Letters to the Editor
AFR, Wednesday June 27th
Michael Musgrave’s new value capture tax will hit every development in Parramatta [$] (25/6 AFR) made a strong case for his constituents. It’s the Australian way for property developers to make rezoning windfalls in their sleep.
Musgrave musters every scaremongering tactic in the developers playbook over the Parramatta City Council’s brave move to claim 50% of rezoning windfalls delivered by the bureaucrats ‘golden pen tick’. From destroying pensioners investments to bumping up the price of housing, he mentions everything but the long standing value capture arrangement in the ACT, where 75% of any windfall gain goes to the public. Affordability did not plummet in the ACT when this was enacted. In fact the Land Tax reforms underway there are already saving new mortgagees $2,000 p.a.
The sooner we raise more money from rezoning windfalls (unearned incomes), the better. Shouldn’t the public get the lion’s share of any such uplift, since the developer did little more than a few week’s work for what could be a multi-million dollar payday?
Karl Fitzgerald
North Melbourne
