State and Territory Treasurers Meeting

The Hon. T.J. STEPHENS (15:23): My question is to the Treasurer. Is the Treasurer attending a meeting of state and territory treasurers, and will the issue of GST be discussed? What position will the Treasurer be putting on behalf of the people of South Australia?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (15:23): I thank the honourable member for his question. Yes, I will be attending an important meeting of the board of treasurers tomorrow in Sydney. As I result of that, I will miss a very important meeting in Adelaide and I am truly apologetic for having to miss that very important meeting. However, this particular meeting is important.

The federal Treasurer and the federal government, weeks ago now, put their position in relation to the Productivity Commission recommendations on horizontal fiscal equalisation—in essence, the GST funding deal—into the public arena. The comforting thing from that was that they rejected the Productivity Commission recommendations, but the recommendations from the commonwealth government have been closely analysed and scrutinised by all state and territory treasuries as we speak.

In the discussion tomorrow, the position that I will be putting on behalf of South Australia will be essentially the position I put publicly at the time, that is, the same as the position we put prior to the election; that is, we will not agree in South Australia to any deal which disadvantages South Australia. As we closely analyse the proposed deal, which the federal government hopes to have reached an agreement on by the end of this calendar year, we are going to need to assure ourselves and the public of South Australia that it is in the best interests of South Australia for us to sign up to the deal or not.

The discussion tomorrow with other state and territory treasurers will be about their analysis of the deal. As is always the case in relation to GST funding deals, there is a wide diversity of opinion, ranging from Western Australia at one end of the continuum, generally through to the smaller states and territories—Tasmania, South Australia, the Northern Territory and sometimes the ACT—at the other end. The interesting group in the middle tends to be Victoria and Queensland.

I think as I have indicated previously, it was only through the strong support of the Victorian government and the Victorian premier, Jeff Kennett, and his close relationship with former premier John Olsen, that when we signed the original GST deal in 2000-2001 the Victorian government supported the strong position the smaller states and territories put. That was an influential factor in the current funding deal which has advantaged South Australia significantly over almost 20 years.

That will be the position I put to my interstate colleagues tomorrow. There will be no resolution tomorrow. There will be sharing of information and cooperation between now and the end of the year, when ultimately each state and territory will have to say to the federal government whether they agree to sign up to the proposed deal or not.