Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think it is too, but I think it was a little bit unfair to refer to the Prime Minister’s reference to interest rates and the availability of land, which is a local government matter and often a state government matter. He was not using that as a reason to centralise populations in Australia; it is more about the old supply and demand. There is demand for people to live in cities. If you do not supply enough for the demand—if you do not supply enough land—then that excess demand raises the price. I think that is very simple economics that the Prime Minister is referring to. I certainly do not think it was fair to verbal him and to suggest that we raise that as ‘feedlots’, in the terminology of the member for New England.

The member for New England also raised the GST issue. In 2000, local government lost a real opportunity to get a share of the GST income. We have seen the state governments go from one level of income and then go up quite a bit to another level of income, which the local governments all around Australia have not benefited from. I have always been a believer because I think local government generally is a very efficient user of government moneys.

We have seen that local governments used every cent of the Roads to Recovery money that the member for New England also referred to. As a result of that, I think we have seen a great improvement in our roads. I was part of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Transport and Regional Services, which really came up with that idea. There was a real need for us to go directly to local government and increase the funding. The Australian Local Government Association chairman at the time showed us that we had a real problem with not only the upgrading of roads but also keeping up with the maintenance of roads under local government responsibility. The Roads to Recovery program has been a great program and we have increased it. I am not quite sure whether the member for New England was correct when he used the terminology of 1c excise. My quick calculation was that it was about 3c.

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