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

I start today by taking to task the premise of this MPI, and that is 'the government's plan to harm household budgets with a 15 per cent GST'. The government does not have a plan to introduce a 15 per cent GST. We are having a debate about the best tax system for our country, going forward—a mature debate, one would hope. But I lost count of the number of times the member for Bendigo used the words 'rule in' and 'rule out'.

Some members on the opposite side would remember Mr Ken Henry, who was the Secretary of the Treasury, who produced a report about our tax system which he gave to the then Labor government, and the government sat on for some three months and, in that period of three months, ruled out just about every tax measure in that report, bar one. That was the mining tax, which I will come back to in a little while.

This GST debate, this tax debate, seems to have been going on just about all my adult life. In 1985, we had the then Labor Treasurer Paul Keating promoting option C of his taxation paper, which he was rolled on by his own party. We then had John Hewson in 1993 bring forward a comprehensive reform package and—perhaps a tactical mistake—release it a little bit too early. After some initial very strong support, Mr Keating, then the Prime Minister, managed to politically destroy that package. Then, in 1998, we had John Howard and Peter Costello. Mr Howard had the political skills and the political courage, along with the Treasurer of the day, to introduce this comprehensive and probably most significant reform of our tax system, and we are still benefiting from that today.

What did the Labor Party do in response to that tax reform? They had a campaign called 'roll-back', which was the backbone of the ALP tax policy for many years. It was simply: 'We'll just roll it back.' After a certain period of time, that became unsustainable, but I am still not sure that they have moved on. Perhaps they have moved on, because we know that the then Treasurer and now opposition Treasury spokesman did commission some research on a 12.5 per cent GST. It is a shame that he has not released that research to the rest of the parliament so we could all have a good look at it.

So, what is Labor offering in terms of the tax debate? We know that they want to reintroduce a carbon tax. With their inflated targets, we are talking about a hit of around $600 billion to the economy and a hit of around $6,000 per family.

We had the mining tax, which as I mentioned was the only tax initiative that came out of the Henry review. While it did not raise any revenue, it damaged the investment environment and drove investment capital away from the Australian mining industry. Certainly, people in my electorate will take a long time to forget the mining tax. There is the multinational tax policy that they have brought forward which many people in the business community know will just drive away investment again.

And while we are crying crocodile tears about low-income families, a packet of cigarettes under the Labor proposal will cost people $40, and many of them are on low incomes. That equates to a lot of money per week. If we are talking about damage or impact on low-income families, a $40-a-day cigarette habit is pretty damaging. What are we really trying to achieve at the end of this debate? We are looking for a better tax system, a more efficient tax system and a fairer tax system which will allow the country to grow, will grow our economy, will grow the number of jobs and will grow the number of people in work—people who have the dignity of work and who are earning good incomes.

I want to close by noting that any GST changes will need the agreement of all the states. As a very proud Western Australian, I know that the Premier of Western Australia, Colin Barnett, will not agree to any change to the GST base or level without a fundamental change to the way the GST is distributed. As you would know, Deputy Speaker Goodenough, WA is currently receiving around 30c in the dollar per dollar of GST that we pay, and that system is unsustainable. I know that any change to the GST will see WA receive a much fairer share.

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