Page 1786 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 2 May 2012
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on cost of living. We need to get it right because we need to see, where things do impact on certain parts of our community, how we can ameliorate those impacts, whether it be through concessions, whether it be through greater provision or enhancement of particular programs. That is what we should be focused on. Let us do this, let us get it right and then let us look at how we might move forward with it.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (11.27): I think we should start where Ms Hunter left off: let us get it right. And we could get it right here today by the simple deletion of the word “direct”. Mr Assistant Speaker, when you look at the explanatory material that Mr Barr has provided here today but could not defend in the face of Mr Smyth’s amendment, you see that there are a large number of taxes and that the government has essentially created a list of what it considers to be direct taxes that have a direct impact on families. Now we have a situation where he has said that if this passes and this explanatory material obtains the force of extrinsic material we can only look at these things because Ms Hunter and he are uncomfortable about the implications that actually account for the impact of conveyancing duty.
In what sense is conveyancing duty not a direct tax upon families? Every time a family buys and sells a house, they pay a tax which is called conveyancing duty. There are other people who pay that tax as well and every time—
Mr Barr interjecting—
MRS DUNNE: That is really funny. Conveyancing duty is funny to Mr Barr. Every time someone pays a conveyancing duty, some of that is directly impacted by families. It is a duty that is directly on families when they buy and sell the family house. And when a business buys and sells, the same thing happens. If they impose it, they incur a cost and that cost is passed on or absorbed by them. Either way it is direct or indirect; in this case it is both a direct and an indirect tax on families.
Mr Barr could not even take the time or have the courtesy, or he does not have a substantive reason for opposing Mr Smyth’s amendment. He does not have a substantive reason. He just stood up and said, “We’re not going to support it.” He could not give the families of the ACT, the mothers and fathers of the ACT, a reason why he thinks that a conveyancing tax is an indirect tax and therefore not necessary to be accounted for in this way.
Land tax impacts directly on families through rents. In a whole way it does impact. But Mr Barr could not do the people of the ACT the courtesy of telling them why he thinks these should not be subjected to the same rigours as their selected list of direct taxes.
We then get to the change of lease charges and the impact that will have on things like childcare centres. If you charge $10,000 per place for a lease variation charge for a childcare centre, that directly impacts on the cost of providing childcare and it will be passed on to every family who has children in childcare in that centre. That is a tax which directly impacts on the cost of living of Canberra families.
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