Page 539 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 19 March 2014
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MR COE (Ginninderra) (4.08): Madam Assistant Speaker Lawder, that is what you call being pushed in the deep end as an assistant speaker, and I congratulate you on working through that.
I will clarify a couple of points. I have already done so in this chamber on many occasions, but I will do it again for the Chief Minister’s benefit. The opposition supports codification of the lease variation charge. Obviously, it is right and proper that there is a payment at the time of varying a lease. However, the devil is in the detail. We cannot have a rate of LVC which in effect deters investment, which is exactly what the government has done. I am concerned that even putting the LVC on hold may not be enough for this economy at the moment.
The fact is that developments under the current LVC remission rates are not going ahead. They are actually pressing pause on the current economic situation, and the current remission levels may not be enough. In actual fact, the government may well have to go back to the 75 per cent remission levels to ensure that developments get off the ground. That is something that we will await.
The Chief Minister spoke about how it is appropriate for developers to give back to the community in the event of varying a lease. Yes, that is correct. And they do, by way of jobs, by way of unit creation, by way of investment in an area, by way of regeneration, and by way of future rates, future land tax and all the future social benefits that the new community will receive. I do not think it should be in the government’s mindset that in effect developers are bad. That is, in effect, what the Chief Minister is saying: developers are bad, and the only way they can offset their behaviour is by paying more tax. We on this side do not accept that.
Let me go to the Treasurer’s comments. He is getting into a mess by his own words. He is saying there are no changes to the LVC except for one change, yet the Chief Minister’s own media release says:
The four elements to the package being announced today include … changes to lease variation charges …
It says “changes to lease variation charges”. It is not unchanged; there are changes. And that is the very point of what the government is trying to sell. You can rest assured that when they front the Property Council’s forum next week, when government representatives are there trying to explain this, they are going to say: “There are changes here. There are changes.” Yet Mr Barr, in his stubbornness, will not accept that the government was forced to change the arrangements that Mr Barr put in place, because they were not working. They are not working, and I still fear that pressing pause on the current remission levels will not be enough to actually spark investment, especially in the inner areas.
Further to this, Mr Barr is on the record as saying that this is a perfect tax, that it is excellent public policy. But he said just four months ago, in December, at the public accounts committee:
This is the one tax that has no drag.
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