1. Addresses the following deficiencies and incongruities which currently characterise public revenue raising in Australia:
   • the inordinate dependence upon a revenue source which inherently penalises work, skill, enterprise, self-reliance and saving
   • the manifestly unequal scope for tax minimisation (and avoidance)
   • the increasing vulnerability of the revenue base to erosion by means beyond the control of national economies
   • the ever-increasing complexity of tax legislation
   • the exceedingly high compliance costs, particularly for small enterprises
   • the distinctive impacts of payroll tax on employment and indirect taxes on business inputs
   • the discriminatory impact on state land taxes
   • the exacerbation of urban sprawl by local government rate based on improved capital values
   • the failure to capture massive and inflationary windfall profits conferred on landowners and developers by public planning decisions
   • the vulnerability of the environment to "development" motivated by the prospect of speculative land value profits
   • the inadequacy of funds available to fairly compensate property owners disadvantaged by public planning decisions
   • the inordinate diversion of national savings into speculative property investment
   • the cumulative impact of unearned land value profits upon socio-economic inequality
     
2. Reviews the rationale of public revenue raising, and highlights the contradiction evident in a society seeking solution to structural unemployment and socio-economic inequality through ever-increasing encroachment upon the finite natural environment.
3. Argues that a gradual shift away from taxes on productive labour and capital towards charges upon the consumption of land and other finite natural resources (rather than upon the consumption of socially desirable goods and services) would mitigate the foregoing deficiencies and incongruities and establish Australian public revenue raising on an environmentally responsible base that was demonstrably transparent, simple and cost-effective, equitable, efficient and incapable of avoidance.

P. D. Day, LL.B, Dip TCP, LFRAPI
Hon. R. Else-Mitchell, LL.B, D. Litt, CMG, QC
B. Kavanagh, AVLE (Val.)
J. D. Tucker, BA, M.Pub.Ad.

(The full text of this submission is available on request. Further amplification can be found in LAND : the elusive quest for social justice. Taxation reform and a sustainable planetary environment, Day, P.D: 1995, Australian Academic Press, Brisbane, obtainable from book stores or from the author)