Page 2492 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 9 August 2016
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that this government does not actually have a clear trajectory to get back to surplus. What would be far more useful would be if there actually were a comprehensive list of key performance criteria that they were striving to meet. As I said, numerous other jurisdictions have this and I think it would be well worth the ACT government’s trying to adopt this as well.
There are numerous other areas within the agency which need to be addressed. My colleague Mr Hanson has already spoken about the impact of rates in the ACT and the growing impost it is on so many households. And it is interesting when you look at the tax mix as presented in this year’s budget and the two outyears, and also in previous years budgets, you do see a significant increase in the fire and emergency services levy in addition to rates, stamp duty. And we have got the new safer families levy. When you add all these on top of each other, even when you include the insurance levy, you are still seeing a significant year-on-year increase. Far from being simply the transfer of stamp duty revenue into rates, you are seeing a significant increase in the actual rates take as well, especially when you factor in those additional levies that I mentioned.
Whilst the government may say that they have gone ahead in leaps and bounds with regard to abolishing insurance taxes, the truth is that this loss of income has been well and truly compensated for by significant increases in other income that is being presented on the rates bills.
I will also touch on the LDA and land release in the territory. This is one of the real issues with this government’s management of what is a very important resource. But it is not just a financial or economic resource, it is also a very important social resource and we need to make sure that children in the ACT have the opportunity to grow up and have the ability in the future to buy a house, preferably to buy land if they so choose, in the ACT. Of course we are not seeing that at the moment. We are seeing, I think, very few first homebuyers able to buy land in the ACT. And we are seeing other jurisdictions, most notably New South Wales, and other councils, most notably the Queanbeyan city council, compete in this space.
As I have said before, there are many costs to a federation. But one of the benefits of having a competitive federal model is that you have jurisdictions competing with each other, and that is exactly what is happening over the border in New South Wales with the Queanbeyan city council. They are able to deliver land to market through a private provider at less than half the cost that the LDA is delivering land right now in Throsby.
It is no wonder that in fact the LDA is not even selling that land now, that people are in effect turning their nose up at the prices. When you are charging $1,000 a square metre just for the land and someone goes and buys a 400-square metre block and is hit with $400,000 before they have built a house, that is out of reach for so many Canberrans, in fact, the tens of thousands of Canberrans that are looking to buy their home. Because of that, you are seeing people look to estates such as Googong or Tralee or to the west of Canberra in Murrumbateman for opportunities to get into the housing market.
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