Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House:

(1)

notes that:

(a)

as a result of the introduction of The New Tax System on 1 July 2000, every State and Territory will be better off in 2006-07 than they would have been had tax reform not been implemented;

(b)

since the introduction of the GST in 2000-01, Western Australia has received around $18.4 billion in GST revenue and is estimated to receive a further $3.9 billion in 2006-07;

(c)

the Western Australian Government has benefited the most from the mining boom among the States, collecting more revenue from royalties, including petroleum revenue from the North West Shelf, than any other State, and is expected to collect almost $1.9 billion in royalty revenue in 2005-06 and over $2.2 billion in 2006-07;

(d)

the Western Australian Government collected $2.36 billion in 2005-06—almost double what it collected three years earlier;

(e)

Western Australia is estimated to be the highest taxing State in Australia on a per capita basis in 2005-06 and is set to remain one of the highest over the forward years;

(f)

as part of the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Reform of Commonwealth-State Financial Relations, the States were to abolish nine State taxes; and

(g)

the Western Australian Government has failed to implement this agreement and abolish all of these taxes; and

(2)

calls on the Western Australian Government to:

(a)

immediately abolish Mortgage Duty, Rental Duty and Non-real Conveyance Duty as agreed in the GST agreement;

(b)

take immediate steps to reduce the burden on home buyers by substantially decreasing Stamp Duty and associated land charges; and

(c)

reduce the overall tax burden on Western Australians from the highest in the nation.

Western Australia is in the grip of a once-in-a-lifetime economic boom. The demand for commodities from China and, to a lesser extent, India has fuelled a resources bonanza that has resulted in double-digit economic growth. This has resulted in a massive inflow of revenue to the Western Australian Labor government—through no doing of their own—on a number of fronts, including massively increased GST revenues, massively increased mining royalties and massively increased property transfer taxes.

You would expect that these massive increases in revenue would allow the Western Australian government the latitude to reduce the overall taxation burden on Western Australians; yet, sadly, the opposite has been the case. Instead of reducing taxes, the Western Australian government have become the highest taxing government in the nation. They are far and away the highest taxing government that Western Australia has ever seen. Their demand for revenue is obscene. When Labor came to power in 2001, the Liberal government was collecting $1,500 per person in state taxes. The Carpenter government, in contrast, collects $2½ thousand for every man, woman and child. This is a massive $1,000 extra per person. In an environment where property prices have increased 50 per cent in the last two years, the Western Australian government have increased the rate of stamp duty to be now one of the highest in the nation. Their stamp duty windfall is almost double what they budgeted for. They have also collected enormously increased mining royalties and enormously increased GST revenues—both far in excess of what was actually budgeted for.

This begs the question: where has all this money actually gone? Government propaganda would have you believe that it has been spent on infrastructure or on more essential services, but all Western Australians know this to be wrong. In my own electorate of Stirling, the state government fails to fund essential infrastructure such as much-needed overpasses for the Reid Highway. Anyone who visits a state school will see the neglect of the Western Australian government. It is up to the Commonwealth now to fund building works through our Investing in our Schools program. Indeed, it is very difficult to identify any area of administration that the Western Australian government is actually prepared to take responsibility for. Any problem, any request for action, is met with the same response—let the federal government do it. Yet the Carpenter government continues to spend like drunken sailors. It has exceeded its spending targets in every one of its five years in office. In the last financial year it increased spending by seven per cent above the allowance that had already been made for inflation and population growth.

The real answer to where all this money has gone is in more bureaucrats. We have a massively expanding public workforce in Western Australia. In fact, the government there employs 17 extra workers every single day—that is, a massive 86 extra workers every single week. Again, if this workforce increase were going to more police officers, more teachers or more nurses it might be defensible, but sadly these new workers are not employed in frontline services that deliver anything to the people of Western Australia. They are employed in creating more bloated bureaucracies for ministers—an extra 17 per cent increase in the workforce of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, an extra 11 per cent in the Department of Treasury and Finance. The record wages bill that this massively expanded public workforce has created will be a millstone around the neck of any successive Western Australian government.

The Western Australian government must take urgent steps to reform their gluttonous taxation policies. They can start by adhering to the original GST agreement and immediately abolish mortgage duty, rental duty or non-real conveyancing duty. They must stop their great rip-off through property taxes, reduce the rate of stamp duty and provide some relief for first home buyers. There is absolutely no justification for Western Australia to have the highest stamp duty rates in the nation. This mismanagement cannot continue. Once the boom ends, WA will be left with an uncompetitive tax regime— (Time expired)

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