Page 3170 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 July 2010
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Mr Barr: So people will move their land out of the ACT, will they?
MR SESELJA: He has again demonstrated his ignorance through that interjection. People do have a choice where they develop both in the ACT and over the border. They can choose greenfields which do not have the same level of taxes. We want to encourage greenfields and infill. Many may choose, as a result of a massive tax, to focus more on greenfields development than on infill. Mr Barr again, I think, has shown either he has not thought about this debate or he is in fact blindly following a policy that perhaps he did not sign up to. I do not know which it is.
But Mr Savery gave what I think can best be described as a very diplomatic answer, and I give credit to Mr Savery because he is in a very difficult position. It is difficult. He certainly cannot be openly critical of government policy on this, in his position, but I think it is a very difficult one for him to defect. I have a lot of respect for Mr Savery. We disagree on a number of issues. But I think he is someone who has the best interests of Canberra at heart. I think he genuinely wants to see infill. I think he genuinely wants to see—and we have had many discussions about this—Civic grow, as do I. He wants to see it change. He wants to see more people living around our town centres and in the city.
I think that Mr Savery and others would be looking at this and saying, “This massive tax is not going to help that. It can only hinder it. It can only mean that there will be less development going on in those areas where we want there to be more development. It could lead to a real imbalance in where development occurs.” There is a false economy in it too. There is a false economy in the fact that we will get development where we do not necessarily want it to be concentrated. But of course there are all the flow-on effects.
It is a relatively small tax, as it is now. They are making it a very large tax. But even as a very large tax, it is nowhere near as large as other property taxes such as stamp duty. I do not think the potential other flow-on effects in terms of revenue have actually been considered by this government. I do not think they have considered whether they will lose money in other areas as a result of increasing this tax. Have they modelled whether or not they will lose money in stamp duty because there are fewer transactions? If there are fewer units, then you are losing a lot of transaction taxes, which the government relies on.
So I would be interested to hear what modelling has been done on that. What other flow-on effects are there in terms of economic development, in terms of some of the choices that are made? It has not been explained. They have sort of fallen into it. Ms Gallagher talks about the deal or arrangement. Mr Barr says that is grubby politics. I do not know where the Labor position lies on that but we do know that this is a significant change. And we do know that they have not released any modelling that would tell us.
But we do get diplomatic answers from Mr Savery—and I respect that—but I think he is in a difficult position, as many other people within government would be, perhaps even Mr Barr. Perhaps Mr Barr deep down does not agree with the tax and is just doing his bit to defend the indefensible.
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