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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 391 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

reform would be implemented gradually, over a number of years to allow businesses and consumers to anticipate and adjust to the new rules and incentives.

This is the sort of debate that unfortunately we did not have in this country. It is a debate that we wanted. On going through the file I see I wrote letters to members of this place asking that we have a proper summit on taxation. We could have really canvassed these very progressive ideas that are gaining weight, incidentally, not only in the United States but also in Europe. Unfortunately, what we ended up with was a very narrow view, and mainly a political bunfight, which is also what is happening today in this debate, rather than any real investigation of how we can reform the tax system to meet the needs of the community now and into the future.

Of course, there are issues around vertical fiscal balance, which is what Mr Hird's MPI seems to be dealing with. I am not saying that that is not an issue, but that is an issue that can be dealt with as well separately. The GST is not necessary to deal with that problem. What is necessary is that we have, as a society, a proper look at what our taxation system at the moment is doing. As I just clearly explained, it is not having a positive impact on ecological sustainability or social justice. Taxation policy could be an important instrument for social cooperation and for making an economy into a society.

I will briefly touch on the concept of the Tobin tax too because we do have a lot of discussion in this country and internationally about global action, global treaties, international conventions, whatever. The idea of the Tobin tax is that you would have a tax on speculative foreign exchange. Speculation would be determined by the period of time between purchase and sale. The figures that have come out through investigation show that a Tobin tax of one quarter of a per cent would bring about $250 billion a year. At present $1.5 trillion is gambled daily on the speculative money market. This is an issue that the United Nations says we could look at. If we had a quarter per cent and we got that $250 billion tax on that, there would be enough from that, according to the United Nations, to deal with poverty, education, nutrition, health issues and to clean up our ravaged environment.

There are solutions. There are ways we can look at the destructive activities that occur on the earth. There are ways that we can use economics to bring about social change. Unfortunately, we do not see a willingness to do this in this country or in many developed countries. I can only guess why that is. I think it has to be said that it has something to do with the fact that most leaders in most developed countries are inappropriately affected by people who are people of money, or people who are people of business and who have a vested interest in ensuring that governments around the world take an approach to taxation which is much more about keeping rich people rich than caring about the earth or social justice.

MR QUINLAN (4.52): I have to disagree a little with my leader on this. I was a bit bemused as to why this topic was raised by Mr Hird in this place. From what I gather so far, we are in the process of terrifying Kim Beazley. If I bump into him in the next week or so I will let you know just how shaken he was at the end of the day.

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