Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise to condemn the Turnbull government's plan to increase the GST, which is a plan that would stretch millions of household budgets to breaking point. This is a plan that would hit the poorest people the hardest and a plan that would only serve to further entrench growing inequality in this country. Of course, the Prime Minister has refused point-blank to be honest with Australians about what he is cooking up. Instead, he will only give us a nebulous and completely unhelpful platitude: 'Everything is on the table.' We are told that we should not be concerned because we have a massive table piled with stuff so we really need not worry ourselves about exactly what that stuff is.

The reality is that everything is on the table is just code for, 'We refuse to tell the Australian people our policy.' Some commentators have taken this to mean that the government has not got a plan at all. I will admit that this is a concern that is entirely possible, but I actually do not think that is what is going on here. No, I actually think the government has a very clear plan but they just do not want to let Australia in on it. Because if everything truly was on the table and if every outcome was just as possible as another, then we would be hearing about these possibilities from the government. But that is not what we are seeing, and that is not what we are hearing.

There are a wealth of options available to the government in the area of tax reform but the words of those opposite have been dominated by three small but very significant letters: GST. It is the recent, sustained kite-flying campaign on GST that clearly reveals the real agenda of those opposite. In fact, the Prime Minister himself has said:

…it certainly has to be a part of a suite of measures…

Of course, Australians are not stupid. They can see the nonsense of pretending that every outcome is just as possible as another while at the same time directing virtually all the discussion to just one item. Those opposite like to talk about the 'new government' but their behaviour on GST shows that the core agenda has not changed—they have just become more sneaky about how they go about enacting it.

You only have to look back to that toxic and deeply unfair 2014 budget to see that tinkering with the GST has been the plan from the beginning. Then, just as now, those opposite were not honest with the Australian people about their plans. Rather than putting their case and admitting that their true intentions were to put the GST up, we saw Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey set out to try to starve the states into submission. We saw them gut the state health and education budgets to the tune of $80 billion in a transparent attempt to force an outcry. Not willing to face the Australian people with their clear intention to increase the GST, Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey tried to force the premiers to be the fall guys. Instead of being honest with us, they tried to blackmail the premiers into a state of desperation where calling for a GST increase would be their only option. This bullyboy behaviour was sneaky, dishonest and to the detriment of millions of Australians.

And now, here we go again. Despite saying that everything is on the table, we hear that the government's economics committee had been asking business to make a case for a GST hike. No-one is under any illusions about what the government wants: their real agenda is to hit the most vulnerable Australians through a regressive tax. Modelling from the highly respected outfit NATSEM shows that even if a GST increase came with a five per cent reduction in every tax rate, our tax system would become more regressive and two-thirds of households would be worse off. Whether the government wants to increase the rate or widen the base of the GST, the result would be the same: Australia's lowest income households would bear the brunt.

Clearly, even though we have a new lead singer on the other side, the band is still singing the same harsh and tired songs. From the people that brought you cuts to health, cuts to education and cuts to pensions, we now have a plan to create an extra tax burden for the majority of households. Those who brought you the $100,000 degrees, which would see a generation of our young people locked out of education, are now cooking up a plan to make our taxation system even more regressive. The same people who wanted to see young people go without an income for six months have now turned their minds to a plan that would further increase inequality.

So not only are they trying to hide their true intentions from the Australian people but they are also too cowardly to even make their own case. Mr Morrison even went as far as to say that an increase in the GST would not result in an increase in government taxation revenue. Of course, our current Treasurer is in denial about what most respected economists understand: Australia's revenue base has dropped dramatically in recent years. When considered as a whole, revenue over the past eight years was 20.5 per cent of GDP below the 2000-01 to 2007-08 average. In contrast, cumulative spending has been just 8.6 per cent of GDP above the average.

But rather than addressing this blatantly obvious fiscal reality, the Treasurer seems to have decided to revert to the tried and true Liberal strategy of hitting those who are doing it tough and rewarding those who are well-off—with no accompanying benefit to the budgetary challenge he should be addressing. Instead, Mr Morrison is reducing a progressive tax in order to increase a regressive one. Of course, in doing so, he would further entrench the inequality that is already as high as it has been in the past 75 years. If the Prime Minister had been true to his word and genuinely believed in fairness—and not just the perception of fairness—then he would immediately have rejected such an obviously unfair suggestion by his Treasurer.

Hiking the GST is not taxation reform. It is lazy, it is unfair and it will disadvantage those who spend the highest proportion of their income on week-to-week living—and that is not a plush week-to-week living; it is a survival week-to-week living. It will do nothing to address the budgetary challenges, and it will only serve to increase inequality, which we know creates a drag on productivity. If the government is serious about actual reform, it needs to start addressing the loopholes and perks that are benefiting the richest people and companies in the country. When will the government commit to addressing the perks for high income earners in the superannuation system? When will the government get serious about addressing multinational tax? And when will they stop trying to levy greater burdens on the poorest and most vulnerable people in the country? Despite the Prime Minister's spruiking about his lovely table and everything he has on it, the only thing they have shown the Australian people so far is a great big regressive tax.