Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

If Mr Rudd or Senator Cameron had any credibility they would explain how the states are going to get by with 30 per cent of their GST revenue, their only growth tax, being taken back from them. That is highlighted in this report on GST revenue sharing relativities. It also, curiously, completely negates the argument that Senator Cameron was, in all loyalty to his leader—and I respect him for doing that—putting. But he cannot have meant anything that he said in his comments on the public hospital funding proposed by Mr Rudd. We all know it is a fraud. We all know it is more of Mr Rudd’s ‘all talk and no action’ approach to government. It will not succeed—but then Mr Rudd never wanted it to succeed. He never thought it would. He knew, as Senator Cameron knows, that the states will not agree to it. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.