Thursday, 20 February 2025

Land tax

Nick McGOWAN (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:14): (1449) It is the end of another parliamentary week, and I thought I would do something a little bit different today and let the government in on a little secret. It is disappointing that there is just one minister here and none of her colleagues. Perhaps they have gone to bed or they are having an afternoon nap. I know it is that term of government when governments –

Gayle Tierney interjected.

Nick McGOWAN: Where are they, sorry, Minister? They are in meetings? Well, if they are in meetings, I will give them a shout. Let us give them the benefit of the doubt; let us say they are in meetings. I am glad they are in meetings, and perhaps I will get the video later on and send it to them just in case, because I have got a secret to share with them. I have got a beautiful little secret. It comes from the genesis of Prahran and Werribee, and I just hope it is not too late to save your good colleagues, because I know there are some good colleagues among them.

The secret is this: that having ratcheted up land tax – and I know it sounds boring immediately, because it is pretty dry subject matter, but I am going to go there anyway. It is a Thursday afternoon. It is dry subject matter, but nonetheless, land tax is quite an insidious tax. It is sort of like walking down the street and demanding from a stranger their wallet, because the reality is while you take the wallet and take the money, you are not giving anything in return. They have already paid tax to buy the property in the first place. They have lived their entire life having paid their taxes through their wages, paid their taxes through the GST and paid their taxes in all other manner of speaking. However, the government has time and again ratcheted land tax up, and this government has taken it to a perfect form.

It got me wondering: where does this land tax come from? What is the history of this? Well, you need look no further than the mother country. Mrs McArthur, I do not mean to offend you here tonight, but I will probably go close to the line. In the mother country, once upon a time, there was a British window tax. In a funny sort of way this is a tomb, or perhaps a sarcophagus, it feels like at times, but nonetheless, this is a place that stands as a testament to that window tax because back in the 1600s – from 1696 to around 1851, about the time this building was built, actually – they had a window tax. The irony of the window tax was that it was a tax created – for those of you who have a memory long enough to recall this, I do not pretend to have been there. I did read this. I was not there. I am not that old. I am getting older, but I am not that old. It was a tax created to cover the revenue lost by clipping coinage. This was the original predecessor to the modern property tax. Isn’t it somewhat ironic that we have gone from that situation to this. Even back then, even in the 1600s, it was called a progressive tax. Well, still today this Labor government call the land tax a progressive tax. For one of my constituents, their land tax has gone up from $115 in 2019–20; to 2020–21, up by $143; to 2021–22, no change; to 2022–23, $370; and to 2023–24, wait for it, $2865. This is absolutely killing Victorians. Minister, the action I seek is that you get rid of this highway robbery.