David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer ) Share this | Hansard source

Sometimes, in moments of rage and excess, the truth comes out, and we saw it there from the member for North Sydney. They have been trying to conceal exactly what their true plan is, but we saw it in all its glory. The member for North Sydney just said, 'We're going to have to come in and fix up the mess.' Well, we refute the suggestion there is a mess, but I will come to that in a minute. But what he also said was, 'We are going to jack up taxes.' That is what he said. It is on the Hansard. He has finally come clean. Maybe he did not put that in the memo that he sent out to each and every one of you, when he said: 'Listen, guys. Whatever you do, don't have any contact with the Parliamentary Budget Office, because this time round they might actually record it and they might hold us to account for the unaffordable spending promises that we make.' You heard it there from the member for North Sydney: they are going to jack up taxes if they get elected. You do not have to be Einstein to figure this one out.

The Leader of the Opposition got up and said in his budget-in-reply speech, 'We're going to set up a tax review committee.' Here I was thinking that they are so single-minded in their determination to jack up the GST and broaden the base of the GST. We know how determined they are to do that, because it is in their DNA. They were the ones that came into this place years ago and put the GST in place. In fact, they did not go nearly as far as they wanted to go. They had to compromise at the time, and in compromising they did not put the GST on fresh food or health and education services. And you know what? They did not even get the rate that they were really looking for, so they had to settle for 10 per cent. Now they see the great opportunity to come back, have a second crack at it and finish off the job—to broaden the base of the GST and slug Australian families by hitting people with higher costs and higher taxes on their health, their education services, their school fees, their private health insurance, their medicines and their medical aids. These are the things that they want to slug Australian families with.

They come into this place day after day and say, 'We are going to save this country money by reducing red tape on small business.' Well, I will give you a tip: never before was there a government that strangled small businesses across this country quite like the Howard government when they introduced the GST. They strangled small businesses.

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