Page 141 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 November 2012
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Mr Barr and the government are refusing to release this information suggests that the Canberra Liberals are 100 per cent right, that the Quinlan review when it spelled it out was 100 per cent right, and it said that rates will triple.
If there is an alternative, where is it? If there is an alternative, put it out there; otherwise you are being dishonest with the community and you are hiding it. So I do not accept the criticism of Mr Barr, I do not accept the criticism of some in the media who say that Mr Barr failed to sell the tax reform. He did not sell the tax reform, that is true, but the reason he did not sell it is that it is unsellable. It is unpalatable. They have pretended that there is a tax reform with no downside. They have pretended that they are going to get rid of these taxes, but no-one is going to have to pay. It is going to be a cup of coffee a week, we are told. That is not true. It is not true now, it will not be true in five years time, it certainly will not be true in 10, 15 or 20 years time once stamp duty is abolished. So be honest.
I commend Mr Smyth’s amendment. It should be supported. I will be interested to hear what the crossbench or government member, Mr Rattenbury, has to say on it, because for the purposes of this debate I understand he is a crossbench member. I will be interested to hear his views on it. Is he going to support the government and be a government member on this one or is he going to say, “Yes, put it out there; we’ve got nothing to hide”? Mr Rattenbury has indicated that he is a supporter of tax reform. His former leader, the former parliamentary convenor, Ms Hunter, perhaps lost her seat as a result of tax reform, it could be argued. So if you believe in it, put it out there. That is all we are asking with this amendment.
We are saying, “Okay, you’ve said you’re going to get rid of stamp duty. When you get rid of stamp duty what will rates be?” Have we ever seen such a tax reform? Would it have been acceptable when the Howard government introduced the GST, not a popular change at the time? When the Howard government introduced the GST, what did they do? They said, “We’re going to reduce certain other taxes, wholesale sales tax, we’re going to reduce income tax, and we’re going to have a GST. That will increase the cost of some things.”
Would it have been tenable for them to say, “We can tell you how much money you will get back in your income tax; we can tell you how much you will save on wholesale sales tax; but we can’t really tell you how much extra you will have to pay when the GST comes in”? That would be untenable; it would be ridiculous. Yet that is exactly what this government are doing. They have been allowed to get away with it by some of their cheerleaders, but we will not let them get away with it.
The question before the Assembly is: if you believe in tax reform, if you believe, as Mr Phillips did before the election but not after the election, that it is not only more efficient but also more equitable, show us. Put the numbers out there; otherwise all we have to go on is the Quinlan review, which says they will triple.
If there is an alternative, what is it? That is why he did not sell the tax reform—because he knew he could not. If he used the actual numbers, if he went out there and said, “This is what we’re going to do,” the community would not have been too happy about it, which is why, right through the campaign, they kept saying, “No, none of it’s true. It’s not true; it is a scare campaign.”
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