I know you're all going to love this one ... it highlights perfectly the absurdity of the GAIC proposal. The land advertised at the link below is a 20.5 hectare parcel in Point Cook and only 15 minutes from the CBD. The agents have listed the fact that no GAIC is payable as a major selling point. The sale of land like this that is ripe for immediate development incurs no GAIC, while the sale of land that could be decades away from development triggers the $95,000 per hectare charge.

GAIC free land for sale.

A group of Taxed Out protestors armed with signs and banners greeted Tim Pallas, Member for Tarneit, at a playground opening in Hoppers Crossing today. Mr Pallas was even handed a "Tell Brumby He's Dreaming" bumper sticker. Well done team!

M3 Property Strategists report on the impact of the GAIC, December 2009

Read what M3 Property, one of Australia's largest independent property advisors has to say about the GAIC.

"... purchasers and owners need to be careful when buying rural land in anticipation of future rezoning to urban development land regardless of location, as the GAIC is not just a tax on Melbourne urban development, it has state wide implications."

The Victorian Labor Government presented several amendments to the GAIC bill in the Upper House last week. They are only superficial and do not relate to the "first sale" GAIC trigger point, and therefore do not address our main concerns. Despite the attempts by the government to ride roughshod over parliamentary process and push the bill to a vote, the opposition parties wanted more time to consider the amendments and so voted for an adjournment. The matter will be held over until the next sitting of Parliament on 2nd February. It is unclear if the debate will resume in the Upper House or if it will be automatically referred to the Dispute Resolution Committee as by that time the Bill will have expired.

Here is a brief summary of the proposed amendments:

- A refund facility with a 3 year time limit will apply for land on which GAIC was paid but is later removed from the contribution area. (This is not much help for land that is sold now but not developed for 5, 10 or 20 years.)

- In circumstances where the purchaser of land deducted the GAIC amount from the purchase price (yes the government has finally admitted that the GAIC will be deducted from the purchase price) the taxpayer is taken to be the vendor of that land and so would be the recipient of any applicable refund. This is in direct contradiction to the Government's claims that "developers will now pay the GAIC".

- The premium interest rate applied to GAIC deferrals will be 6%, rather than being set by the Treasurer. So the interest rate payable on deferred GAIC debts will be the market interest rate PLUS 6%.

- The Treasurer no longer needs to approve staged payments over $2 million. Approval still needed by Planning Minister for ALL staged payments.

- The operation of the Growth Areas Authority will no longer be funded by GAIC revenue.

The full Upper House debate is available on Hansard at the links below:

Upper House debate 8.12.09

Upper House debate - members statement

Upper House debate 10.12.09 (At the end of this transcript it says that the matter has been adjourned until 17th December, but it has actually been adjourned until 2nd February)