Page 3500 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 2010
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MR SPEAKER: Now your supplementary, Mr Smyth.
MR SMYTH: Treasurer, how much additional revenue do you estimate that the territory will obtain from these own-source revenues?
MS GALLAGHER: They are all published in the budget papers.
MR HARGREAVES: A supplementary, Mr Speaker.
MR SPEAKER: Yes, Mr Hargreaves.
MR HARGREAVES: My supplementary question to the Treasurer is this: is the Treasurer concerned at the announcement that there may very well be significant cuts to the public sector, and that the trickle-down effect on to small business will have a detrimental effect on the taxation base?
Mrs Dunne: A point of order, Mr Speaker.
MR SPEAKER: Stop the clocks, thank you.
Mrs Dunne: The question was about own-source revenue and the Henry tax review. Mr Hargreaves is not being relevant to the substantive question, and he is using the opportunity to perhaps score a point in this election week.
MR SPEAKER: Mrs Dunne, to be honest, I thought Mr Smyth’s question was about the tax revenue base for the ACT, and I think Mr Hargreaves has framed his question to be about the revenue base for the ACT.
MS GALLAGHER: Of course, any attack on employment in the territory is going to have a flow-on effect, not only for small business but also for our own revenue lines. Our big four revenue lines are payroll tax, general rates, land tax and conveyancing. Largely, they are the big four. Of course, all of those will be affected if there is a significant decline in employment numbers in the territory. So we are worried. We are worried as a community about those potential job cuts and what they mean for our city, Canberra, that we all love.
In terms of the flow-on effects, apart from employment in the private sector, there are the flow-on detrimental effects to our own revenue lines. Our budget is facing a tough next two or three years, and any decline in our own revenue lines will have an impact on the already quite significant deficits that we are facing, particularly in the next two years. So employment, and keeping our employment levels to where they are now, is certainly very important in terms of the recovery of our own budget. Indeed, that is the view we took when we thought a longer term strategy to recover our budget was not to attack our own employment levels, specifically because of the flow-on effect to our budget.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Seselja, a supplementary question?
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