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home owners should be able to appeal against their valuations, which are now to be used for the 1995 rates calculations. That is something they had not expected last year. In the area where I was living last year the valuations rose very significantly. I had fully expected that that would drop off in the following year and, looking at the pattern of valuations in most areas of Canberra, that was a reasonable expectation.

In addition, I will be proposing that anybody whose valuation would have fallen by more than 4 per cent this year will not have to pay any increase in rates in 1995. I think that is an extremely fair position, as in ordinary circumstances those people would have received a lower rates bill in 1995 than they did in 1994. It is only the Government's artificial freezing of that valuation that has cost them more money.

Other Canberrans will also be disadvantaged by this legislation, particularly those who for employment-related reasons are transferred out of Canberra for a few years. These people who are transferred away become involuntary landlords for the period of absence from their homes. Those people are predominantly from the Federal departments of defence, immigration and foreign affairs, and accepting postings out of Canberra is very much a part of their careers. It is not something that is optional, by any means, for most of them. I believe that the regime that applied previously, where these people were able to claim an exemption from land tax, was a fair one, and the Government in seeking to abolish that exemption is not being fair.

What happens in other circumstances is that a person buys a residential property as an investment and that person gains the benefit of capital gains and of the negative gearing regime. The Commonwealth recognises the benefits of that investment by applying capital gains tax to any realised capital gain on the property. The Liberal Government is proposing not to charge these investors land tax, even though they make capital gains and even though they are negatively gearing, if their property is not rented for more than a quarter. So, the ACT Government will be subsidising the investment risk of that person.

In the meantime, the public servant who has been posted out of Canberra in the process of developing their career is immediately hit for land tax on their family home which is temporarily rented during the absence from Canberra. I would find it extraordinary if somebody being posted overseas for three years were to feel comfortable with a prospect of leaving their family home untenanted and vacant for that three-year period.

Mr Humphries: What did you do about this in government? Nothing.

MS FOLLETT: Mr Humphries, by way of interjection, asked me what I did. What I did was instigate a system where they had an exemption from land tax for three out of five years. Mr Humphries displays his ignorance yet again, Mr Speaker. For Mr Humphries's benefit, I repeat that the Bill before us seeks to do away with that exemption.

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