The Nationals Member for Murray Plains, Peter Walsh, has labelled the new Emergency Services Levy as a land tax by stealth – targeting the farming community in particular – and as “socialism gone mad in Victoria”.
He said the new ‘levy’ is the Allan Labor government “conniving to push through an unprecedented and deliberate land tax on farms”.
“Agricultural land, which is what feeds and clothes this state, and this country, has rightly been exempt for this traditionally pernicious cash grab for obvious reasons.”
Mr Walsh was on the steps of Parliament House on Tuesday to join CFA volunteers and farmers protesting the tax and then took their message to the government with a damning Member’s Statement on Wednesday.
He thanked all those who made the effort to be in Melbourne for the protest and said no-one should be under any illusion about this being a fair levy for all emergency services.
“This is a new tax to fund the faceless bureaucrats of the Victorian Labor government,” Mr Walsh said.
“Despite what those on the other side of the house may say, this is not about the volunteers; it is about filling a huge black hole in the Victorian budget,” he explained.
“The volunteers were on the front steps of Parliament, incensed when they hear those in the government say this is a tax for them.
“It is not.
“Department secretaries are rubbing their hands together with the nearly $2 billion they will have to spend out of this tax.”
Mr Walsh said the Allan government has effectively now introduced land tax on farming land – and at the same time also increased land tax for all those who have been brought into the land tax payment scheme in the past two years.
He said this is now about every property in Victoria being hit with an increased land tax.
“With this tax the Premier and her bloated bureaucracy are ignoring the voices of everyday Victorians who are saying enough is enough,” Mr Walsh added.
“Labor has wasted tens of billions of dollars on cost blowouts on its ridiculous and corruption-riddled major projects in Melbourne, and now they want to have a land tax to make up that huge black hole,” he said.
“This is Labor showing its contempt for the common people and giving us a frightening glimpse of its socialist lunacy.”
CAPTION:
Peter Walsh at this week’s emergency services tax protest on the steps of Parliament House with Diggora farmer Cameron McPherson.
