State’s GST share remains elusive

TREASURER Peter Gutwein has put a figure on Tasmania’s GST receipts in the first year of the new distribution system, but admits the state’s percentage share remains unknown.

Mr Gutwein has pointed to Tasmania receiving a $17 million top-up to the $2.761 billion in GST revenue forecast for 2021-22 in his State Budget.

That would grow to $23 million by the time of the new system’s full implementation in 2026-27, for a total of $112 million over six years.

“The payments then go on,” Mr Gutwein said.

“It is a larger pool that the Commonwealth are proposing forever, in perpetuity.

“What we need to do is satisfy ourselves in terms of the model — we’ll work through it sensibly and responsibly.”

But asked whether Tasmania’s 3.6 per cent share of the GST pie would grow or become smaller, Mr Gutwein said details were yet to be modelled.

“What we need to do is to get that data and to understand it fully,” he said.

“What we do know is that on the projections that the Commonwealth provided, we get more money — that is a good thing.

“As a treasurer, you always want more money rather than less.”

Mr Gutwein said Tas- mania’s relativities — or dollars per head of population — held firm under the Federal Government’s modelling.

Labor dismissed the top-up figures — part of a $6.7 billion total injection nationally — as an unfunded best case scenario.

Health spokeswoman Sarah Lovell said the first-year top-up would do little to fix the state’s under-pressure hospitals.

“That amount of money would keep our hospitals running for just four days,” Ms Lovell said.

“If Tasmanians think the crisis in our hospital system can’t get any worse, it absolutely can and under this deal it will.”

Ms Lovell said Tasmanians had no guarantees on the extra money — apart from Treasurer Scott Morrison’s word.

“The biggest problem here is that’s the best case scenario, that the Treasurer stays true to his word and we get those topup payments,” she said.

Mr Gutwein said hundreds of nurses and teachers could be employed with the $112 million package.

He said the Federal Government top-ups represented a small fraction of the $600 billion it would collect from the GST.

“The Commonwealth can afford it,” Mr Gutwein said.

Greens spokeswoman Rosalie Woodruff joined the warning on cuts to pay for the top-ups.

“We’re going to have money taken from the State Budget in some form or another to make that up,” Dr Woodruff said.