Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said re­cent­ly that the prop­er­ty tax was the right thing to do and that he was pre­pared to lose the elec­tion over it. The Op­po­si­tion has con­sis­tent­ly been against the tax and vot­ed against it in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. And when the time came to vote in the Sen­ate, the Op­po­si­tion again vot­ed against it, one In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor vot­ed against it, sev­en oth­er In­de­pen­dents ab­stained, and on­ly Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vier­ra on the In­de­pen­dent bench vot­ed with Gov­ern­ment.

Land and build­ing tax­es from 1920 to 2009 were small, and peo­ple did not mind pay­ing it. In­deed, pay­ing land and build­ing tax­es was seen as a process of le­git­imis­ing own­er­ship and pay­ing an­nu­al­ly gave a feel­ing of se­cu­ri­ty.

It is very like­ly that if land and build­ing tax­es had been in­creased by 100 per cent, 300 per cent or 500 per cent, few would have ob­ject­ed, and I doubt that any home or prop­er­ty own­er would have had to pay any sum ap­proach­ing $9,000.

From the be­gin­ning, there was re­sis­tance be­cause there was a sus­pi­cion that new prop­er­ty tax­es would not be fair, that in­for­ma­tion gath­ered would be abused, that se­lect­ed in­di­vid­u­als could be tar­get­ed for var­i­ous rea­sons and that if a cit­i­zen was wronged, there would be no guar­an­tee of jus­tice.

None of those sus­pi­cions have gone away. The par­lia­men­tary vot­ing re­flect­ed lin­ger­ing con­cerns. There re­mains a shroud of sus­pi­cion and a shred of anger about prop­er­ty tax.

Some would have wel­comed a 1 per cent re­duc­tion. The res­i­den­tial tax rate is 2 per cent now, ac­cord­ing to law.

But that does not solve the prob­lem of scep­ti­cism and sus­pi­cion. Be­cause 2 per cent of one per­son’s prop­er­ty can be much less or much more, than 2 per cent of the neigh­bour’s prop­er­ty. So 2% of what? How are you go­ing to ar­rive at what you take 2 per cent of?

How will con­sis­ten­cy be guar­an­teed? How will fair­ness be achieved? How will ar­bi­trari­ness be avoid­ed? How is po­lit­i­cal, par­ti­san and per­son­al re­la­tions go­ing to im­pact on con­sis­ten­cy, fair­ness and ar­bi­trari­ness?

As an ex­am­ple, the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA), it seems, is a den of cor­rup­tion, and one of its jobs is to pro­tect and se­cure the State and to pro­vide safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty for the cit­i­zen! Care­ful se­lec­tion of in­di­vid­u­als with­in that agency did not elim­i­nate cor­rup­tion.

How will we keep in­di­vid­u­als and in­sti­tu­tions aligned to val­u­a­tion and as­sess­ment hon­est, clean and free from cor­rup­tion? How will we pro­tect the cit­i­zen? How will we keep the sys­tem free from po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence?

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so said that if we did not in­tro­duce the prop­er­ty tax, we might have to ap­proach the IMF for help. So, the pur­pose of the prop­er­ty tax is rev­enue. It is, there­fore, even more im­por­tant that cit­i­zens be pro­tect­ed by a sys­tem that is trans­par­ent, fair and just with the nec­es­sary checks and bal­ances built in. Most cit­i­zens do not have any such sense of as­sur­ance.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so knows that prop­er­ty tax may add rev­enue but no forex.

The Op­po­si­tion has pledged to re­peal this law, so as gov­ern­ment, they will lose this rev­enue. They have not in­di­cat­ed what they will in­tro­duce in­stead, to gen­er­ate in­come or to give peo­ple a sense of com­fort as tax­pay­ing own­ers of prop­er­ties.

There are valid rea­sons to be scep­ti­cal and con­cerned about the prop­er­ty tax and how it will be op­er­a­tionalised. But a fair tax for prop­er­ties is nec­es­sary in a sys­tem of or­der.

The Gov­ern­ment knows what the re­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion means for forex rev­enue. That prob­lem will fol­low them in­to the next term, should they get a third term.

The Op­po­si­tion will find out, if they are called to gov­ern­ment, that the sit­u­a­tion is much more dire than they ever con­ceived, and that high com­pe­tence and clar­i­ty are ab­solute­ly re­quired.

What the peo­ple are re­belling against though, is that they can­not see where their tax­es are go­ing and how they are ben­e­fit­ing. They are dis­ori­ent­ed by the rec­om­men­da­tions for big salary in­creas­es for min­is­ters and par­lia­men­tar­i­ans but 4 per cent for pub­lic ser­vants. And it may well be that gun vi­o­lence, gangs and mur­ders are much more stress­ful to them than prop­er­ty tax.

Or maybe it’s the dis­turb­ing com­bi­na­tion of liv­ing in per­pet­u­al fear and in­se­cu­ri­ty, liv­ing dai­ly with eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial dis­tress, and still be­ing asked to pay more for noth­ing at all, with cor­rup­tion all around and po­lit­i­cal commess per­sis­tent.