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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2064 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

that owners will typically have to spend some of their own time after hours grappling with GST implementation and compliance issues for months and months, if not forever, under this tax.

But this government has made no attempt to assist small business in the ACT. Unlike New South Wales, there has been no analysis by this government of the effect of the GST on our businesses. The closest in relation to any analysis of the effect on ACT businesses is a claim or a prognostication that I have seen of the chamber of commerce that up to 30 per cent of all small businesses in Australia may go bankrupt in the next two years. That has been the extent of the analysis that has been carried out on the effect of the GST in the ACT and Australia generally, as I am aware of it. Up to 30 per cent of them will go broke. Some analysis!

Unlike the Tasmanian Labor government, this government ran dead on a companion issue to the GST, the diesel fuel rebate. The Labor government in Tasmania won this subsidy for transport operators throughout that state, including Hobart. The government here, the ACT government, did nothing about the subsidy. Indeed, it seemed to know nothing about it. The result of this incompetence is that there will not be a subsidy for the greater number of operators in Canberra, but there will be a subsidy of 23c a litre for operators in Queanbeyan and Yass.

The Treasurer said in his presentation speech that this bill is a demonstration of the Carnell government's commitment to the intergovernmental agreement on the reform of Commonwealth-state financial relations. It may well be that, but it demonstrates more about this Liberal government. It demonstrates to the people of Canberra the Moore-Carnell government's commitment to an unfair, unworkable and unnecessary tax, the GST.

We in the Labor Party will not support the GST and, as Mr Quinlan has said, the Labor Party will not support this bill.

MR HUMPHRIES (Treasurer, Attorney-General and Minister for Justice and Community Safety) (8.34), in reply: Mr Speaker, I do not propose tonight to engage in a panegyric of the GST. I have certainly observed the many issues that have been raised about the GST in the course of the last few weeks. I have no doubt that some of what has been said about the GST is true and that some of what has been said about the GST will prove to be false. At the end of the day, Australia will have a new tax system, that is, as of Saturday of this week, Australia will have a new tax system and there will be a number of changes Australians will need to adjust to.

Despite the fact that, like the rest of Australia, the ACT will have to experience the changes that are coming about because of the changes in our tax system, the ACT, as a community, will be a very significant winner out of having a goods and services tax. The basis on which I say that is the simple equation that the ACT will obtain under the GST very considerable sums in place of or by way of federal government grants, representing the ACT's share of the national GST pie.

As members noted in the Estimates Committee debate a bit ham-fistedly this morning, in the first four years there will be no net improvement in the ACT's financial position as a result of the GST, but that position will change dramatically in the sixth year, that is,

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