Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

Why is it that the government are not honest with the Australian public and admit it is their tax? If they do admit that, as everyone else accepts—including the Australian Bureau of Statistics, who counts it—then the proportion of tax under this government has increased and will continue to increase despite the tax cuts that are included in the budget. They are the highest taxing government in the history of this country. The only way in which this government can try to pretend they are not is by ignoring and not counting the $40 billion of GST revenue. No person in business can ignore the tax. No person can pretend it is not there. They have to collect it and they have to go through the paperwork to satisfy the government’s needs, but this government want the luxury of pretending it is not their tax.

We did have an attempt on the part of the government to not have the tax imposed. I remember when Mr Macfarlane, a former minister for small business, wanted to run a fundraising function for his seat of Groom and operated on the basis of advice from the Liberal Party in Queensland that GST was not required to be paid. I remember something like that. There was supposed to have been a tax report clearing the minister of these wrongdoings. That report has never seen the light of day. This was a former minister for small business who thought it was such a fantastic tax that every small business in the country should collect it and pay it, except his FEC. What sort of double standard is that, Mr Deputy Speaker? Six years on from the introduction of this GST, we now have a massive compliance burden. The government has not reduced red tape by 50 per cent. It has not reduced it at all. It has massively increased it.

What did the government then embark on? It said that it would have another review. The Banks review was established in October 2005, it reported and the report was released in April 2006. It highlighted many of the concerns of small business concerning regulation, red tape and compliance. This bill attempts to adopt a number of the recommendations. But I want to use the time that is left to me to go to the GST compliance issue, because I think this is terribly important and there is an easy solution. Labor has been proposing it since 2001. It is called BAS Easy.

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