Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

No, I am just wondering. I am curious. I would say to the minister for resources: if you want to keep your deals then the key aspect of that for this bill is that the states continue to receive the revenue out of the GST rather than having it shanghaied by the federal government.

In conclusion, the opposition in both Victoria and New South Wales have expressed serious concerns about this agreement and there are still enormous uncertainties about the terms of this agreement. As well, this is a government that is more and more addicted to spending and looks all the time for new revenue-raising sources. Look no further than today. Yesterday the Assistant Treasurer said that he was going to investigate applying the GST to online purchases and then he scurried out onto ABC TV today and desperately tried to recover the situation by saying, ‘We’re not going to place a tax on online purchases.’ That is the way the government’s tax policy is framed. It cannot hold a policy on tax from midnight to dawn, let alone hold a policy on tax from budget time to election time, like the mining tax, or hold a policy on tax for six months in relation to carbon emissions.

This is a confused government. It does not know what it stands for and therefore is incapable of delivering policy that people believe in. So when it comes to this initiative on health, with a lack of detail in the bill and a lack of certainty in relation to tens of billions of dollars, the coalition will oppose this bill because it is bad policy and we would ask the parliament to support our second reading amendment, which defers any further consideration of the bill until such time as additional information is provided by the government.

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