Rick Wilson (O'Connor, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Trade) | Hansard source

That doesn't matter. What matters is that the coalition put together a deal. I remember the member for Burt and others saying that it couldn't be done and that no-one would ever agree to it. We've now got a GST deal which does rectify the inequalities in the GST distribution and treats WA fairly. The Prime Minister will go to Western Australia next week and he'll look down the barrel of the camera and say, 'We're not going to touch the WA GST deal.' He'll look straight down that camera, the same way he did when he said, 'We won't touch the stage 3 tax cuts,' and I don't think the people of Western Australia are going to believe him, quite frankly. I don't think they're going to be able to say, 'Yes, Prime Minister.'

When you think about the rationale that we've heard in here about taking from the rich and giving to the poor and about taking from a rich state and giving to the poorer states, the same rationale could be applied to the GST deal. Quite frankly, I'm concerned for Western Australia and our future finances. We do pretty well with our iron ore industry, but I don't trust the Prime Minister not to take away our GST.

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