Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

For the member for Moreton’s information, because he might not understand: 100 per cent of GST revenue is distributed to state governments. We went to the Australian people with the fact that if they re-elected us we would introduce this tax—and it cost us a lot of seats. For years thereafter, the opposition said that they were going to have a rollback. They opposed it even after it was established and in existence. Our leader, John Howard, said, ‘You the people of Australia have to absorb this tax for the purpose of ensuring state governments can look after their schools, their hospitals and their law and order responsibilities.’ They got the money but they do not have any truancy officers. And here we are in the federal parliament legislating to get stuck into individuals for the purpose of replacing the inadequacy and, in fact, the obstructionism of state education agencies to this point in time.

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