Page 1518 - Week 06 - Thursday, 2 July 2020
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MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (3.13): I have to congratulate the Liberal Party on the brevity of their motions. It is quite exceptional, and a welcome trend compared to some very long motions, quite a few of which I have been guilty of. However, there is one small problem with such a short motion—it is not absolutely clear what it means. Is the motion talking about freezing individual dollar amounts of rates for each individual ratepayer? Possibly. Is it freezing the total amount of rates that the ACT government gets? Is it talking about freezing the percentage rate of rates? One of the biggest problems with rates is that we use the words “rates” for two things. Is it talking about—and I thought it might have been—addressing the ongoing issue of relativities between units and houses?
The other thing it does not say is what, if any, changes the Liberal Party will make to our taxation mix if this change happens. I look forward to hearing the answers when Mr Coe sums up the debate. In the meantime—I am sure that Mr Coe will not be surprised—the Greens will be supporting the ALP amendment. As Mr Barr said, the progressive side of politics is interested in government outputs and not just government inputs.
The ALP amendment highlights the government’s short-term economic stimulus during our current time of crisis, but Mr Coe’s motion calls for a long-term freeze to one of the ACT’s key sources of revenue. In real terms, assuming that inflation is still a thing in this brave new economic world with negative interest rates, this would potentially be a permanent tax cut. That is a very dangerous possibility.
Mr Coe and all of us here, as people who are supported by public sector revenues, need to reflect on why society has taxes such as rates. It is not just to pay our salaries. We have taxes so that society can pay for the things we need and things that cannot be reasonably provided by individuals. We have taxes to pay for a public health system. We are looking right now at what happens in countries that do not have proper public health systems, such as the United States. Millions of citizens are in the misery of untreated health problems and they seem to be unable to respond to public health emergencies like COVID-19.
We pay taxes to keep some businesses alive on a short-term basis during a pandemic. We all think that trying to keep the ACT’s private sector going in this time is generally a good thing. We have taxes to pay for emergency services during disasters like the summer’s bushfires. Probably everyone in the Assembly would support more rather than fewer resources into things like that. I note that the government recently announced more firefighters and I am almost sure that we all support expenditure like that.
We have taxes to pay for children from low-income families to get an education so that they can contribute fully to society when they grow up and so that they can have better, more meaningful lives. Many times I have heard members of the Liberal Party talking about the need for child and youth protection. I am sure they absolutely agree that we need taxes so that we can ensure that every child in Canberra gets a fair start regardless of whether they are from a high or a low income family. I have spoken to enough Liberal members to believe that they actually support this, which is great; but, if you support this, it requires funds to do it. It requires taxation to do it.
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