Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Oh yes, Senator Moore. Does anybody really think that Mark McGowan, the WA Labor leader—the man who left WA with crippling teacher shortages as education minister and who was part of a government that literally could not keep the electricity on—will be able to fight for WA's interests effectively and make sure the floor is implemented?

And what of Mr McGowan's federal Labor colleagues? Following the Prime Minister's announcement, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Shorten, was given numerous opportunities by journalists at media conferences to support the plan to implement a floor. He pointedly refused to do so, simply dodging the questions. We in Western Australia all know what that means. As we saw with the mining tax and with Labor's refusal to do anything to reform the GST, the federal Labor Party simply sees WA as a convenient cash cow which it can use to prop up its political position in the eastern states. It is clear that, if Western Australians want to achieve GST distribution reform and see a floor implemented, they need to think very carefully about the choice that they make at the WA state election in March next year.

Having agreed the principle of a floor, the debate must now focus on where that floor should be. But, before that point, a sensible next step would be to commission a thoroughly independent, comprehensive and economically focused inquiry into the national economic gains to be derived through imposing a floor through which GST distribution relativities cannot fall.