Thursday, 5 October 2023

Land tax

Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:22): (492) My adjournment matter is for the Treasurer, and it relates to his shock expansion this week of the vacant residential land tax. Property Council of Australia CEO Mike Zorbas called the move a ‘trust burner’, and it is not just industry he has burnt. Assistant Treasurer Danny Pearson had no idea what was going on, despite the Premier’s hasty follow-up claim yesterday that she knew about it all along after discussion in cabinet. Either the Assistant Treasurer tunes out his boss or someone has not been telling the truth in this place. There are so many problematic aspects to the announcement it is hard to know where to start, so I will do it geographically.

Firstly, in metro Melbourne the tax is extended beyond empty properties to unimproved land. That might make sense in the built-up part of the city, but what about Melton in my electorate? This is a new growth area. There will obviously be undeveloped plots, yet now if greenfield sites are undeveloped for five years, they will immediately be hit. That is ridiculous, and it yet again shows Labor makes policy which might fly inside the tram tracks but is deeply damaging to Melbourne’s outer suburbs and growth areas.

In regional Victoria holiday home owners will be socked yet again. The May budget brought the COVID levy, then last week we heard about the Airbnb tax – now this. The Treasurer claims these changes will cause more development by incentivising building. Taken in combination, though, this never-ending tax ratchet will instead just make investors sell up and get out. Real Estate Institute of Victoria CEO Quentin Kilian called it:

… just another regrettable demonstration of poor property policy development, and shortsightedness from the Victorian Government.

The exodus of rental providers has increased over the past year, and with yet another round of taxation aimed at the property market there is no doubt that investors will continue to leave Victoria, exacerbating the rental shortage. This week rent prices in Melbourne reached their highest ever recorded levels. The median paid has increased by $95 a week to $520 a week, nearly a 25 per cent increase in one single year. For Labor politicians to say this has nothing to do with them when Victoria has the highest property taxes per capita in all of Australia at $2120 is clearly deluded or dishonest. Sadly, we understand the impact of this attack on growth suburbs and new triple-taxing of holiday home owners. But the action I seek is clarification of a less discussed matter: will this tax apply to land zoned for agriculture? Is he really expecting farmers now to have to pay a brand new tax for property on their land put aside for seasonal workers?