The Labor Government barely left one crisis behind before lurching to a new one this week – its latest predicament surrounds a successor for soon-to-be-retired senator Mark Arbib
Rather than getting caught up in their spiteful clashes, this week, my Liberal colleagues and I redoubled our focus on policy.
On Tuesday, I spoke in the Senate about the distribution of GST to the states and territories.
Each year, the Commonwealth Grants Commission determines how much GST revenue each state and territory should receive. Those calculations weigh up how much money a state can raise – generally through taxes and mining royalties – and the needs of their citizens.
Source: Commonwealth Grants Commission
In Victoria, our share of the GST has gone up by 0.5 per cent and the state government will receive only 92 cents of every dollar of GST collected in Victoria. As pointed out by the Coalition State Government, this has a major negative impact on the state budget. And because it receives less than 100 per cent of its GST take, Victoria will continue subsidising South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory.
There are a number of issues with this. First, the formula used by the Commonwealth Grants Commission provides little incentive for states – such as Victoria – that are historically good at service delivery. Second, in what can only be described as a commonwealth cash-grab, the Labor Party’s mining tax will reduce revenues to all states, even those without mining sectors.
On Thursday, I presented a report on the Lobbying Code of Conduct that showed the current system is working as it should. It was not a view shared by my red-Green colleague, Senator Lee Rhiannon, who presented yet another crazy idea.
Senator Rhiannon is such a strong advocate of open democracy she wants to waste time and money establishing a new bureaucracy to monitor everyone who visits their elected representative.
For an ex-Communist, she is strangely keen on transparency and openness – something her beloved Soviet regime was not so good at.
In the next few days, Prime Minister Julia Gillard will announce a cabinet reshuffle. When she does, keep in mind that the Labor Government will probably use this as an excuse to add to an already inflated public service.
