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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 5 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1751 ..

MR CORNWELL (continuing):

substantially. If you want to turn up on time when you take children to child-care centres or to school, catching buses will not work.

I regard the bushfire tax as petty and tokenistic. I wonder, in fact, whether the government is trying to keep the memory of their glory days green. I don't know. This tax will not help the victims. The amount of tax to be collected works out at $5 million per annum. You could argue, in fact, that it is not even a fair tax, if any tax ever is, because ACT Housing is exempt-why should ACT Housing be exempt?-as are fire victims and pensioners, though how you accurately manage the last two of these groups escapes me.

Self-funded retirees and those renting are the losers from this opportunistic tax. The former, the self-funded retirees, are losers because it is an unexpected impost. Unlike pensioners, I believe they are not exempt. Of course, the latter, the tenants, the people who rent, are losers because landlords simply will pass on the cost. That is what will happen. I find that interesting because tenants are among those that this Labor government purports to care about.

Unfortunately, this exemption for pensioners from paying this bushfire tax is about all that pensioners will receive. Apart from the predictable increase in the concession to eligible card holders to offset increases in electricity under full retail contestability, which was supported by this chamber and, as I say, was predictable, there is a paltry $100,000 essentially for education material for elder abuse. We have waited two years for the government to act on this and we end up with $100,000. I don't think that is very much. What happened to the other 13 recommendations, please? The answer is nothing, of course.

I remember the debates that went on here and I would remind the government that, as the Chief Minister identified, there are already 76,000 people over 50 years of age in this city. It is true that an older women's boarding house to house eight people has been budgeted for. I really do not know why older men are not mentioned.

Finally, there is a mysterious $5.2 million set aside for what is called a "sub and non-acute"aged care facility. This is mentioned only twice in the budget papers and I cannot find any mention of it in the media release. I have no explanation for it apart from those two single line items. I wonder, Mr Pratt, whether it might be a WMD-don't get nervous, because in this case WMD stands for "whatever might develop". I look forward to being enlightened when you get around to deciding just what you are going to do with this $5.2 million. This a classic example of the opposition's accurate claim of more money, less services. From what I can gather, in this case we have all the money and no service.

So far, Mr Speaker, I have mentioned only the meagre benefits the pensioner section of our aged and ageing community has obtained. The other part of our elderly component, about 5,000 voters, is made up of self-funded retirees-the often asset rich, provident people, who are the forgotten contributors to the greatness of this city. They have received nothing. Do they benefit from the full retail contestability for electricity? Are they exempt from the bushfire tax? Do they receive the range of pensioner concessions that the Commonwealth has offered to this Labor government to extend to holders of the Commonwealth seniors health card? Do they receive the reciprocal transport concessions

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