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Land and Property Taxation in Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea Australia: The main functions of local government in Australia are to provide and maintain roads, street lighting, rubbish collection and disposal, maternal and child health care centers, libraries, and recreational facilities. It may also subsidize certain educational and counseling services, although education is not regarded as primarily a local responsibility. Nor is public security. Some local functions are supported, not through property taxation, but through user charges. Some Australian municipalities were rating on unimproved land values as early as the 1850s. But as a result of the impact of Henry George's writings, single-tax leagues, as they were often called, began proliferating about 1890. The concept was spread by such able and energetic advocates as Max Hirsch, who abandoned a successful career in commerce in order to do so. George's three-month speaking tour in Australia in 1895 accelerated this trend. Its growth was halted by the outbreak of World War I, and from then on, exacerbated no doubt by the welfare state, a decline in the number and membership of the leagues set in.Almost from the beginning, some land value capture for public benefit in Australia has been obtained through the leasing out of Crown lands. A graduated federal land tax was introduced in 1910, with the stated intention of breaking up the large estates. The first [pound]5,000 of unimproved value was exempt, and the rates were low except for very large estates, the owners of which frequently escaped the tax by nominally subdividing them among family members.. As mentioned above, it was abolished in 1952. State land taxes were introduced into the six states in the following order: South Australia, 1884; New South Wales, 1895; Tasmania, 1907; Western Australia, 1907; Victoria, 1910; and Queensland, 1915. They vary considerably, apply only to certain properties, and suffer from serious administrative defects. By far the most important are the local land taxes or "site value rates." All six states permit their adoption by local option; Tasmania is the only one in which no jurisdiction has availed itself of this choice, although strong efforts have been made there to promote it. Its use began in New South Wales and Queensland in 1890, and is universal in both states; in Western Australia it began in 1902, and is predominant there. In South Australia and Victoria net annual value rating is predominant, but site value rating has existed in the former since 1893 and in the latter since 1919. New Zealand: Historically, New Zealand was long known for its advanced social legislation. It pioneered female suffrage, and was among the first countries to adopt social security, old age pensions, and universal health care. A measure of land-value taxation was introduced even before the publication of Henry George's Progress and Poverty in 1879. New Zealand's export production provides jobs for only about 10 percent of its workforce, yet full employment has long been an overriding political goal.
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