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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2547 ..

MS DUNDAS

concession is extended to pensioners, gold card holders, and full-time student concession holders.

This year's budget saw a major change to registration: the introduction of continuous registration. What this means is, regardless of when you re-register your car, the bill will be backdated to the time that your registration fell due. Further, there will be a reduction of the "lapse"period available for registration renewal from 12 to three months, meaning that if you do not renew your registration within three months of the expiry, it will be considered a new registration. That means your car will have go over the pits for re-examination and be subject to all of the administrative requirements that go with the registration of a new or recently sold car.

Many families may not be able to pay for their registration when it falls due and may choose not to drive the car for a couple of weeks until the next pay day. Under the new system, there will be no option but to pay for the full rate, even if you don't drive the car in the interim. This reform will raise up to $500,000 in the first year from people who are already struggling to make ends meet.

What makes the new system worse is that the ACT community has not been told about this issue or consulted about its implementation. Without a community education program there will be many heated moments at government shopfronts, as motorists argue about the full cost.

There are many reasons why people may not wish to register their car on the due date. They may be overseas or interstate, or have work commitments; they may be having their car fixed or a new engine installed; or they may just be tinkering under the bonnet for a few weeks and driving another car.

Continuous registration assumes that everyone who fails to renew on the exact date is a criminal and driving their car unregistered. But there are no real facts to show this. This is just $500,000 from people who are struggling. The affordability of registering a vehicle will be affected and many people will opt for short-term registration. However, there will be a surcharge of $25 each time someone takes out short-term registration. So if you pay quarterly you will be up for $100 per year-yet another impost on those people who are least likely able to pay.

The trend is increasing towards short-term registration and more and more $25 surcharges. In 2000-2001, 41 per cent of registrations were short term, and this increased to 46 per cent in 2002-2003. In this year's budget the government expects to reap an extra $1 million from this surcharge on motorists.

This surcharge affects motorists who do not have the money to pay up front for a whole 12 months registration-people such as the unemployed, pensioners, students, veterans and the working poor. While I understand that the surcharge has been in place since 1998, more and more Canberrans are finding it difficult to pay the full year's registration.

I cannot believe that it really does cost $25 to process a registration fee. In fact, this seems to have become a flat tax on poor people. Through questions during the estimates process I have established that 33 per cent of drivers now take up three months

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