Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australians have endured, for a number of weeks now, Liberal MPs from right across the country going around our nation and extolling the virtues of increasing the GST and broadening the base of the GST. They cannot tell us, unfortunately, exactly what they want to achieve through tax reform, but they are confident that, whatever the problem may be, a GST increase is the answer. I rise today to say that Labor says, 'No, that is not the answer to the various tax problems that face our system.' One of the reasons for this is very well-understood and well-known by everyone in this chamber—that is, that the GST is a regressive tax. That means that those households on the lowest incomes are going to have to pay the most through that tax. I echo the words of the member for McEwen: it is just unfair.

Yesterday in question time the Prime Minister told us, 'Don't worry, everyone. What we're going to do is compensate low-income households.' Deputy Speaker, tell me: in what alternate universe would you have to be to believe that Australians are going to trust this government to execute a change like this in a way that is fair on the Australian people?

This is a government which, in its first budget, tried to take away all income for unemployed young people for six months, a policy that probably would have left thousands of Australians homeless and without enough food. This is a government which, having promised to make no changes to pensions, has spent two years relentlessly attacking the incomes of pensioners and others who rely on welfare. We do not trust them; neither do Australians.