The Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/0001/21/text/national12.html Deluge of angry e-mail over tax on tampons Date: 21/01/2000 By TONI O'LOUGHLIN The plan to apply the GST to tampons and sanitary pads has triggered furious protests from women, who have bombarded Federal politicians with e-mail. Under the GST legislation, tampons and sanitary pads are deemed to be personal hygiene products, not health products, and so will be taxed. At present, tampons and sanitary pads are tax-free but with the application of the GST on July 1, Australian women are likely to pay, in total, an extra $20million a year for these products. Women are demanding that the products be added to the list of exempt health-related items, which include sunscreen, folate pills, condoms and personal lubricants. The office of Labor Senator John Falkner estimated yesterday that he had received 3,000 e-mails on the issue from individuals since last weekend. Yesterday afternoon they were still arriving at a rate of about 20 an hour. Also targeted were the Minister for Health, Dr Wooldridge; the Leader of the Democrats, Senator Lees; the Minister for Communications, Senator Alston; Democrats Senator Andrew Murray; and National Party Senator Ron Boswell. The Women's Electoral Lobby's national executive officer, Ms Helen Leonard, said it was not only inequitable but sexist to tax such items. "It is one of those things that you can't avoid buying, and they are fairly highly priced anyway," she said. "You have to buy the darned things every month for 30 years or more." A member of Democrats Senator Natasha Stott Despoja's staff said it was not only prime-age women who were protesting. A man had written to the senator saying he had three young daughters and that he would not be able to afford the extra cost. A spokesman for Senator Lees said some e-mails had been received, and the issue would be discussed at today's party room meeting. Dr Wooldridge's office declined to answer questions and referred them to the office of the Treasurer, Mr Costello. The shadow treasurer, Mr Simon Crean, accused the Government of breaching its promise not to tax health items. "When you look at the [GST] exclusion list, it makes this decision not to include them even more ludicrous," Mr Crean said. This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited. ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." -- 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
