Nobody wants to pay more tax, except me

October 21, 2026 — 4:00am

You have reached your maximum number of saved items.

Remove items from your saved list to add more.

No gift articles left

You've used all of your gift articles. 3 more will become available on the 1st of every month.

Q: What politician in their right mind would go to the next federal election promising to raise the tax on goods and services from 10 per cent to 15 per cent?

A: Probably none of them. But that just shows how lacking in courage and desire to fix our problems both sides of politics have become. Go for the simple, indolent life and become prime minister. Leave it for some other mug to repaint the house.

But there’s been a recent flood of worthies urging just that: an increase in the GST. On the Liberal side has been former treasurer Josh Frydenberg and former finance minister Mathias Cormann. Earlier, on the Labor side, we had Paul Keating and former union boss Bill Kelty.

The independent member Allegra Spender has made tax reform her special project. Among the economic experts, there’s been former Treasury secretary Ken Henry and Grattan Institute boss Aruna Sathanapally.

So what’s the problem? First, that old favourite, debt and deficit. It’s perfectly fine for the federal budget to be in deficit – where government spending exceeds tax collections – at times when the economy’s in recession or very weak and needs the government to prop it up, provided it’s back in surplus when things return to normal.

Spender and Chalmers’ reform adviser back GST change to offset tax cuts

But we’ve run a deficit for most of the past two decades, with the government’s........

© Brisbane Times