Page 2888 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 19 September 2006
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This is a critical area for governments. They, thank heavens, play a role independent of all political parties in assessing the performance of governments and the operating expenditure in particular of governments and their capacity to live within their revenue stream. Sadly, the people of Canberra are the ones wearing the impact of these charges. They are seeing services chopped back. They are seeing courageous statements being made—and I say that with a measure of facetiousness—that the Chief Minister is now able to make the tough decisions.
One has to ask the question why tough decisions were not being made over the past four years. Why is it that suddenly, overnight, we have had to see this massive corrective action when it has been very evident to this opposition here—certainly to me in my two years in the Assembly—that major problems were starting to develop?
All of this community is now suffering. Thank heavens for the federal government’s initiatives. They are countering some of the impacts—they are creating employment and the like—but, at the end of the day, the taxes we are all wearing are excessive. I believe they cause a deal of pain to the many people in Canberra who had faith in this territory’s government.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs and Minister for the Arts) (4.14): The thing that needs to be said first on this constant parroting of the commonwealth’s economic credentials is the fact that the commonwealth government under Peter Costello and John Howard is the highest taxing jurisdiction in Australia, and its share of taxation is increasing. It is the highest taxing government the nation has ever seen, and the commonwealth’s share of taxation is increasing.
The measure that you use in relation to that is the proportion of taxation relative to gross domestic product. Taxation revenue for the commonwealth increased from 25 per cent of GDP in 2003-04 to 25.7 per cent in 2004-05. Taxation revenue collected by the states and territories and local government fell in the same period. All this parroting here from Peter Costello’s apologist in this particular place—
Mr Mulcahy: He does not need an apologist. He is doing pretty well.
MR STANHOPE: He does. You get up here and talk about this raging taxation regime here in the context of relativities. You parade in here and beat your breast about the credentials of the commonwealth, the highest taxing regime in the history of Australia. Its proportion of the tax take is increasing, and you know it is, as against that collected by the states and the territories. Between 2003-04 and 2004-05 commonwealth taxation revenue increased by 9.3 per cent.
Do not come in here and talk about the extent to which the people of Australia, particularly the people of the ACT, are doing well because of the taxing regimes of the commonwealth—the commonwealth is taxing the people—and then parade and parrot a range of services that we receive from the commonwealth as a result of this 9.3 per cent increase in taxation revenue taken by the commonwealth over the year. In fact, to parade this outrageous set of rates and fees that are levied here in the territory as somehow extraordinary again belies the facts.
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