NO.071

LABOR’S BENEFIT FOR SYDNEYSIDERS – NO-ONE ELSE NEED APPLY

The citizens of Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia,

Tasmania, ACT, Northern Territory, as well as people from regional towns

in New South Wales will all be discriminated against under a Labor proposal

to introduce a new benefit which will only be available to residents

of Sydney but no-one else.

Two weeks ago Mr Latham announced a new Labor policy to increase the

First Home Owners Grant by $5000 for Sydneysiders who work in “essential

services”, and he named police officers, nurses, childcare workers

and teachers as eligible categories (Sunday Telegraph, 3 August, 2003).

This is bad policy for three main reasons:-

1. A bureaucratic nightmare – What is classed as an essential service?

   Which occupations do not consider themselves to be essential services?

   Why are childcare workers essential and ambulance drivers not?

   What about workers in water, gas and electricity? Food? Builders?

   Taxi drivers?

2. The scheme is unfunded – Treasury estimate the cost of the scheme

   (for the present cohort of first homebuyers in Mr Latham’s selected

   occupations in Sydney) as being between $50-$100m. Mr Latham’s

   supposed offset comes to the grand total of $1.5m per annum. The

   massive cost adds to Labor’s Budget Black Hole from its $500m health

   shortfall, $300m education shortfall, and $700m Coastguard shortfall.

3. Why should Sydneysiders get a benefit that the rest of Australia

   is ineligible to apply for? Why should the citizens of Perth, Brisbane,

   Darwin, Hobart, Melbourne, Adelaide, Wagga, Ballarat, Alice Springs,

   Dubbo, Toowoomba etc, not to mention every farmer in Australia,

   be paying for a benefit that none of them and none of their children

   can apply for?

Mr Latham’s “policy” smacks of the sort of “economic”

thinking that led to previously ridiculed proposals like the PET tax

and the GST exemption zones.

CANBERRA

13 August 2003