Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Certainly there were no words, but a nodding of the head up and down, as opposed to from side to side, tells me something. But Mr Rudd would agree with me in private, Senator Cameron. We all know Mr Rudd brought this program in knowing that the states would not approve it and knowing that this Senate, which is the states’ house, would also not approve it. So it was all more of this ‘blah, blah, blah’. It is why people—not me, I might add, but others—are calling him Prime Minister Blah Blah, because it is all talk and no action. This particular document on relativities of GST brings this to the fore.

In passing, I might note, from this document, that the powerhouse states of Australia who are keeping Australia going at the moment—that is, Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory; it is Northern Australia where all the wealth of this nation comes from—do very badly out of these proposed changes. Western Australia in particular does very badly and that has been commented upon by Premier Barnett. I note that the Northern Territory has been absolutely shattered by this proposal, and I will expect the Northern Territory Labor Party senator to be in here criticising this report on those grounds. While my home state of Queensland has not gone backwards, it has barely gone forward. And these are the states that are keeping Australia going.

Can someone from the Labor Party tell me how the states are possibly going to deal with this grab of 30 per cent of their GST moneys? We all know of course that it only needs one state to object, and clearly the state Labor government in Victoria is going to object, so this whole hospital plan is nothing more than blah, blah, blah.