I want to express my sympathy to Winsome Anderson, Frank Lamattina and their fellow land owners around Clyde at having this new new Labor Party wealth tax slapped on them. It might be called “a contribution” but it is a tax, pure and simple.
The idea that you cannot sell a working farm to someone else to continue running as a working farm without paying a $95,000 per hectare tax is absolutely outrageous. What other small business is subject to such a tax, upon the sale of the business?
Worse still, the so-called GAIC is retrospective. That is like being charged with a crime which wasn’t a crime when you acted – some time in the past, before the law was changed.
But of course the Labor Party is basically a socialist party (to use an old-fashioned word) and considers Winsome and her neighbours to be greedy capitalists, and therefore fair game for extra taxation.
What they actually are is small businesspeople – the heart and soul of the Australian community and the main drivers of our economy.
At least the Coalition Liberal and National Opposition has stood up for landowners. They will try to stop the changes to the Urban Growth Boundaries in the upper house. Shadow Minister Matthew Guy says that an “infrastructure contribution” should only be applied at the end of the process – when land is actually subdivided for new housing, not just because it might be some time in the future. A much more reasonable proposition.
All of that is apart from the silly idea of subdividing traditional intensive farming land – fertile and productive, and near to Melbourne markets. We are grateful that our council has strongly opposed this proposal.
And the rest of us who live in the Green Wedge country of Devon Meadows, Cranbourne South and the Coastal Villages have been warned – your land might be next on Minister Justin Madden’s list.
Do I need to suggest who you might vote for at the State Election next year?
D.H. Jewell,
Cannons Creek.
