Wednesday, 31 July 2024

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:13): (1007) My adjournment debate for the Minister for Planning concerns the cladding rectification levy (CRL), another Labor tax stacked on the back of the productive sectors of Victoria’s economy, hitting developers and builders but passed on to all Victorians through higher rents and prices. This tax, which took effect on 1 January 2020, was sold to us as a temporary, necessary, carefully targeted measure. Accordingly, we were all told it would last just five years. The Premier’s media release on 16 July 2019 said the building permit levy would raise $300 million ‘over the next five years’. The Victorian Building Authority website still refers to the funding to be raised ‘over the next five years’. In debate in this place on 12 November 2019 Ms Terpstra, apparently reading the party line, said:

… the levy increase will be effective from 1 January 2020. The cladding rectification program is a five-year program, and it is expected that the additional building permit levy will apply over that five years.

Mr Erdogan said the same day:

As the program is set to undertake rectification of non-compliant cladding over five years, the levy is set to apply for only those same years.

At the same time, some of us called this non-ring-fenced charge a badly disguised tax grab. It seems we were right. There is nothing so permanent as a temporary government program.

The Cladding Safety Victoria review was tabled on 7 March this year. Funnily enough, this was not accompanied by a ministerial press release. Five years of the CRL would expire on 31 December this year, yet the report I mentioned references a CRL review, required no later than January this year, which has apparently determined there is an ongoing need to continue usage of the cladding rectification levy to fund cladding rectification works and associated programs. For how long will it be extended? When will this be publicly announced? Has the minister told the industry, the people who will have to pay more for longer, or did she just hope that nobody would notice that the sneaky extension of this time-limited tax would get lost in the forest of other taxes choking our economy? The action I seek from the minister is the release of the CRL review and a public statement explaining why this tax will not as promised be abolished on 31 December this year.