Labor’s bizarre claims on GST today confirms that they’re spendaholics, who would trash the budget if given the chance to govern again.
With their absurd conspiracy theory about GST funding, they have confirmed that they want to undo all of the savings that we have made, plunging the state back into deficit and debt.
The fact is, the Commonwealth Grants Commission only released its final report on the GST carve up in February this year.
It took several more weeks for the Federal Treasurer to agree to the recommendations. While the outcome was certainly welcome, there was every chance that the Commonwealth Grants Commission could have recommended a distribution that would not have been so favourable and could have resulted in Tasmania getting less GST.
It was simply not possible to accurately forecast Tasmania’s share of GST when the whole method for carving up the GST was being reviewed and changed, which is why we took the prudent and sensible step of using the Commonwealth Government figures in the 2014-15 budget.
No matter how desperately Labor tried to rewrite history, it won’t change the fact that they trashed the budget, and we are repairing it.
Peter Gutwein, Treasurer
