Page 1576 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2007
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I think the rest of the country should look carefully at the ACT—as a Labor government in microcosm—for a taste of what we would get at the federal level. I think we should be very, very scared. This government and, indeed, its Labor colleagues interstate I think can stand as a sobering warning to the rest of Australia about how Labor governments are incapable of responsible management of the economy. Without a healthy economy, all the social and community services that are the hallmarks of a civilized society are pared to the bone. You need good economic management to be able to deliver education, health and the essential services. Despite these incredible windfall gains that you have received, our services are worse in many instances than they have ever been since self-government.
We can speak of an elephant in the room or something that we dare not speak its name in Mr Stanhope’s budget speech. What is this called? It is the GST. Indeed, in his last speech as opposition leader, he spent considerable time banging on about how this would crush the old and young. Now it is not even mentioned, which is passing strange.
In all the talk about how his government had to put the ACT’s finances on a secure footing by slashing and burning in the last budget, he spoke about how the territory had come to rely on the expenditures of our own big brother, the commonwealth, pre self-government to tide us over. He talks as if the commonwealth had never put in place in 2000 a goods and services tax which would pass all the collected revenue to the states and territories so they would never have to cry poor again and be able to manage their finances responsibly.
I said earlier, being part of that last government, we just started to get in our first lot of GST. How wonderful it was to have this injection of money which enabled us to do initiatives we could not do because of the mismanagement of the previous government and the fact that it took us four or five years to get back on track. Some of the initiatives, which to your credit you have continued with, were the result of that. The kindergarten to year 2 initiative in schools, for example, was the result of continuing flows of money. You credibly included and built up the program to kindergarten to year 3. It was a good initiative. It would not have been possible without the GST.
The GST, of course, is one of the better taxation innovations that has been adopted in Australia. It is broad based. It reflects economic growth. It has provided the states and territories with over $3.2 billion of revenue over and above what they would have received under the financial arrangements that prevailed prior to the introduction of the GST. The windfall GST gains have certainly bailed the ACT Labor government out of trouble.
It was, however, only introduced on the basis that the states and territories would get rid of a multitude of inefficient taxes. These are, or were, taxes that are inefficient and which did impose inordinate compliant costs on the community. These matters were all spelt out in the intergovernmental agreement that was signed by all states and territories and the commonwealth government.
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