Brick With Eyes crushes GST hike

Says the Brick With Eyes (or Senator Glenn Lazarus to the uninitiated) at the AFR:

“I would not support any increase to the GST. As has been said, it will be the low-income earners, the people that can’t afford it, that will pay.”

Says Xenoponzi:

“Look at the issue of superannuation, tweaking superannuation, tweaking negative gearing or the capital gains concessions. All of those would look at revenue rather than slugging some of the most vulnerable in the community…Which would be equitable rather than ratcheting up the GST so significantly.”

MB is in favour of sensible GST reform which is not regressive as the Brick suggests. Wilkie, Katter, Labor and the Greens are also against, so no GST reform is possible before the election. Having said that, it was not going to get up prior so that’s no biggie.

But the implications aren’t much fun, throwing up the possibility of another GST election with the Coalition needing to win both houses to get its agenda up.

Meanwhile, more important matters will fester.

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About the author

David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.