Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

In essence, this bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Making Sure Every State and Territory Gets Their Fair Share of GST) Bill 2018, is bad public policy. I don't believe it's supportable, and I won't support it. I fear I'll be the only person in this chamber who will call out, 'No,' when the key time comes.

I think it's actually quite shameful that this reform is being pushed in this form by the government—

Ms Collins interjecting—

and, I'm sorry, by the opposition. I responded to the member for Franklin, and I see the member for Bass here. I do acknowledge that the Labor Party has fought hard on this issue. But I think you've choked at the last minute. I don't think you should support it, and I'll tell you why.

For a start, the no-worse-off guarantee is only for eight years. That will be here before we know it. I would have thought that any effective no-worse-off guarantee would not have a time line on it. I worry that eight years is really just to push it beyond the next election, beyond the next parliament—'It's just too hard, so we'll park it for a while'—instead of addressing the fact that there is a need to reform the GST. It clearly is unacceptable that Western Australia, as a result of the trailing nature of the calculations, is getting, roughly, only 30c in the dollar, I think. So there is a need to fix it, whereas this eight-year, no-worse-off guarantee really just parks it. To me, it reeks of a political fix, just to get it beyond the election and a bit beyond that.

I think it's also an attempt to try and condition the community that there will be deep and problematic changes in the future. In fact, Deputy Speaker Hastie, you're a military man; you'd understand the term 'shaping the battlefield', and I think there's an element of that.

I also worry that there's no guarantee that Tasmania's share will grow in line with the inevitable growth in national GST receipts. Of course the GST pie is always growing. So it's not enough to say, 'We won't be worse off.' We would need effective guarantees. I think it would be very difficult to actually legislate this, but I'm sure it could be done: we would need some sort of effective guarantee that, as the GST pie increases, Tasmania's gross amount also increases. So I feel that that is another significant deficiency in this bill.

I note that the member for Franklin spoke about the issue of special purpose payments. I think this is a very serious issue. I think, actually—and it's through you, Deputy Speaker, to the member for Franklin—this alone is a serious enough deficiency in this bill to warrant the opposition not supporting the bill. I can see it could be very easily done, and it would be very hard to identify it clearly and to fight against it: that, in two years time, three years time or four years time, at the end of the forward estimates, our special purpose payments could be reduced—perhaps subtly, but that could still be tens of millions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars. And that would be very, very harmful.

As has been identified in this place, Tasmania has a low domestic tax base and a very high reliance on federal funding, in both the GST income and also special purpose payments. If we were to see some of those special purpose payments cut or just shaved, it would have a disproportionate impact in Tasmania because of our high and completely understandable reliance on federal funding.

I will wrap a bit of context around my concerns. Australia is obviously a federation. When we came together in 1901—the six states and the territories—it was agreed then, and it was really a condition of Federation, that all of the states would be equal, would all be treated equally and would all get a fair go. There is more than a whiff in these reforms of Tasmania being at serious risk, because of the sorts of limitations I have identified, and of us being a second-rate state. There's risk that there will be uniformity in the mainland and then there will be Tasmania down on the bottom, having to fight its own fight on its own. I think this bill actually betrays our founding fathers and the architects of Federation. It really does puts Tasmania at the real risk down the track of being a second-rate state.

It's not like we have a lack of money. I would remind honourable members that Australia is the 13th richest country in the world. In fact, if you include Palestine and Taiwan as countries, there's something like 196 countries in the world and we're the 13th richest. We are fabulously wealthy. In fact, if you divide our riches across our relatively small population, we're the second wealthiest people on the planet. We are second only to the Swiss by one measure. In fact, I saw in The Australian newspaper a few days ago that, by another measure, we are the richest people on the planet. It's not that any state needs to go without and it's not that any state needs to be put at risk of going without in future years because of deficiencies in a reform like this. There is more than enough money and more than enough wealth and smarts in this country to ensure that every state receives the money they genuinely need and that the money equalised in an effective way to ensure that every person in this country gets adequate access to public health care, the education system and so on.

The fact that there may not be enough money sometimes, or it's said that there is not enough money sometimes, is really because politicians make bad decisions and we have our priorities out of whack. I remind you that the federal budget this current financial year will be in the order of half a trillion dollars. There's more than enough money, with good decision-making and good priorities, for every state and, in particular, for Tasmania. That's including Western Australia, where you're from, Deputy Speaker Hastie. There's more than enough money that, with the right decisions and the right priorities, every state gets a fair deal and that WA's needs are met, Queensland's needs are met and the needs of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania are met. It's not that we have to engineer these weaknesses into our legislation that put us at risk in the future, because there's more than enough money to avoid us being put at risk.

There have been comments too about Tasmania's special needs. These concerns of Tasmanians are very real. It is heartening that all Tasmanian senators and members have had a say on this and have all said the right thing. As we need to, because Tasmania does have particular disadvantages and special needs. We're obviously an island state. It costs money to deliver government services in an island state. We are a small market for the delivery of those services. That creates inefficiencies and often added costs to the delivery of government services as well. We have lower incomes. We are older people.

I will just give some insight into the health of Tasmanians. As a general rule, we are less well than mainlanders—that's for some very understandable reasons—and the cost of our health care in Tasmania tends to be more than elsewhere. For example, Tasmanians have poorer sight compared to the national average. We have a higher rate of arthritis compared to the national average. We have a higher rate of hypertension. Actually, it is actually a markedly higher rate of hypertension compared to the national average. We have a higher rate of mental and behavioural problems compared to the national average. We have a higher rate of back problems, a higher rate of deafness and a significantly higher rate of heart, stroke and vascular disease. We have a higher rate of asthma. In fact, with most of our cancer rates, we have the highest rates of any state. In fact, it's all too often that we look at the figures, and we are second only to the Northern Territory when it comes to a lot of these measures of public health and economic disadvantage.

I make the point again that, at the same time that we have the higher costs of being the island state and we have the higher costs of a more unwell population, we also have a really tiny domestic tax base. We don't have your fabulous iron ore reserves. We don't have the coal of Queensland and New South Wales. We don't have the precious metals. We don't have the uranium of the Northern Territory and South Australia. For a whole lot of reasons, we have a smaller domestic tax base, and we have a lot of inefficiencies. So income from the Commonwealth, in particular our GST share and in particular our special-purpose payments, assumes a disproportionate significance for Tasmania. That helps to explain why all of us—the Liberal Party, the Labor Party and myself—are so exercised about this issue.

I suppose that where I diverge from my colleagues in this place is in what I'm going to do about it. I will vote against this. If I'm the only member who does vote against it, I'll be asking that my name be recorded in Hansard. To my mind, the simple eight-year guarantee that we won't be worse off is a start, but it is not enough to make this bill supportable. If there were going to be any no-worse-off guarantee, it should not have had a time limit. Eight years will be here before we know it.

And the bill is fundamentally deficient in that there's no effective guarantee to ensure that Tasmania's GST share increases proportionally with the increased receipts from GST nationally. That runs a very real risk that, in effect, we will actually be worse off in the future.

As I've already said—and I'll say it again—there is that very significant deficiency that there is no effective guarantee whatsoever that we won't see cuts to our special-purpose payments. This isn't just the member for Franklin raising it to score political points. It's not just me, from Denison, trying to score political points. I note that an economist, no less than Saul Eslake, one of the most eminent economists in the country, has made a point of focusing on that risk to Tasmania that we will have cuts to our special-purpose payments in the future.

I won't detain the House any longer, other than to say that I think this bill is bad public policy. I don't think it's supported. I won't support it, and I am very disappointed that I will not be joined at least by my colleagues from the Labor Party. It's one thing to voice your concerns, but it's another thing to act. I think our performance in this place should be measured by what we do, not by what we say. I am going to be very disappointed to see the ALP support the Liberal and National parties in supporting what I think is bad policy, policy that might not jeopardise Tasmania in the short term but jeopardises us greatly in the medium and especially the long term.

See this speech in context