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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2059 ..
MR QUINLAN (continuing):
The Financial Relations Agreement Bill and the consequential amendments bill are being put before the Assembly for ratification of an abhorrent tax system and it seems that now is a good opportunity to reflect on the GST, a GST that I have witnessed Mrs Carnell and Mr Humphries embrace awesomely on the other side of the house.
Let us look a little at the background. One of my personal favourites in this whole process is an interview given by Mr Howard in May 1995 on the future of a broad-based consumption tax. I would like to relate the words between a journalist and Mr Howard:
Journalist: So you've left the door open for a GST now, haven't you?
Mr Howard: No, there's no way that a GST will ever be part of our policy.
Journalist: Never ever?
Mr Howard: Never ever. It's dead. It was killed by the voters in the last election.
Journalist: Were you misquoted in today's Australian newspaper, then?
Mr Howard: Well, any suggestion that I left the door open is absolute nonsense. I didn't. I never will. The last election killed the GST. It's not part of our policy and it won't be part of our policy at any time in the future.
There you go. To some extent I think that Mr Howard, our Prime Minister, went to the same school as our own Treasurer and Chief Minister in relation to commitments made and not kept, such as "the sale of ACTEW is not on our agenda".
Mr Berry: It is on the hidden agenda.
MR QUINLAN: It is on the hit list. One of the triggers for more information on tax reform came from the state and territory leaders, including our very own Mrs Kate Carnell, who in October 1997 all signed a communique on tax reform. That communique started off by saying that there must be no increase in the overall tax burden. It went on to say that the states and territories must have access to broad-based growth taxes to replace undesirable, ineffective, narrowly based taxes. The 1998 election was to follow, with a campaign fought on tax reform and tax reform alone.
The federal government's document Not a New Tax, a New Tax System was at best misleading, and at worst a total lie perpetrated on the most vulnerable members of society. We all remember the promises that everybody would be better off, that there would be no increases in price greater than or equal to 10 per cent, that housing rents would not go up, that fuel prices would go down, that income tax cuts would counter the GST, and that inflation would increase only by 1.9 per cent over the underlying GST rate.
Another thing that this place could never forget was Kate Carnell and Gary Humphries standing in this house and echoing the voices of their federal colleagues. In fact, it was this government that costed the Liberal Party's taxation reform package using government resources, while there was not a whimper when the earned income tax credit
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