Page 2320 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 28 June 2005
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time to look at it, I think that there were some abiding messages that were not confined to the dissenting report, but went indeed to the broader committee report. The Treasurer should be concerned by that. It is interesting that the committee did focus on his windfall gains. Despite the deal that was made with Labor treasurers that under no circumstances would they ever look at a review of stamp duty on commercial conveyances, it is very clear that the view has been expressed—not just by the business community, not just by the property sector, but in fact by leading firms of economists who have examined this matter—that this is a reform that the Treasurer should have adopted within his budget as it would have made a significant difference to the ACT economy.
The tragedy is that the Treasurer is locked into that. He disclosed a bit of his thinking the other day with his dissertation on the works of a UK author on economics that I found fascinating. It was the best insight I had had in a long time. I am not sure whether he had read the book or whether it was a gung-ho adviser who was advancing the death of economics. I found it on the Socialist Alliance web site or somewhere and I love reading the reviews. It just did not seem to sit terribly comfortably with the philosophical view of the Treasurer. Nevertheless, we will deal with that on another occasion, I suspect.
Mr Speaker, there is one thing I just cannot come to terms with: it is the notion that we have heard repeated—we are now up to the sixth occasion, I believe; I am keeping track of them—by the Treasurer when he says, “Do not lower taxation because it will not do any good. It would only help the business community.” It is the old style trades hall notion that the bosses take all the money, put it under the bed or siphon it off somewhere, and it does not do any good for the workers.
Mr Quinlan: Send it to Sydney.
MR MULCAHY: It all goes to Sydney and nothing is done down here! Of course, anyone who has had experience in business, which is why I find it curious because I think that the Treasurer is one member opposite who actually understands a bit about economics, is fully aware of the fact that business needs to expand. You do not simply run a business and say, “We are not going to grow our business. We are not going to employ more people.” In fact, taxes do come into the equation. They come into the equation on a range of fronts. They come into the equation in terms of where you locate. How often do I hear it said to me, “Gosh, things are odd in Canberra, aren’t they?”
I heard it on the weekend. There were lots of business people here for my party’s conference and they just shake their heads about how people cope with the environment here, particularly in the industrial relations area. I am sorry that Minister Gallagher is not here to hear me because I know that she appreciates my advice on industrial matters. Certainly, the environment here is not conducive to setting up business, with a raft of measures being introduced all the time.
But, most particularly, we fail to take advantage in a tax arrangement. We had the revelation in the estimates hearings that the Treasurer had made a deal with all the other state Labor governments not to compete by way of tax measures. Canberra needs to compete. Canberra has a lot of disadvantages in terms of its capacity to compete with larger states and we certainly ought to be looking at areas such as stamp duty advantage compared with other states whereby we may encourage greater investment. We talk
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