Turnbull pledge on GST

TASMANIA will know before the Braddon by-election the upshot of the Productivity Commission’s review of the GST carve-up, Malcolm Turnbull said yesterday.

“We will certainly make it clear what our position is with respect to Tasmania before super Saturday,” he said.

The Prime Minister repeated an “absolute guarantee’ Tasmania would not be worse off.

“In other words, they’re not going to receive, under any revised arrangement, less money, less dollars, from the GST arrangements,” he said.

The final Productivity Commission report, commissioned to look at the carve-up formula, was delivered to the Government a fortnight ago.

Economist Saul Eslake said the commitment Tasmania would not receive less dollars was worrying.

“All the Prime Minister is ‘guaranteeing’ is that the dollar amount of GST revenue that Tasmania will receive in future years will not fall below the dollar amount [$2.488 billion] that it will receive in 2018-19,” he said.

“Given that the most recent Federal Budget predicts that total revenue from the GST will rise by almost 15 per cent between the 2018-19 and 2021-22 financial years, Mr Turnbull’s ‘guarantee’ implies that Tasmania’s share of the GST pie would fall from the current 3.7 per cent to 3.2 per cent over that period.

Mr Eslake said that would mean Tasmania getting $367 million or 13 per cent less in 2021-22 than it would if its share remained at 3.7 per cent.