Page 3105 - Week 08 - Thursday, 16 August 2018
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The scale of the government’s plan for higher rates and taxes has been confirmed. Back in 2012-13 when tax reform was first introduced the government rhetoric was that it was a fairer, simpler, and more efficient tax. Instead, Canberrans will have experienced 10 years of rate paying when it comes to 2022, with rates revenue going from $209 million to $605 million.
In Hawker there has been a 110 per cent increase. In my electorate of Yerrabi, Palmerston has had a 112 per cent increase, while in Chisholm there has been a massive 123 per cent increase since 2012. It is because of this dramatic increase in the cost of living that we are seeing so many people move to areas surrounding the ACT.
There are many things that I would like to see the budget concentrate on. I believe that there is not enough clarity with regard to the percentage of the capital works budget that is expended in the relevant budget year. I note that the government response to recommendation 34 of the select committee report says:
This information is not available at the time of publication of the Budget papers, as reporting for the prior financial year is not finalised at that point in time.
That is the same for every single line item in the budget. That is why we have a commonly called estimates outcome. For them to say they are not able to publish the percentage of the capital works budget expended in the budget year because it is not available at the time of publication is a sham. You could use that excuse for every single line item in the budget. The budget is produced and published in early June. The financial year does not close until 30 June. They could use this excuse for everything. If that is going to be the approach, let us shift the budget to August and let us have final year-end figures included. But if they are going to keep going with a June budget, they should not hide behind the excuse that the figures are not available because it is not 30 June yet. It is an absolute crock that they would base their refusal to publish the percentage of the capital works budget on that defence.
I also believe that the government should be publishing with absolute clarity the total value of the large-scale generation certificates and work into that valuation what their intended purpose is for the treatment of those certificates, because if the budget is meant to be a reflection of your financial policies, and your financial policies are to surrender these certificates at no revenue, how can you possibly say that to value them as being worth $80 million is a true reflection of your accounting statement? It is just not. You cannot say that you have this asset worth $80 million but you have no intention of ever realising it and in actual fact you are going to write it down by $80Â million. It should be there up-front.
That is exactly what Mr Stanhope and Dr Khalid Ahmed said a couple of weeks ago: that the writedown should take place in the same year, because that is what the financial policy was last year. The accounting and budget policy last year was to record the revenue and record the expense in the same year so that it had no impact on the bottom line. Instead, through the tricky financial arrangements that they put into this budget, they have written in the revenue for the first three years and then written in the expenditure in the final year, thus propping up three years of budget outlooks
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