Page 3225 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 21 August 2019
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roads. But the Liberal Party has not joined us in those views. It is worrying because the ACT budget is not a magic pudding.
In conclusion, I will be supporting the ALP amendment rather than the Liberal motion which misses out all the important issues related to taxation and the funding of government services. Personally I thought the motion was so far from reality that the simplest solution was just to vote it down. But the Chief Minister’s amendment is broadly factual and sensible, so I will vote for it.
MR WALL (Brindabella) (10.44): I was not intending to speak too much on this motion, but it seems that there is a very large disconnect between the reality that Mr Barr operates in and the reality of his constituents. He wants a gold star and a merit certificate for the hard work of tax reform whilst countless Canberra families are doing it worse now than they ever have simply because of the unfair, punitive nature of this tax reform process. We have heard the impact on home owners. We are hearing some of the impact on businesses.
Some of the questions I raised last week with the Minister for Transport and City Services were about commercial property holders, who are paying the highest level of rates in the ACT and for that are receiving no garbage service. They get nothing in the way of service that you could expect for a domestic property, yet they pay a factor of more than 10 times what a residential property owner does. They are also having to pay, out of their own pocket, to fix damage that is being caused to their property by trees on government land. Why does a government that charges so much in rates fail to deliver the basic amenity that you would expect to be received for it?
I spoke of the Calwell shopping centre, whose tenants have had to argue with government to get permission for two trees on territory land to be removed. Then the government has had the hide to say, “You pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in rates a year, but you can also pay to get those trees removed. You are in business. You are rich. You should be able to afford it.” That is the attitude that we have seen from those opposite.
Mr Barr says it is easier to set up a business here in the ACT. But those businesses are very often sole-person operators. They are certainly not buying property. I do not know how he is managing to conflate it. Yes, they are starting up here, but as soon as they get to a size where those taxes are biting hard they are leaving town or they are looking for an escape. We have seen that time and again.
The Chief Minister was quick to point out that 90 per cent of businesses do not pay payroll tax. Yet it was this Chief Minister and Treasurer that closed an exemption that existed for contractors, predominantly doing work for the commonwealth, from paying payroll tax. He sought to money-grab on that provision that was established to see a large and successful contracting sector here in the ACT. He sought to close it and grab the money for the ACT government coffers instead. That has caused significant damage through the contracting sector here in the ACT. He talks about seeing fewer people pay payroll tax than ever before, but it would be reasonable to guess that more small entities are now liable for an element of payroll tax than have ever been before under this Treasurer.
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