Federal bureaucrats cash in as taxpayers fund their stamp duty when they buy Canberra homes
EXCLUSIVE: FEDERAL bureaucrats granted an outrageous perk that forces taxpayers to cover their stamp duty bill when they buy a new Canberra home.
NSW
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FEDERAL bureaucrats have been granted an outrageous perk that forces taxpayers to cover their entire stamp duty bill when they buy a new home in the nation’s capital.
The obscene windfall, revealed exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, also includes taxpayers footing the bill for public servants’ real estate commissions, legal costs and advertising fees. It is part of the taxpayer-funded carrot used to lure department secretaries to work in the nation’s capital for demanding politicians — on top of generous salaries that run into hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
In a jarring political double standard, the same taxpaying Australians struggling to break into the housing market, partly because of high stamp duty and associated costs of buying a home, are subsiding highly paid public servants to help them buy an ACT residence.
The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet said the Remuneration Tribunal Departmental Secretary Determination provided entitlements for secretaries in relation to relocation assistance.
The determination pays the real estate agent’s commission, advertising costs, solicitor’s fees, stamp duty and auction costs.
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The stamp duty on the median Canberra house price of $684,395 is $22,679.75, and is $10,007 on the city’s median unit price of $413,697, although discounts apply on newly built homes. Standard conveyancing fees range from $1000 to $2000, auction fees range from $600 to $1000, and agents’ fees run from 2 per cent to 2.5 per cent of a home’s purchase price.
While federal politicians have never faced more scrutiny about how they spend taxpayer money, public servants do not have to publicly detail what perks they have received.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has pledged to introduce an independent parliamentary authority that will monitor MPs’ use of public money, which will include monthly disclosure. However, there is no plan to make public the perks that senior public servants receive or how they spend taxpayers’ money.
Independent senator Nick Xenophon said the largesse needed to end, given that many Australians had to travel interstate for work and dug into their own savings to pay stamp duty.
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“I would have thought what department secretaries get paid would be more than enough to pay for their own stamp duty,” he said.
A spokesman said the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet had not paid any costs towards the sale or purchase of residences owned by PM & C secretaries, before, during or after an appointment in the past five years.
“PM & C does not have details for other secretaries within the APS. Information relevant to secretaries is managed by each department/agency,” he said.
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