Heavy blow to GST The following Editorial was published in "The Guardian", newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia in its issue of Wednesday, May 19th, 1999. Contact address: 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. Sydney. 2010 Australia. Phone: (612) 9212 6855 Fax: (612) 9281 5795. Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Webpage: http://www.peg.apc.org/~guardian Subscription rates on request. ****************************** A heavy blow has been dealt the Howard Government's attempt to foist a GST on the Australian public by Senator Harradine's decision not to support it. Despite the billion dollar attempt of Howard to bribe Brian Harradine, he took a principled stand in the end, saying that a GST is discriminatory against all who are in lower income brackets and that any "compensation" would soon be whittled away. He said that a GST is regressive. Senator Harradine's decision contrasts with that of the Australian Democrats who seem to be begging Howard and Costello to give them a ring so that they can negotiate a tax package which would still have the GST as its centre-piece. They cannot get it into their heads that a GST is an unfair, discriminatory tax and no amount of tinkering is going to alter that. They are still motivated by the argument that the present tax system is "broke" and has to be fixed by some sort of GST. There remains a danger that the Howard Government will take up the Democrats offer and salvage its main objective. Maximum opinion should be conveyed to the Democrats immediately to vote against the GST, ON PRINCIPLE, instead of trying to make fair what is inherently unfair. Meg Lees, Democrat leader, can be contacted by phone: (08) 9325 8449 (Adelaide) or (02) 6277 3991 (Canberra); fax: (08) 9325 5943 and email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] It cannot be repeated too often that the real intention behind a GST is to further shift tax payments from the big corporations and high income earners to the low and middle income earners who spend most if not all of their incomes on food, transport, clothes, rent, and services of all kinds. Why can't the Democrats see that simple fact? The present tax system is basically a progressive one. It is based on the concept that those on higher incomes not only pay more but at a higher rate and that company profits should also be taxed. But successive governments have created one loophole after another through which companies minimise their tax or avoid it altogether. Kerry Packer is a notorious case. By shuffling transactions from one company to another and one country to another and by employing expensive lawyers and accountants, he avoids tax payments on millions. It is this aspect of the tax system that needs repairing by a government which has the courage to stand up to the threats and blackmail of the big corporations. As the big corporations evade taxes, workers on wages and salaries cannot avoid the full force of the tax take under the PAYE scheme. But even this is not enough for the corporations. They want to reduce their tax payments to nothing. That is why the various business organisations are solidly behind the GST except where it would impose a tax on their business activity, such as in tourism. There is a claim that without a GST the Australian economy cannot be competitive. The fact is that many other developed economies with which Australia competes have had a GST tax system for years while Australia has retained the existing system. This has not made Australia uncompetitive. A GST reduces the purchasing power of the overwhelming number of consumers. By taking more and more out of the pockets of consumers fewer goods will be sold and industrial turn-over will slow down. Put more in the pockets of consumers and spending will go up. But business leaders are so blinded by the demand for profits that they cannot see that by impoverishing a large proportion of the population they ultimately undermine their own prosperity. But in the end, they will reap the whirlwind as more come to see that there is no need for poverty and that it is the economic system that is "broke" and must be changed. The defeat of the GST would be a very important victory over the Howard Government. It is to be hoped that there will be a similar rejection of the full or even half privatisation of Telstra and that Reith's second wave industrial legislation will be defeated. Maybe, Meg Lees will do better than Cheryl Kernot in this respect. The Guardian 65 Campbell Street, Surry Hills. 2010 Australia. Email: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Website: http://www.peg.apc.org/~guardian -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
