Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The announcement earlier this month by the federal Treasurer that the Commonwealth Grants Commission is currently undertaking a review of the GST distribution has put a shudder through the entire state of Western Australia. Contributing to this concern are the recent comments from the newly elected Premier of New South Wales, Chris Minns, who flagged a showdown with all governments on the current GST deal. Just over a week ago, Mr Minns claimed New South Wales is:

entitled to more—and that is an implicit criticism of the current arrangement. It's all up for negotiation in the next few years, and I'm not going to take a backward step from the perspective of taxpayers in the state.

Western Australia has not easily forgotten the dark old days when our state was holding onto just 30c in the dollar and when important infrastructure projects could not be properly funded because WA was missing out on its distribution of the GST carve-up. Some said it wouldn't change, that it was just about impossible to do anything about WA missing out on what was rightfully ours—a better GST deal.

Well, I remember the member for Burt saying that the then coalition government would not implement any change to the GST formula. In fact, in February 2018, he said, 'Whatever the Productivity Commission does, they'—the government—'will not implement those changes.' 'Trying to get any changes through is almost politically impossible,' he said, 'in the land of pigs might fly.' Well, member for Burt, the pigs did fly.

All Western Australians remember that it was the coalition government that delivered for the people of Western Australia, a fair and equitable GST deal. It was a coalition government which ensured that Western Australians receive a minimum of 70c in the dollar of GST revenue, increasing to 75c in 2024-25. Without the sensible and pragmatic intervention of the previous coalition government, WA's GST revenue would have fallen to 16c in the dollar in 2022-23 and 10c in 2023-24—10 cents!

Liberal senators from Western Australia are not going to take a backward step in defending our GST share. We will fight lock, stock and barrel to prevent Western Australians from being worse off. Those hard-fought changes must be preserved.

President Kennedy once remarked that victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan. Many people claimed to have fixed WA's GST problem. Even the member for Burt claims that. But history will record that it was that WA federal Liberal team who fought to raise the importance of the issue before the member for Cook, and it was the member for Cook, as Treasurer, who changed it and delivered real improvements for Western Australians. I wasn't a senator back then, so I can't claim the credit. I stand here on the shoulders of my colleagues and friends who fought gallantly for the GST fix, in particular Senators Cormann, Cash and Smith and I believe it was Senator Back back then and, of course, Senator Reynolds, who is still here.

Western Australians will take a dim view of any federal government which seeks to alter the existing arrangements and delete Western Australia's fair share of the national GST distribution. You only have to ask the question: why is it that the Treasurer has commissioned a review into looking at the GST arrangements? You don't commission a review like this if you aren't intent on changing it.