Community Alliance Party

The Community Alliance Party is committed to a ‘back to basics’ approach that aims to direct government spending to the essential functions and services required to meet the needs of the community.

The current ACT Government has not spent our money wisely, especially during the past four years. It has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on unnecessary expenditure, including a single-lane arterial road (Gungahlin Drive Extension), the appeal against Coroner Maria Doogan, ‘Firelink’, the busways project, hospital pay parking, ‘Rhodium’, a luxury detention centre, waste-water recycling, the arboretum, the ‘Live in Canberra’ campaign, advertising, and assorted statues.

The ACT Government has also cut back on essential services highly valued by the community—including 23 schools, ACT shop fronts, and the Griffith Library—while increasing all sorts of taxes, charges and fees. Many cuts have proven to be false economies. The Alliance will work with government and the community to develop long-term budgeting strategies that reflect community priorities and provide for recurrent funding of essential services like education, health, infrastructure, and the environment.

Accountability

• The Alliance will demand transparency and public accountability in all budgetary processes.
• The Alliance will insist that the ACT Government provides good value for money to taxpayers by focusing on the efficient and effective supply of services to the community.

Responsibility

• The Alliance will deliver responsible budgets, recognising that this sometimes entails countercyclical investment to ameliorate the adverse effects of booms and busts in the business cycle.
• The Alliance will investigate and implement measures to broaden the revenue base and steadily reduce the ACT Government’s financial dependence on returns from land sales (a diminishing resource).
• The Alliance will develop a co-operative regional approach with neighbouring communities to share costs on tourism promotion, national parks, water infrastructure, hospitals and other common interests.
• The Alliance will ensure that the ACT Government’s investment portfolio is progressively converted to ethical investments.
• Expenditure on matters that should be a Federal responsibility will be avoided.

Equity

• The Alliance will help renters to buy their own homes by abolishing stamp duty for first-time buyers who become owner-occupiers of residential property valued at five times the median income (currently $375,000), and reducing stamp duty on all other owner-occupied residential properties to match equivalent charges in New South Wales.
• The Alliance will progressively introduce affordable cuts in rates, charges, levies, fees, and duties for government services to ensure that the tax burden is distributed equitably amongst ACT residents and businesses.
• The Alliance will match the payroll tax rate in New South Wales.