Page 1194 - Week 04 - Thursday, 17 March 2005
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So they have this sort of tax policy that seems to be a bit ad hoc and a matter of “coming along with the next bright idea till we get some public resistance”. I feel sorry for the Treasurer, because I suspect that the Treasurer struggles to try to manage his high-spending, freewheeling ministers. He is there with the benefit of advice from very able people in the Department of Treasury, and they probably sit back there, hold their heads in their hands and say, “Here we go again.” We have Minister Gallagher, who says, “more increases but no trade-offs, because we are great people here”, and other ministers who would be wanting to spend funds. But we still do not seem to get improvements. We do not get improvements in the hospitals; we just seem to see more and more dramas.
There has been a consistent failure to develop taxation policies properly. On the other hand, the Liberal Party went into the 2004 election with a policy of eliminating high-cost, inefficient transaction taxes in the ACT and there was a range of measures that we put forward. Despite comments that I heard very early after my election—that these were wild, expensive, extravagant promises—they were in fact fully costed. I made it my business, the first day I took my seat in this Assembly, to analyse the costings that my party had prepared, and I certainly have confidence in the thoroughness with which those matters were investigated and analysed by my leader and by his team and our advisers.
We have been told that something will happen on land tax, and then we are told there will not be a review. I know state governments love grabbing the funds from land tax and various other areas. The Financial Review, I think, recently came out with a very scathing editorial about the way in which the territories and states have been managing their affairs. It has been echoed by the Canberra Times, which ran a significant editorial on 7 March on these matters. I do not agree necessarily with those who want to throw out overnight every tax that exists. I do not think we can afford to do some of the things that we would like to see happen. But we also have to remain competitive as an area of Australia in which to invest.
I understand that the Treasurer expressed the view that the land tax has no bearing on investment. I understand also that the grill people had for breakfast today at the real estate institute was the Treasurer, because I understand that the real estate agents were not particularly thrilled and convinced that the market was travelling terribly well here. These people are not working on macroeconomic positions; they are actually working on how much money they make and how much bread they put on the table.
Mr Quinlan: How much money they made last year.
MR MULCAHY: Last year is another story, and that is the problem. This government say, “The money lasted well in the past, so why don’t we just keep spending the way it is.” Look at what has happened in the past. They had a blow-out of expenditure in 2001-02 of $312 million. The next year it went to $216 million. It went to $410 million in 2003-04. But, fortunately for all taxpayers and for business people, there has been windfall revenue—a lot of which has come out of the commonwealth-territory financial arrangements—of $311 million in 2001-02, $385 million in 2002-03 and $417 million in 2003-04. Those funds, of course, have meant that the ACT government have not had to be as responsible and as cautious as they might have had to be, had they had to live within their budget.
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