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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 7 Hansard (4 June) . . Page.. 1814 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

suburb of Forrest increased from $422,000 to $645,000, a huge increase and a huge windfall that at this stage accrues directly to the land owners, even though they are sitting on, as Ms Tucker put it, the major asset of the territory.

This government does believe in progressive taxation. All we can say in relation to that, Ms Tucker, is: watch this space over time. But the major thrust of this bill is to ensure that people who have lived in one place for a considerable length of time are not hit by increasing land values simply because their suburb has become popular for gentrification, for people who are well-heeled enough to acquire a position closer to city services than the average citizen can enjoy and are capable of taking up what would be known as choice land by virtue of that.

We have seen Yarralumla gentrified. We are now seeing the inner north and the inner south being redeveloped and people with significant resources being able to acquire properties in those areas and the government, consciously or not, contributing to the forcing out of the original population because the rates have gone through the roof. We intend to work up a system that protects those people. One of the spin-offs of that will be that those people who buy into those suburbs and increase the land rates will pay rates based on the price that they paid for the land. That will be part of the cost of taking advantage of picking up choice land and redeveloping choice land within the territory. I think that that is an equitable road to take.

Mr Speaker, this bill is the one that sets the rates for next year. It sets the rates at the best estimate we can have for the CPI, because it has been measured over, effectively, the last recorded period. It will therefore, through time, not give us the result that we had over the last six years of a 16 per cent increase in rates over a 9 per cent increase in the CPI. That will not happen under this bill. It is our intention to ensure that it does not happen. It will be difficult to bring in the new system, to make sure we cover properties in various modes of ownership, but that is what it is our intention to do and we intend to make the rates system as fair as is possible. This bill is a first step and I commend it to the house.

Question put:

That this bill be agreed to in principle.

The Assembly voted-

Question so resolved in the affirmative.

Bill agreed to in principle.

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