Page 3421 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 17 September 2019
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We also heard that there is a significant disparity in what one petrol station site is being rated at, compared to another in town with similar traffic volumes. Let me give a small example. A service station with reasonable exposure in, say, the Belconnen area, with an underlying land valuation of around the million-dollar mark, is paying about $64,000 a year in rates. A site with a similar traffic flow in Fyshwick, which has an underlying value of $2 million, is paying almost double that in rates. The costs that then need to be passed onto consumers are significant. Couple that with high workers compensation premiums and the highest payroll tax thresholds in the country—as far as the percentile rate goes that these companies are paying because they are national companies—and costs mount up and ultimately get passed on to the consumer.
Recommendation 5 calls on the government to do some comparative analysis of the costs of doing business in the ACT compared to other jurisdictions. It particularly asks that it look at sites that have the potential to service a similar market volume and similar drive-by traffic volumes. Essentially it is an opportunity to compare apples with apples when it comes to the underlying costs of doing business.
I commend the recommendations in this report to the Assembly. I look forward to hearing the government’s response. It is a measured and well-considered report. The recommendations are very careful—I would call them conservative—in the calls that we are making to make sure that, to the best of our ability, they will place a downward pressure on petrol prices in the ACT without risking the countermove which might add additional cost pressures to ACT households when they can least afford it.
There were not the outrageous interventionist calls that we heard about from the Chief Minister to put a retail margin cap on petrol prices. That kind of interference is unfounded, unwarranted and simply reckless, particularly coming from the Treasurer of the ACT. I commend the report to the Assembly.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Justice and Community Safety—Standing Committee
Scrutiny report 34
MRS JONES (Murrumbidgee) (10.26): I present the following report:
Justice and Community Safety—Standing Committee (Legislative Scrutiny Role)—Scrutiny Report 34, dated 10 September 2019, together with a copy of the extracts of the relevant minutes of proceedings, and a revised copy of the extracts of the minutes of meeting No 39.
I seek leave to make a brief statement.
Leave granted.
MRS JONES: Scrutiny report 34 contains the committee’s comments on nine bills, three proposed government amendments, 16 pieces of subordinate legislation, three regulatory impact statements and seven government responses. I am also tabling
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