Island Plan changes need a windfall tax

From Daniel Wimberley.

ENVIRONMENT Minister Rob Duhamel wants to rewrite the Island Plan by rezoning green fields and glasshouse sites, just two years after the Plan was approved by the States (after a week-long debate, I might add).

This is just the latest move in the policy of more, more, more adopted by the Growth Party for many years now, in complete disregard of common sense, of what the public wants and of what the Island can handle.

I suggest that in order to meet the legitimate concerns of Islanders, before any debate on the Island Plan revision, two conditions should be met.

The first is that the States must agree measures to tax the increase in land value caused by rezoning, before any such rezoning is discussed.

This windfall tax would achieve three things. First, it would replenish the States coffers in a completely pain-free way. The tax would fall on wealth that did not even exist before the rezoning. No one loses anything.

Secondly, it would remove the potential for corruption within the planning system in exact proportion to the scale of the tax. If it were to be levied at 100 per cent then all temptation for corruption would be removed – there would be nothing to be gained in a rezoning decision by anyone. If it was set at 50 per cent then 50 per cent of the incentive for corruption would be removed.

Is it important to remove any perception of corruption, any possibility for corruption from our planning system? Well, looking at some of the extraordinary permissions granted in the past, I believe that it is.

And thirdly, it would reduce the amount needed to be raised in tax from everyone else. Who could disagree with that?

Well our last States Assembly, that’s who, when they rejected this proposal when I brought it. Readers might ask themselves how anyone could vote for the States creating instant millionaires at the expense of those needing housing. What could their motives have been?

The second condition is that before any proposed changes to the Island Plan are debated, the States must agree to stabilise the population at an agreed level, and agree the mechanisms to do this. They have to stop bowing to the vested interests of construction, finance, business and landowners and actually set a proper policy.

Then, and only then, will there be an end to the otherwise endless process of rezoning more and still more land for housing. Then, and only then, will there be any prospect whatsoever of housing all of our people properly without ruining the Island for ever.

But the ruling group have signalled that they want the opposite. The minister responsible for population, Paul Routier, has been reported in the JEP as saying that there should not be any limit.

He says that the extra people are needed to help to pay for the ageing population in spite of the official 2009 figures prepared in 2009 for the debate on population levels, which show that their contribution would be insignificant and that other measures are far more important.

Our rulers plan to build a new financial district. This amounts to a declaration of intent for yet more people to come in.

And in the 2009 population debate ministers airbrushed 2,800 net inward migrants out of existence in the background ‘information’ provided to States Members in a shocking case of making statistics say whatever you want them to say.

How do we stop this wilful and shameless pursuit of a policy of endless population growth?

A good start would be a fair voting system where every vote counted and where every vote was worth the same. Another would be to refuse your vote to those who voted to continue increasing the population and to those who did not support the land windfall tax. (I can send these to anyone interested, the web references are too long.)

Fairness in our tax system by taxing increases in wealth which are completely unearned and undeserved. An end to the failure to tackle the population issue. And a chance of finally solving our chronic housing problem. These could all be ours if the States wanted it to be so.