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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 2 Hansard (25 February) . . Page.. 411 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

Mr Speaker, the result was that the consultants came back and proposed a rating system that suited them - at a cost of $72,000 to the taxpayers - which Mrs Carnell immediately rejected. If you do not give consultants decent terms of reference, you get junk. Mrs Carnell immediately rejected the report. Mrs Carnell seemed almost surprised that none of the recommendations were fair or politically palatable.

Mr Speaker, we do not question her rejection of the recommendations, because the consultants' proposal - which is for 50 per cent of rates to be collected by a flat fee and 50 per cent by an ad valorem charge on the value of people's properties - was not a fair proposal and would have caused a significant shift in the rates burden to people in lower value properties. As I said, we do not question her rejection of those recommendations; but it is remarkable that she was willing to waste $72,000 on a report to come up with a proposal that she was not going to implement, given subsequent events.

Mr Speaker, Mrs Carnell then decided that her election promise to produce a new rating system after one year could not be kept. So, last year, in June, the Chief Minister scuttled back into the Assembly and attempted to put through a rates Bill that would have kept rates to the CPI using 1994 values for two further years.

Mrs Carnell: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: Those opposite were very keen to call points of order on relevance earlier today. What we are actually debating here is the exposure draft. I do not think Mr Whitecross, apart from one sentence at the beginning of his speech, has so far spoken about the actual draft at all.

MR SPEAKER: Mr Whitecross, I would remind you about relevance.

MR WHITECROSS: Mr Speaker, I am indeed very conscious of the importance of relevance, and I think it is highly relevant to talk about the context in which a new rates and land tax system is being proposed. Mr Speaker, Mrs Carnell interrupted me when I was pointing out how, in June 1996, she broke her election promise by coming back here and asking us to cap rates and land tax using 1994 values for two further years - a blatant breach of her election promise, an admission of defeat, an admission that she did not have any idea of what to do about the rates system and was hoping to put it off - - -

Mrs Carnell: Our election promise was the CPI, which is exactly what we did.

MR WHITECROSS: Mrs Carnell cannot even be accurate about her election promises, Mr Speaker. She was hoping to put it off until after the next election, because then all the problems would accrue to whoever was the government after the election, and she would not have to worry about explaining to the people of Canberra at the next election why she had not achieved a decent rates system.

Mr Speaker, Labor and the crossbenches took the view that Mrs Carnell's approach was unacceptable. It was not acceptable to continue to use a system that was designed for only one year and promised for only one year - a system that was only ever intended, even by the Liberals' bad policy, as an interim measure. Capping rates using out-of-date values destroys the relationship between rates charges and land values and the concomitant notion of equity as between ratepayers and their ability to pay.

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