Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Wang for his question. I remind Senator Wang that it was this government that last year stopped the drop in GST revenue for the great state of Western Australia. Indeed, the way we did this—I believe at the time with some supportive comments from the Leader of the Opposition—

Senator Lines interjecting—

You would not think that Labor was supportive when you listen to one of the few remaining Labor federal members of parliament from Western Australia, Senator Lines. We have had four out of six pull the pin—what a vote of no confidence in the current leadership of the Labor Party! There are only two of them left, Senator Sterle and Senator Lines, and Senator Lines is jumping up and down complaining about the fact that this government invested an additional $500 million into infrastructure projects in Western Australia to ensure that the share of the GST for Western Australia effectively did not continue to drop. We said that once the GST relativities were released by the Commonwealth Grants Commission this year, we would assess what, if any, additional funding would be required in a similar fashion to ensure that the GST share for WA did not continue to drop below the 37.6 per cent that it was in 2014-15.

The truth of the matter is that GST is a tax that is collected for the states. 100 per cent of it is shared across all the states. You cannot just take away money from one state in order to give it to another state. That is not the role of the national government. But we do recognise the particular challenges faced by Western Australia and we have responded to them positively. That is our commitment to the state of Western Australia: to continue to work with them to ensure that we can respond in a similar fashion this time round. The expectation, sadly, is that because of the significant drops in iron ore prices the current problem will start to subside. (Time expired)