A what levy?

The ACT govt are now doing this so much that everyone is starting to notice though. IN letters to the paper today someone who complained about lack of parking at Kippax was told that is evidence of a vibrant community. I think pollyanna has got a job as stanhope’s pr.

It’s this thing called lack of “truthiness” – Bush lacks it in a big way (as did Blair and Howard over Iraq, and Howard over children overboard). It’s where people must now examine every statement made by every politician (whatever the flavour) to see what the reality really is.

There is no longer any concept of actually telling people the way it really is – Peter Beatty seems to sometimes gets close, but now the bureaucrats are doing the same thing.

Every department now has a media unit, whose entire job seems to be to hide the reality behind all this flim-flam.

Thumper, even if the money does go to to the ES as Corbell says (and there is certainly a lot of confusion about that), it will eventually just replace ongoing funding anyway. Within a couple of years, the ES will not even be aware, in a financial sense, that the levy even exists – it will all be on paper (including our rates notices of course).

Every govt does this to some extent, but Stanhope up is up there with the “best” of them.

As you say, it’s not a good way to run the Territory (let alone any enterprise).

Well do the right thing next ACT election and vote them out. They are so inept that words escape me.

Actually inept is too polite. They have been proven to be liars. Anyone is better than this pack of clowns…anyone

That said the Commonwealth seems to have more money than it knows what to do with perhaps they could give some to the states to improve the health system or something.

The Commonwealth gives the states and territories all the GST revenue, specifically for things like health. If the states can’t manage it, maybe it should all be brought under the Commonwealth umbrella. Same goes for edumacation.

I’ve just come to this thread, so back-tracking a bit.

caf, the problem with this levy, and likewise with the Hospital pay parking, is that it is all smoke and mirrors. In both cases, the government has said that the money will be used for a specific purpose. The trouble is that there is no transparency and accountability for the process being used. The ACT Treasury boffins have deliberately designed things that way.

What will happen is that both Ministers, as seepi has said above, will line up for photo opportunities over the next few months showing how the ES/parking levy/fees have been spent as they said.

Then over the next year or so, the ES/Hospital budgets will quietly be eroded away so that the amount of money raised is offset by some “efficiency” savings.

So, we are fleeced even more, comprehensively lied to by the relevanet Ministers and their minders, and the ES/Hospital budgets return to where they were before, and Treasury has a bit more money to play with to curry favour with their political masters next time a pet project comes along.

And we all live happily ever after…

It certainly smacks of whoops when we said it was a levy it was really just revenue raising that wasn’t rates.

That said the Commonwealth seems to have more money than it knows what to do with perhaps they could give some to the states to improve the health system or something.

I know lets make the ACT entirely userpays – I wonder what the rates on the lodge would be, great central location, if it was bulldozed you could build heaps of apartments, close to embassies and in the upmarket Forrest/Deakin Yarralumla area – its a huge block looking at allhomes. Reckon the new rates should be about $1.5M a year, now if we can the embassies and Govt Depts to cough up…

so what they are actually doing is backfilling the coffers because they could not come up with a workable budget, or they could not stick to the one they had, and so they need everyone to bail them out for their poor financial management?

ummm, I’ve overspent my budget too, can everyone please pay me $2 to fill the coffers back up

cheers

It seems simple to me. Simply under pay the invoice to the tune of the levy you don’t want to pay, and include a polite letter saying why you dont want to pay it.

Yes, you will eventually have to pay it, but you should have extracted more than the value of the levy in extra administrative processing that the government has to do, that it will even things out.

At least that way, even the levy won’t make it into general revenue.

Or am I being juvenile? I can’t tell, it’s what I do best.

Further evidence of poor financial planning and management.