Page 1434 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2006
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and we all acknowledge that, but it is a pity that you will not pitch for the longer term, that you will not look at it as anything beyond this particular budget and electoral cycle, because it is about the future and it is why the government has taken the approach that it has, through the functional review. That will be reflected very much in the budget that is about to be delivered, which is about structural change for the future. It is about implementing more efficient ways of providing corporate services to ensure that we have the capacity to sustain the delivery of services into the future.
We do have, as I have already indicated in the context of particular parts of the motion, an excellent record as to addressing high-priority needs and we do that. The motion is, essentially, nonsensical. If we are to be criticised, we are to be criticised for spending too much in health, in disability services, for children that are being abused, in indigenous affairs, and in and around a whole range of areas encapsulated more than anything by the Liberal Party’s or Liberal government’s woeful record in relation to mental health expenditure.
Contrary to the claims that have been repeated again today, the mantra, the suggestion that if you continue to run a line often enough it might become accepted or at least an urban truth or myth, the ACT taxation effort is around the national average, according to the Commonwealth Grants Commission. If you go to the objective date, if it is available, the Commonwealth Grants Commission, through its published reports, will inform you that the ACT taxation effort was at 100.27 per cent.
I know how particular Mr Mulcahy is about his capacity and his status as the new ACT guru on anything economic. Obviously, he has not seen the latest of the Australian Bureau of Statistics catalogues on taxation revenue across Australia, catalogue No 5506 of 29 March 2006, which shows that taxation per capita, both state and local taxes, in the ACT is 11 per cent lower than the average for all states and territories.
The ACT takes relatively less tax per person today than it did in 2000-01. Relatively speaking, we tax less than you did in government. In 2000-01 the ACT’s taxation per capita was the third highest, behind New South Wales and Victoria, and on a par with the average for the other states and territories. In 2004-05, the ACT was the third lowest, around $270 per capita lower than the average. It is quite sobering, and I am sure that it would be a dreadful shock for Mr Mulcahy, to view the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics analysis of taxation revenue.
Over the four-year period between 2000-01 and 2004-05, the ACT had the lowest increase in taxation revenue of all states and territories and the commonwealth at nine per cent. Taxation per capita in all other jurisdictions increased by between 11 and 43 per cent. The change in the ACT between 2003-04 and 2004-05 was minus six per cent. The change between 2000-01 and 2004-05 was nine per cent as against a national average of two per cent, as against our minus six per cent and a change between 2000-01 and 2004-05 of 22 per cent. It is interesting to compare that with the commonwealth, with an eight per cent change from 2003-04 to 2004-05 and a 24 per cent increase in taxation in the same period.
We have the highest taxing federal government in the history of the commonwealth. We all know that to be a fact. You glory in the budget delivered today by the highest taxing government in the history of the commonwealth. Over the last four years they have
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