Page 1512 - Week 06 - Thursday, 2 July 2020
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The ACT government has created a world of pain for so many Canberra families because of its unreasonable, uncaring, and obsessive tax reform regime that is doing so much damage to this city. Nobody is doing more for the economic development of Queanbeyan than Mr Andrew Barr. I am sure that Mayor Tim Overall is very happy with Mr Barr being at the helm here in the ACT, because there are all these economic migrants moving over the border, seeking greener pastures on the other side of the railway track in Queanbeyan.
We were told that the rates regime would just be a cup of coffee a week. It is now, pretty much, a cup of coffee an hour in order to pay for what the Labor Party has subjected Canberrans to. Rates revenue in 2011-12 was $209 million. This year it is $600 million, climbing to $700 million in about a year’s time—so the pain is coming back. Then there are all the fixed levies as well. The fire and emergency services levy—I think that they wish that all that money went to fire and emergency services—has gone from $28 million to $99 million.
Then you have the biggest rort of all: abolished stamp duty is going up. It has been abolished and keeps going up. It is extraordinary. How many other taxes get abolished and yet bring in more revenue after they have been abolished—up to $271 million?
These increases are affecting every Canberra household. Regardless of whether you are a homeowner or a renter, these increases are driving up the cost of living right across this city. When you include the levies, the rates bills are going up thousands of dollars.
After the 2019-20 budget, apartment owner Mr Ken Begg spoke of how retirees who live on a fixed income were struggling to cope with the massive rates increases. In that year his rates alone had increased by 18 per cent. If you are over in New South Wales, you have to beg and plead the Premier to go above 2½ or three per cent. This governments puts an 18 per cent increase on so many Canberrans’ rates.
Tenants pay this as well. We are not just talking about homeowners; we are talking about renters. Tenants are hit not just once but twice by this tax reform: first by the rates and second by the land tax regime, which has been very aggressive. Land tax is going from $63 million in 2011-12 to $164 million in 2021-22. On top of this you have the additional scandal which is their land profiteering.
This government’s regime with regard to super profits is worse than the banks’—much worse than the banks’. In 2012 the land profit margin was 44 per cent. Now it is 78 per cent. Who pays that additional amount? It is the poor sucker who has to buy a block of land in the ACT. It is first homebuyers. It is families. It is people who are struggling. They are the people who are paying Mr Barr’s super profits tax.
The $150 that has been flippantly announced by the Chief Minister, initially as a COVID stimulus measure, is an insult to the thousands of Canberra households that have been paying double and triple that every year as a result of their rates changes.
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