As Canberra homeowners receive their first rates bill for the year, Chief Minister Andrew Barr has strongly defended the 9 per cent increase and turned the attack on the Liberals, accusing Opposition Leader Jeremy Hanson of being a "crazy right-winger" who wants to retain taxes on property sales and insurance.
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He also accused Mr Hanson of sharing material from "ratbag right-wing libertarian groups" in the United States on his Twitter feed – a reference to Mr Hanson tweeting a video on light rail, produced by the Reason Foundation and published by the Sonoran Alliance.
"We see him. He is there with Rand Paul and Donald Trump and a couple of the other Tea Party advocates. We know that they are crazy right-wingers. We know that. And we are hearing it again and again today, stuck in the 1950s on social policy and out there with the far right," Mr Barr said during a rowdy Question Time.
He was responding to sustained criticism from the Liberals over the government's ongoing increases in rates, up an average 42 per cent over four years, with some suburbs facing increases of more than 60 per cent since Labor's tax changes began.
The increases are designed to offset the gradual abolition of stamp duty, but Mr Hanson said the amount collected in stamp duty continued to rise, and Mr Barr would "take more stamp duty than any other treasurer in the history of the ACT".
He read letters from upset homeowners, one "terribly alarmed" and expecting to be forced on to the aged pension, another struggling to live on just $578 a fortnight, and the owner of a rental property facing a land tax bill up from $168 to $348 a quarter.
Claiming vindication for the Liberals' 2012 election campaign against what it said would be a tripling of rates, Mr Hanson said Mr Barr was cruel and arrogant to "impose a massive cost increase on many thousands of Canberrans who simply can't afford it" alongside a decision to "squander" $800 million on the tram.
For people on low and fixed incomes and for retirees, who might have lived in their home for 40 years, every dollar counted, Mr Hanson said.
"Andrew Barr is now taxing that family home and he's taxing people out of that family home," he said.
The debate became especially heated when Liberal backbencher Steve Doszpot raised the case of the Manuka newsagent whose rates are rising by $6000 a quarter.
Mr Barr said the increase was a result of revaluation. He had cut insurance tax, payroll tax and stamp duty, he said, choosing rates as "the simplest and fairest" and most efficient tax.
"That is the difference. The Liberal Party support the bad taxes. They want to be in your pocket every time you transact on property. They want to be in your pocket every time someone takes out an insurance policy. It appears they want to be in your pocket to pay more GST."
Earlier, Mr Hanson attacked the "stench" of Labor's acceptance of hundreds of thousands of gambling dollars from its Labor clubs, saying clubs had been set up to help community groups, not to "shovel money into the pockets of Mrs Burch and Mr Barr and all of their mates in the Labor Party".
"All of the millions of dollars being shovelled into the Labor Party is money that is not going into the community," he said, to which Gaming Minister Joy Burch responded that Liberal politicians "drank their free booze, ate their free dinner" at the club industry's annual dinner each year.
Mr Hanson also hit out at Mr Barr's dismissal in estimates hearings of parking fee increases as not even the cost of "a bottle of sparkling mineral water at some of our high-end restaurants". The idea that someone would be "deterred from their $100 dinner by a $5 parking fee" was wrong, Mr Barr told estimates.
Mr Hanson said Mr Barr was "grossly out of touch". "As long as they can get to have their swanky meals in their swanky restaurants, they don't really care if your rates are tripling, they don't care whether you've got to pay more for parking," he said.
To which Mr Barr countered that a $100 dinner was not extravagant.
"Better that my taste be water than Bollinger, Moet and the likes of those drinks that those opposite would no doubt consume on their big nights out," he said.
