House debates
Wednesday, 2 December 2015
Matters of Public Importance
Goods and Services Tax
3:30 pm
Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister to the Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source
Would you roll back the GST? My colleagues quite rightly refer to rollback. Where have we heard rollback before? We have heard rollback before. You did have a plan to roll it back but then you had six years in office when, if you wanted to roll back the GST, you could have taken that action. You could have continued to litigate this argument. But the argument against the GST vanished as soon as you secured office in 2007. From 2007 to 2013 the Labor government made no argument against the GST. In fact, there was action taken on the GST that we know about—just like Paul Keating's option C, the then Treasurer had three scenarios modelled on increasing the rate and expanding the base of the GST. We still do not know what is in those scenarios. The Australian public do not know what was in the modelling or the directions that the then Treasurer gave for the modelling, for the extension of the rate and the increase of the base. What were they? We have part of scenario three, which was increasing the GST rate to 12.5 per cent and broadening the base. It is the estimated weekly price impact on households in 2014-15. This is actual Labor Party modelling that was done at the direction of the former Treasurer, who is now the shadow Treasurer. He says that we are modelling something, but he is the only one who has received modelling.
Tibor Majlath
Posted on 5 Dec 2015 11:30 am
The LNP did the right thing by the GST when most goods became cheaper than under the old Wholesale/Sales Tax system. Also, some state taxes were abolished which didn't affect most people much.
However, the LNP must be condemned for imposing the GST on essential services which were previously untaxed.
Labor is no better when it could have stopped taxing essential services such as electricity, gas, transport etc. while in office. This would have at least shown that Labor had real concerns for the unreasonable increases in the cost of living.
Whatever is decided concerning a rise in the GST rate will just increase the cost of living for households despite tax cuts and/or compensation which will never adequately mitigate the effect of this regressive tax.