Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Labor Premier of Western Australia, Roger Cook, is trying to rewrite WA's GST history. On the eve of the election, he is out there with state Labor candidates telling people that Labor will protect the GST in WA. Labor is the fairweather friend to GST reform in Western Australia. Let's just remind ourselves that it was the WestAustralian newspaper that said that WA Labor members of federal parliament had not done enough in arguing for GST reform. Indeed, it was the Sunday Times who joined the chorus and also said that WA federal Labor MPs had let WA down because of their poor regard, their lack of attention, to the GST debate when it was in full flight just a few years ago.

In fact, it was Roger Cook, the Deputy Premier of Western Australia at the time, who had to say to his federal Labor colleagues that they needed to take more notice of and get real about the GST issue in Western Australia. If that's not bad enough, who can forget that the then Labor Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, said that there would be no changes to the GST and that there would be no introduction of a GST floor. Instead, Bill Shorten and Labor were just going to give Western Australia a mere $1.6 billion in extra infrastructure funding. Compare that to the $32 billion in extra revenue WA will receive as a result of the Liberals' GST deal—an extra $32 billion up until 2027-28. As the election approaches, there's only one thing that Western Australians need to remember, and that is that Labor is a fairweather GST friend.