Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

He wants me to stop there; that will do! I love it when the member for Mitchell stands up and says 'What Labor has to do is tell the parliament how they will respond to get rid of the policy that we will not tell you we have.' That is his argument. There is a demand for Labor to say how they would subsequently respond without the government saying what they would do. The other thing that I love is when he refers to modelling that was done. There is something in common between the modelling he referred to and the modelling that is in the paper today. The modelling that he referred to was Labor wanting to model a Liberal Party proposal, and what is in the paper today is the Liberal Party wanting to model a Liberal Party proposal. That is what is in the paper today. All the times we have had Treasurers stand there looking back at Labor and saying, 'Oh, the only modelling that was ever done was when you were in government and you were trying to cost what we were talking about,' they were holding modelling of their own to prepare for their own proposal and not letting the Australian people know.

It is no surprise that they did not want the Australian people to know, because if you expand the base and increase the rate of the GST you end up with something that households cannot afford, the budget cannot afford and the economy cannot afford. On household considerations, NATSEM modelling shows that people in the lowest 20 per cent of income brackets pay seven per cent more. People in the highest 20 per cent of income brackets pay just three per cent more. That is why they support it. It is right in line with the economics that the member for Mitchell has believed in all his political life—the magic of trickle-down economics, the whole concept that the more you earn the lower the percentage of your income you should pay in taxation. That is exactly what is delivered by the GST being expanded in its base and being increased in its rate.

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