Hanson and Howard: taxing our credibility

Bob Collins has chucked in politics after a colourful
and distinguished career as a Senator for the
Northern Territory spanning 10 years.
He came to Tennant to share his views on One Nation,
the looming G.S.T. and to say farewell to the faithful ...

One Nation
No other member of parliament on the federal scene has used the prominence that a member of parliament can get if they want to go out and push buttons, that's why Pauline Hanson's got popular appeal.
The sort of buttons she's pushing for the bush are really not deliverable by any government, let me tell you, they're all buttons that I'm very, very familiar with, having addressed meetings of farmers from one end of Australia to the other.
Soft line buttons like loans for primary producers at 2% interest, erecting huge tariff barriers for Australia, scrapping overseas loans - these are very popular things with Pauline Hanson.
Out in the bush I got hammered on The Friendship Bridge between Laos and Vietnam, a project that the Australian government funded. "What in the bloody hell are we doing giving hundreds of millions of dollars to build bridges in bloody Asia, when you know, farmers are going out backwards etc, etc".
Completely forgetting of course, that the bridge was in fact built by a major Australian contractor, in any case!
The Asian region just happens to be the biggest customer that Australian Primary Producers have got. China is Australia's biggest single buyer of wool, Japan is our biggest customer full stop, overall for things like beef - I could go on and on.
BUT, if you're a pork producer and if you're going out backwards and if somebody wants to come and rub a whole heap of snake oil on you and you don't have a particular love of either of the major parties because neither Labor nor Liberal are offering to print money for you, and then someone stands up in the Federal Parliament and starts promising these things, I suppose your vote for them is a protest to give the others a boot in the backside.
There are certainly a lot of people in regional Australia that want to see tariff walls around Australia, but it would kill us dead. We export five times the amount of produce from Australia that we consume domestically.
We need those walls to be open for own sake, but if you put tariff barriers up, shut down immigration, and close off overseas aid, all One Nation policies, for a lot of people out there it sounds sweet. The fact that it would kill the country at the end of the day doesn't avoid the fact - and it's got to be admitted - that they've got popular appeal. But having said that, they are fundamentally policies which are not deliverable in terms of responsible governments.

Is it true to say that the problem for the Liberals and the Nationals is that they can't quite decide whether to go to the left or to the right?
Correct, you've got it! You've absolutely nailed it in one. That's the reason for the debacle in Queensland. The question of how the Nationals directed their preferences was determined by fear. They don't know whether to run to the left or whether to run to the right and the reason they directed the preferences the way they did was because they were at the one time not wanting to support One Nation, but at the same time not wanting to alienate its supporters by considering them to be worse than the Labor party - that's what that was all about.
They were terrified, they were like a rabbit, you know, hypnotised by the headlights on the highway, because they were terrified to alienate One Nation supporters. They made that decision and by so doing, handed One Nation a whole heap of seats that they would not otherwise have won.
The Nationals of course, having run with the left, are now all running to the right and then back to the left again because of what they actually saw happen on the ground in Queensland! The reason why the Libs are so terror-struck into announcing that they're putting One Nation last has got nothing whatever to do with principles, it's got everything to do with what happened in Queensland - it's all about political survival.
None of this has surprised me and I'm not being a smartass by saying that; it's purely because of the time that I was able to spend in the bush, trekking around as Primary Industries Minister. The disaffection with the National Party is just enormous in the bush and it's been there for an awfully long time.
The bush has simply been waiting for an alternative to the National party to stick its head up and the reason for that is, rightly or wrongly, regional Australia is absolutely convinced that the National Party in coalition simply doesn't represent them anymore. The view in the bush is that the National party has been totally subsumed by the Liberals. That in coalition, what they do is talk National when they're out here but when they go down to Canberra, they talk Liberal.
I mean there was an enormous amount of protest in that vote in Queensland which will dissipate, One Nation can't expect to get that result again, even in Queensland. That's why I don't think they're going to do as well in the Northern Territory as they might do else where. There isn't a distinct National Party here in any case.

Not one that people aren't happy with - I mean, people love their CLP here, don't they?
The biggest difficulty for the Labor Party - and I used to apologise regularly at every budget to the Territory Labor leader of the day - is the good deal that we got from Canberra.
I mean you've got to convince people that they need to change their government to win and that's awfully tough in the Northern Territory. It's all about lifestyle and we have got a lifestyle which in Australian comparative terms is second to none. The lowest unemployment figures in Australia, one of the highest per capita incomes in Australia outside of the A.C.T and the highest growth rate in Australia - all these are true.
So when it comes to putting a mark on that ballot paper, people are not at all convinced of a need for change. It's not because they love the CLP government, most of them don't. It's not because they've got an enormously high regard for the government, it's simply because life's pretty good and they don't see any reason to change it.
One of the great joys of living in the Northern Territory and in Darwin, is the diversity of the community. That's its strength and its richness - it makes the place interesting and exciting to be in!
The prospect of monoculturalism with the entire country looking like clones of Pauline Hanson or John Sharp is too horrible to contemplate. But it was a cry from the heart from Sharp; he really meant it when he said that and that's how a lot of them feel in National Party country.

Didn't Pauline Hanson say recently that she was opposed to non-english signs on businesses and streets?
Yeah, she was objecting specifically to what a lot of sensible entrepreneurs have done. Have you been to Cairns? You go to Cairns and have a look at how many Japanese tourists there are there, there's lots! When you go around Cairns and you talk to the business people, and this is really interesting, you find out a couple of things. One is, all the business people in the Cairns area are desperate to keep the Japanese there. They also tell you what very good employers they are and what very good corporate citizens they are in terms of paying their bills and not defaulting on small business people by leaving electricians and plumbers and all those sort of people in the lurch and fleeing town.
They are good corporate citizens, Japanese businesses, they are highly valued there and there are lots of Japanese tourists in North Queensland, bringing enormous sums of money in there.
As a result the locals, particularly the tourist driven business people, have ensured that there are Japanese, as well as English, signs up round the place, so that tourists can actually see where they're going without needing a translator to do it. Terrific idea! But I mean, to me I see that as being a sensible and in fact I have to say, a totally pragmatic and dollar driven thing.
The locals have recognised the fact that they've got valuable visitors there that they want to encourage and make feel welcome and so on but it's got right up Pauline's nose.

It's the sign of the loony tunes really isn't it?
It is! She came and of course she's talking about legislation - she wants to actually see it prescribed by law that you can only put street signs up in English. What bloody nonsense. You either want a local business to thrive and to have a tourist industry or not.

The Goods and Services Tax

I'm extremely concerned at the moment about the lack of debate on the proposed G.S.T.
Can I just say immediately, I think we do need tax reform, no question about it and I think the thing that needs cleaning up is the wholesale sales tax regime. But a point of sale tax of both goods and services is not the answer to it.
One of the biggest structural problems this country has got is that we are the most highly urbanised people on earth. Ninety percent of our population lives in half a dozen cities, most of them on the east coast of Australia.
It's not responsible government to introduce a system of Federal taxation which is going to further widen the gap in terms of the cost difference between living in those big urban communities and the bush.
To use a Darwin example because it's one that I remember and which was never contested when Hewsen ran his 12.5% GST., let's take electricity. Down south you're paying two cents a kilowatt hour for it because it's generated from the snowy. We know that we've got one of the higher electricity charges in Australia, here in the Northern Territory. I understand all the reasons for that, one of the reasons is the fact that you've got to put all of the infrastructure in to carry the power, to deliver it at the end of the day to a very small number of consumers, which means that it's a high cost service.
I understand that, but how could you possibly use it as the basis for a Federal system of taxation. In Darwin, at 12.5%, the average family, that is 2 or 3 kids, one airconditioner in the bedroom, maybe a swimming pool, which is about an average set up in Darwin for a family, would have been paying $100 a year more in federal taxation for using exactly the same amount of power as someone in Sydney.
You pay $2 per kilo more for that steak at the point of sale in Tennant Creek, or at Manigrida or Urakala where you'll be paying $5 more. You're paying $2 more taxation on it. The easiest way to categorise that is the old basket of goods which is surveyed every quarter by the Bureau of Census and Statistics - that's how we get the C.P.I. - I still regularly get those results. Again in Darwin, it would be the same in Tennant; we are paying $60 - $70 more for that basket of goods than the major urban centres such as Adelaide are paying.
What this means of course is that you are paying more Federal Tax for that apple, for that kilo of meat and for that loaf of bread that people are paying elsewhere. That's an appalling situation. Unless there's some mechanism for compensating it, anybody who lives in regional Australia should be voting against a Goods and Services Tax. I mean we will even be paying tax on council rates!
Compensation for the G.S.T. is of course by reducing personal income tax and that's going to be done uniformly across Australia. That's the point I'm making. If you're given a $50 tax break here in Tennant Creek, your income equivalent will be given the same $50 tax break in Sydney.
The difference is that you're paying more Federal tax for the same things he's buying in the shop. That's just not bloody fair! The big problem with the Goods and Services Tax is that nobody has actually looked at the uniqueness of the Australian situation and said that at this time in any case, this tax will be unfair, it will be inequitable for everybody living far away from the point of production.
The higher the price for the goods and services, the more in Federal Taxation you're going to be paying on the item. As far as I'm concerned, if I'm paying one cent more for an apple or for a litre of petrol or for a unit of electricity than someone's paying in Sydney, it's no basis for a Federal system of taxation.
But nobody's talking about it. People should start thinking about it here and a think about the things that they're going to be paying it on because this was all debated back in Hewsen's time, all your local government charges, they're services you see - garbage, sewerage, water - are all services that form part of the goods and services end of it. Haircuts, tickets to the football, you go and see the football on Saturday, you'll be paying 10% G.S.T or whatever, funerals even, all sorts of stuff.

Mr and Mrs Average are paying a certain amount of tax by whatever means under the present system. If they're to be better off under a G.S.T, who's going to pay the shortfall?
That's right, have a look. The Business Counsel are supporting it enthusiastically to point where they're misrepresenting themselves over it. I can't remember what they call themselves, Australians for a fairer Tax System or something. They've put a dummy front up to try to pretend that they're not business people - they're conscious of the fact that if the big end of town are seen as thinking it's terrific idea, which they do, then the little end of town, the ordinary P.A.Y.E tax earner might think that it's a bit suss.

Won't small business be lumbered with adding a little bit to everything that it sells and then remitting the money to the government and accounting for it all?
Correct, they're called compliance costs and they will be enormous. It will turn every small business in Australia into an unpaid tax collection agency. I've seen the figures. People have actually worked it out that a small business, a retail business, employing between 15 and 20 people, will have to employ an additional person just to handle the paper work generated by the G.S.T. Oh yes, the compliance costs will be significant.
When people in the Northern Territory are going to be paying more tax for a kilo of meat and a packet of sugar and a loaf of bread or a container of milk than someone in Sydney is paying, but only get the same reduction in their income tax that the person in Sydney is going to get, then that stinks on ice, that sux!
I'd vote against that, not because I'm a member of the Labor Party, but because it sux! It's not fair! It's not fair and I think it will be hugely unpopular. It killed John Hewsen, in an election which he would otherwise would have won and it's perfectly capable of killing John Howard.
We are amongst the most conservative race on earth, us Australians! That's the reason that Labor lost the last election, and Howard seems to have forgotten it already. A cartoon hung on my office in Canberra really sums it up.
The cartoon was Keating and Howard standing side by side in an art gallery and in front of Keating was this ENORMOUS piece of artwork with these huge splashes of paint that went all over it, which actually went across the frame and onto the wall. And Howard had this little miniature in front of him and they're both standing there in front of their respective paintings looking at them and all the caption underneath said was "The vision thing"! Summed it up superbly!
I'm an enormous admirer of Keating, I love Paul Keating and I mean he was a guy I just so enjoyed, it was like a rollercoaster ride with him, it was terrific, full of ideas and a tremendous public figure in my view. But it was the "Vision thing" that at the end of the day turned people off it at the end of thirteen years, because people were tired of the change and reform and Paul was still right into it. You know, bridges to Asia and security agreements with the Indonesian government and constant talk about reform.
Howard instead was offering people a pipe and slippers and a seat by the fire! He wanted to make people warm and comfortable and pull back from the change and that had an instant appeal. The people were tired of 13 years of non-stop reform and non-stop change. That's fundamentally what got them elected and us out of office at the last election.
But unless the Liberals and Nationals have got some fantastic carrot that will convince regional Australia that they're going to be disproportionately compensated for the G.S.T, in a way that the city folk aren't, I don't think people are going to go for it at all, particularly when they've got a One Nation alternative.