Page 3688 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 21 November 2007
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impose a huge financial burden on families who attempt to move, forcing them into immobility and loss of opportunity. And, far from simply affecting the very wealthy, this policy primarily impacts ordinary families who are trying to gradually improve their lot in life—like most people in this place and most people we represent—perhaps moving into a larger home as they have more children or as they gradually save for a more comfortable lifestyle.
These are things that the Green movement are not approving of. Those families that do move home may find themselves paying nearly a quarter of the value of their home for the privilege, and they will therefore be back into larger levels of debt, courtesy of the economic policies of the Greens. Similarly, the death tax will penalise those who save wealth to pass on to their children and grandchildren, and I suggest that every member of this place probably has that as their primary motivator—to look after their children or their grandchildren. To see this party preach to us that they are going to penalise those people—they do not approve of that lifestyle; they do not approve of people who save and work and generate some form of inheritance for the future of their children and their grandchildren—is something that I find abhorrent.
The tax they are putting forward has been utterly discredited in economic terms. It is a tax which is based entirely on ideological hatred of inherited wealth and it is an inefficient, burdensome and arbitrary tax. It is in fact a tax which is easily avoided by those with sufficient legal and financial savvy—usually by passing wealth before death, subject to trust—but which arbitrarily penalises those who die unexpectedly or fail to use the services of tax lawyers.
These policies should give Canberra families serious cause for concern before they consider directing their main vote or even their preferences to the Greens. Contrary to their rhetoric, they are a party which is profoundly at odds with the interests and aspirations of Canberra families and other ordinary people. People must make a firm decision to vote for one of the major parties this weekend lest we be put at the mercy of these crazy economic ideals which will threaten the basic Australian family and its livelihood.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
The Assembly adjourned at 6.21 pm.
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