In reality, though, "real" rates are rising almost twice as fast (a little less for houses, a lot more for units). The average ACT household's bill is about to increase by 8.4 per cent (from $2013 to $2182).

How so? The ACT government (like almost all others) has stopped calling its household tax "rates" and renamed parts of it as special levies instead. This coming year, for example, each home owner will pay a fixed fee of $252 for "fire and emergency services" and $30 for "family safety".

Governments are increasingly reluctant to raise taxes, especially in election years. Tony Abbott didn't increase income tax for high earners: he introduced a "temporary budget repair levy" instead. Julia Gillard increased the Medicare levy to pay for the national disability insurance scheme, and imposed a flood levy to help Queensland recover from the 2010-11 disaster.

The ACT's emergency levy was jacked up sharply three times in the past five years. Few Canberrans oppose a well-funded and capable fire-fighting and rescue service. Nor, I guess, would many voters oppose efforts to reduce family violence.

But is it really necessary to give special labels to our taxes? Polling shows governments need not fear calling a spade a spade. Most Australians want more to be spent on hospitals, schools, roads and so on; they don't resile from paying their fair share.

None of these levies, with their special names, are hypothecated – governments can spend the money on whatever they please. The emergency levy doesn't need to fund firefighters; the safe families levy doesn't need to fund policing or rape crisis centres. And nor should these taxes be bound, by law, to be spent a certain way: that's a complicated, inflexible and inefficient way to collect and spend public money. Priorities change. Governments need to be able to adjust quickly.

So, yes, Tuesday's budget continued to increase household rates (and levies) sharply. The first five years of Labor's 20-year tax reform project have delivered, on average, an annual increase to household rates bills of 9.5 per cent.

And, yes, when the Liberals say "Andrew Barr is tripling rates" over 20 years – we'll hear a lot of that over the next three months – they may be right, even accounting for the fact that rates would have risen anyway.

But this change in the way Canberrans are taxed has many benefits, even if they're less visible than rates bills. Home and car insurance is cheaper. Businesses pay less payroll tax and no stamp duty on commercial property sales. Buying a home is cheaper, and will become even more so as stamp duty on residential sales is whittled away. This will in turn make it easier to move into housing that suits us if our lives change, without the punishment of a heavy fee.

There are excellent reasons for taxing land instead of other transactions and earnings, not the least of which is that no one – no matter how good their accountants – can evade land tax. Land taxes spread the revenue burden across the population, rather than hit only a few (for example, those buying a home). And land-value taxes are fair: unlike wages and business income, which are the rewards of effort, the rising value of property has little to do with whether the owner actually creates or does anything of use to anyone.

These are the debates we should be having, and which the ACT government should be leading. Not giving its land tax a politically palatable name and pretending it's something else.