Page 643 - Week 03 - Thursday, 15 March 2007
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We have also seen other fees and charges indexed by the wage price index. Once again, this alleviates the unpleasant task of having to admit that you are raising them. It simply becomes automatic. People wake up one day and see that these rates and charges have gone up and say to themselves, “How on earth are we going to find the money to pay for this?”
I know that things are more prosperous than they have ever been. We have had 10 years of great prosperity due in very large part to the direction of the Australian government. But there is a limit to how much people can afford. Many Canberra families have substantial mortgages. They are not only being told that their rates are going up but also hearing about these other hidden charges, such as the fire emergency services levy, the utilities tax on the internet and things that their kids access, and their telephones. All these subtle ways of extracting money are making life more difficult for ordinary households. Heaven help you if you are a retiree living on a superannuation arrangement and facing the erosion of your standard of living, because thanks to these charges your charges are going up at a far faster rate than the indexation that applies to your superannuation income.
Of course, there is the other terrifying prospect that if there is a change of government at the federal level and if the left have their way, they are going to start slugging people’s superannuation. As confident as the Chief Minister may be about how wonderful the people of Canberra have been to the Labor Party, just watch the backlash from the retired public servants when you start hammering them with tax levels on their superannuation and reverse the reforms introduced by the Howard government to ensure that people can be self-sufficient in their retirement years.
The CPI is a sensible indexation for charges because it preserves their value in real terms by accounting for inflation. Thus, a charge indexed by the CPI remains constant in real terms over time. The wage price index, on the other hand, indexes average wages which, due to greater productivity, tend to increase over time and contain inherent distortions. By indexing rates to this index the government is ensuring that, no matter how productive we become in the future, the government will always increase its ravenous appetite commensurately. In particular, this means that in the ordinary course of events, when the WPI increases faster than the CPI, taxes will increase automatically over time in real terms—not just in nominal terms but in real terms.
The government has also increased the ambulance levy, the water abstraction charge and other small charges. There has been an increase in development application fees. There is a definite pattern here of increases in rates and charges, more and more rapacious government and less money for Canberrans to keep in their pockets. The government have even introduced some brand new taxes, and they have been very good at this. They have been very inventive. You really have to admire their creative spirit.
Some people paint great art and others make scientific discoveries. But this government are as creative as any in finding new ways to take out money, and when it comes to taxing us, they really are in their element. We have seen the introduction of
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