Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tasmanians are very concerned, as I have raised in this place before, about the federal government's inquiry into the GST distribution. Tasmanians are rightly concerned about this because it could cost our state billions of dollars. People would know that Tasmania has had a significant issue in recent years and that we have a higher proportion of people reliant on government support payments. Indeed, we rely very heavily on that GST revenue to run our hospitals and our schools in Tasmania, even though the current state government is not doing a particularly good job of it.

I have to say that I nearly choked on my muesli this morning when I read a letter from David Bushby, a senator for Tasmania, who said:

The Government has no plans to slash Tasmania's GST.

He went on to say that the Tasmanian Liberal Senate team support the principles of horizontal fiscal equalisation. That is the way that the GST is currently distributed. Of course, this is not true. It is the Liberal government that is actually holding an inquiry into the distribution method of the GST. It is in fact the Liberals who are putting Tasmania's share of the GST at risk, and the Liberal senators should be ashamed of their behaviour. Indeed, when the Minister for Finance was directly asked to assure Tasmanians that our GST share was safe, he could not and/or he would not do that. Tasmanians have had no guarantee from anybody in the federal Liberal party that their share of the GST is safe, and they are relying on it to be safe.