Apathy kills off GST carve-up debate

TASMANIAN Tr e a s u r e r Peter Gutwein’s attempt to have the Productivity Commission hold a hearing about the GST carve-up in the state appears to be in trouble.

Because of an apparent lack of interest from stakeholders, a hearing looks unlikely.

Mr Gutwein invited the Productivity Commission to hold a public hearing in Tasmania as part of its review of the $60 billion GST carve-up between states.

“The Productivity Commission understands that there is interest in allowing Tasmanians the opportunity to eyeball the commission and explain to them why t h e y shouldn’t change our GST,” Mr Gutwein said yesterday.

His stance was backed by Labor leader Rebecca White who was also keen for a hearing in Tasmania.

But the Productivity Commission yesterday said it would follow its well established processes. “We need to have a minimum of four registered participants to go ahead with a public hearing,” a spokeswoman said.

“When we released our draft report, we advertised and also wrote to all state and territory governments reminding them of the threshold of four needed to go ahead.

“Our registration closed recently and we only received four or more registrations from the locations listed on our website.

“For registration in locations where we don’t get the minimum of four, we arrange for them to participate in other hearings by teleconference or in person if they prefer.”

The commission will hold hearings in Western Australia, Melbourne, Sydney and Darwin this month.

Mr Gutwein said he met the Productivity Commission about 10 days ago.

“I spoke to them about this particular issue and Treasury has been in contact with them in the latter part of last week,” he said.

A spokesman for federal Treasurer Scott Morrison said that at the most recent Commonwealth Federal Financial Relation meeting on October 27, commission chairwoman Karen Chester had informed treasurers that the commission was a demand-driven organisation.

“If there is enough interest we’ll be there,” the spokesman quoted Ms Chester as saying.

But Mr Morrison’s spokesman said an arbitrary deadline wouldn’t stand in the way of a hearing if there was an escalation of interest.

The commission yesterday said there had been no escalation of interest.

Tasmania could lose funding worth $1 billion from a modified per capita model floated in the draft report released on October 9.

Morrison