Taxation in Australia

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 th...