Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing and Mental Health) Share this | Hansard source

As Tasmanians, we know the issue about GST just as well as the Western Australians. We have had the rest of the states and the Commonwealth trying to take GST and our fair share away from us for decades. Tasmania relies quite heavily on GST. There's no doubt about that. Tasmanians, compared to the national average, are on lower incomes, are poorer, have worse health outcomes and have worse educational outcomes, sadly, despite investments, particularly from our side when we were in government, in trying to remedy some of that.

The point about our state's revenue that I want to raise today is that our annual budget is around $6 billion and 62 per cent of that comes from Commonwealth revenue. That is a very heavy reliance on Commonwealth revenue for our state. We obviously need this funding to provide the same health and education services that other states expect and receive. Indeed, we know that our health system in Tasmania is currently in crisis. We know that the current state Liberal government and the federal Liberal government are currently underfunding our state's health system. We've had numerous reports about the underfunding of the health system in Tasmania at this point in time. We know that Tasmania cannot afford to lose any funding from GST.

Having said that, we've also acknowledged the issue with Western Australia. The thing about the Labor Party is that we always said the same thing in Tasmania that we said in Western Australia, unlike various government prime ministers and ministers who say one thing in Tasmania and then a different thing in Western Australia, in the hope that they would never be found out. But the reason that we're here today is that this legislation finally has a no-worse-off clause in it for every state and territory. We're very pleased that it has that clause in it. The government got there but was dragged, kicking and screaming. We heard it on rumour because some of the Tasmanian Liberal senators threatened to cross the floor. We talked to the Tasmanian Liberal senators and the other senators in Tasmania. Indeed, the federal Labor team—all of my colleagues and I—wrote to every Tasmanian senator asking them to insist on legislation that Tasmania be no worse off. We have been raising this issue in the media. Prior to the Braddon by-election and prior to the state election, interestingly, we heard very little from the state Liberal government or from our state Liberal senators about GST and making sure that Tasmania actually got a guarantee that we would be no worse off.

Indeed, we had the Liberal state government say before the state election, 'It's not an issue, it's not an issue, it's not an issue.' But after that, when the Productivity Commission delivered its report that was deliberately delayed for the Tasmanian state election, they said, 'Oh, we might have a problem here.' Only Labor has consistently said all the way along that we would have a problem if we didn't get a guarantee that Tasmania would be no worse off. It is only because of Labor that this clause is finally in this legislation. We stood up to the government, we stood up to the Liberal senators, we stood up to the Tasmanian Liberal state government and said: 'We need to insist on this. Our state, long term, cannot afford not to have a 'no worse off' guarantee.' And I'm pleased to see it legislated, finally.

Tasmanians were really shocked, when the PC inquiry came out, in terms of what it would mean for our state. The state government modelling says we'd be $240 million worse off if that had gone ahead. Some of the other modelling on the PC's earlier interim reports had us at up to $1 billion worse off, so we know what is at risk here for Tasmania. I and our shadow Treasurer are on the record that we're concerned about what happens to Tasmania at the end of the transition period covered in this bill. I and my Tasmanian colleagues are particularly concerned and want to make sure that Tasmania's GST share does not fall off a cliff at the end of this transition period. We're also concerned what a new PC inquiry would recommend that would impact Tasmanians adversely. What we don't want to see is a PC inquiry tell us to sell our state owned electricity assets. What we don't want to see is a PC inquiry try and do a population distribution again, because Tasmania would be more than $1 billion worse off a year under that model. We need to do everything that we can and we certainly will be. Hopefully we'll still be in this place in 2026-27 standing up for Tasmania and making sure that, at the end of this transition period, Tasmania's GST fair share does not fall off a cliff. We will be making sure that the PC inquiry, when it's done, takes into account the fact that, when it comes to higher education, 27.5 per cent of Tasmanians aged 15 to 75 have no qualification beyond year 10—27 per cent of our population have no qualifications post year 10.

The majority of Tasmanians have more chronic illness and poorer health outcomes than the majority of Australians. Our hospitals and health system are fundamentally in crisis in our state. We have ambulances ramping at the hospitals. We have massive elective surgery waiting lists, some of the worst in the country. We have report after report saying that our health system in Tasmania—because of our social determinants of health, because of the chronic illnesses, because of the poor health outcomes—is critically underfunded. State and federal Liberal governments need to do more to ensure that Tasmanians get the services they need, equivalent to the services of other Australians. That's today, with the current GST and that 62 per cent reliance on Commonwealth input to our state budget. Of that 62 per cent, 41 per cent is GST revenue and 21 per cent comes from other Commonwealth payments.

The other thing we're concerned about is that the Commonwealth might try to claw back those other payments to make up for these top-ups. We're concerned that other funding instruments and partnerships may be clawed back by the Liberal government, because we have seen it before. We've seen the Liberal government try to undo agreements and claw back money from states before. Tasmanians know that the federal Liberal government cannot be trusted. That is why we needed the 'no worse off' clause in this legislation and that's the reason we can agree to it today—because that's actually in the legislation.

We understand that that Commonwealth has given the state treasurers an undertaking that other payments will not be withdrawn from the states to make up for these top-up payments. We would like to see something a bit stronger from the Treasurer on that and to have that undertaking tabled in this place. We'd like to hear directly from the Prime Minister and the Treasurer that they will not try to claw back other payments to states that we rely on. As I said, Tasmania absolutely cannot afford it. We are heavily reliant on these payments to provide just the services that every other Australian deserves and expects, particularly when it comes to health and education.

If you have a look at our health and education, the current distribution of revenue represents 64 per cent of our health expenditure or 71 per cent of our education expenditure, based on 2017-18 figures. There would be an enormous impact on our state if we were to lose any of these funds at any point in time.

So, if the current Liberal government tries to claw back any payments, rest assured that we'll be coming after them. We will be fighting out there every time they try and take anything away from our state that we need to deliver the same services to us as to any other Australian. And we're putting everybody on notice that, come the transition, in 2026-27, we will be fighting for Tasmania again, and we'll be insisting that our state continues to be no worse off. Indeed, we want to see our state much better off. We hope to see the outcomes, particularly in health and education, for Tasmanians improve. So I'm pleased to say that we're able to support this bill today, only because of Labor leading and Labor demanding that no-one be worse off, and because of the pressure that we put on the Liberal state government and the Liberal senators from Tasmania to insist that this clause be in the legislation.

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