Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Tourism and International Education) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Urquhart for the question. I do not think there is actually any conflict between what is being said. In fact, the only proposal that I am immediately aware of for an increase in the GST comes from the Premier of South Australia. If the Prime Minister is asking for people to put a proposal on the table, that is fine. I think that is his purview. What I said quite clearly last week was that the government has no proposal on the table for an increase in the GST. The only person that I know that has a proposal on the table for an increase in the GST is the Premier of South Australia. There has been discussion from the Premier of New South Wales about changes to the GST; other state premiers have said that they do not want to see an increase in the GST, including our Tasmanian Premier, Will Hodgman.

I do not actually see that there is any conflict between what I said last week when I said the government does not have any proposal on the table for a change to the GST, because we do not; we actually do not. If the Prime Minister wants to say that there should be proposals on the table—and there are proposals on the table put on there by the Premier of South Australia—we have a process where we are prepared to consider everything being on the table. We are not shying away from that. We did not do what the Labor Party did in opposition, when they had a root and branch review of the tax system but they forgot the trunk. We are prepared to say we are looking at the entire tax system. We are not squibbing it, like the Labor Party did. We are actually prepared to consider, properly, the tax system—how it might be improved so that we have an economy that continues to grow strongly, an economy that is sound and is fair for all Australians. I do not see that there is any conflict in what I said or in what the Prime Minister said at all.