Emergency Services Levy

Mr TRELOAR (Flinders) (15:38): I rise today to speak on a subject that has been the topic of a good part of question time today, at least, and dominated the airwaves and the print media for the last few weeks, that is, the emergency services levy. Every property owner and many businesses in South Australia are in the process of receiving their emergency services levy notice. They have been going out over the last few weeks; some are only just arriving at the moment and being opened now by property owners.

I have to say that the number of phone calls and emails that my electorate office, and every electorate office, has been receiving over this time would indicate that there is a great deal of surprise and anger at the increase that has been built into this levy—this levy that in a way has become a tax. It seems to me that it has become a land tax that has been introduced by stealth. It is a land tax by any other name, and we cannot get away from that.

The Treasurer was asked a number of questions today in question time relating to constituents of members from this side of the house who had particular instances they wanted to query. Certainly, a constituent in my electorate contacted me and suggested that his emergency services levy has gone up 588 per cent since last year, quite an extraordinary increase. The member for Goyder also indicated that he had been contacted by a constituent, who admittedly owned farming property of some value, and the increase in his emergency services levy is 733 per cent, which is quite extraordinary.

The average householder has also seen significant increases. For a $400,000 capital value house, they are now paying $241, which is an increase of 163 per cent on last year. If you have a half a million dollar home, and many houses in metropolitan Adelaide and even in country areas are approaching that value, the emergency services levy is now $280, up from $102 last year, which is an 183 per cent increase, and so it goes on. A $750,000 house is up 219 per cent, and a million dollar home is up 242 per cent.

The Treasurer today very much played the blame game, attempting to put the reasoning behind this increase very much at the feet of the federal government, and it is simply not true. The state Labor government is desperately trying to blame this decision to double and triple the emergency services levy on the federal budget cuts, which are largely four years away; in fact, through smoke and mirrors suggested by the Treasurer, do not actually exist at all. In fact, after evidence and questioning during the Budget and Finance Committee, the Treasury CEO, Brett Rowse, confirmed that federal funds to South Australia will actually increase by $2 billion per year by 2017-18—and that was in evidence to the Budget and Finance Committee. Mr Rowse agreed that total federal budget grants in South Australia will be $9.9 billion, which, as I said, is an increase of over $2 billion from 2013-14.

What the Treasurer is suggesting is simply incorrect. This is a land tax by any other name. Along with the amalgamation of emergency services which has been suggested by the Minister for Emergency Services in recent days, it is going to make it really difficult for services such as the CFS and the SES to continue to operate in the same way they have been operating in the past.

My feeling is that it will have an impact on volunteers and on the way in which those organisations are run. Centralisation does not give any savings; that has been proven over a long period of time. I urge that all of our constituents out there in the country areas and even in the metropolitan area make known to the minister their thoughts on the amalgamation of the services. That submission process is open until some time in October.

Ultimately, once again, we get back to Labor mismanagement of the state finances. Obviously, we have a state deficit forecast at $1.2 billion and a state debt forecast at $14 billion, and this is an effort by the state Labor government to claw back some of that cash.