and early support for people living with a mental illness or disability.
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