Senator COOK (Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (9:33 AM) —I move:

I seek leave to make a statement on this motion.

Leave granted.

Senator COOK —I think this is an important motion and one that the chamber should strongly support. This is the Senate, we are a house of review, and among our other responsibilities is to review legislation that the House of Representatives carries. The standout piece of legislation that the House of Representatives carried and which we modified in the current term of government was of course the GST legislation. This motion calls for a Senate select committee to be established to review the performance of the GST legislation since the GST came into effect on 1 July last year. That is an appropriate duty for a house of review. It is also an appropriate thing, since we are heading into an election later this year, that the government's promises as to what tax reform would deliver to the Australian economy and how it would allegedly benefit Australian taxpayers are held to account.

It is something that the government should welcome. The government made very strong promises about the impact on the Australian economy of the GST. If the government believes those promises it made, it should welcome scrutiny by a Senate select committee to see whether those promises that have been so strongly made have in fact been delivered. If this motion were carried, a process could be undertaken in which the government would have a chance to demonstrate through an inquiry that its very brave promises on the GST have in fact been delivered to the Australian community.

It is a motion that the Australian Democrats should support. The Australian Democrats have lived on the slogan `keep the bastards honest'. That is surely a slogan aimed at keeping the major political parties in Australia to account for what they say and do and whether or not they live by their words. The Australian Democrats of course are a party that supported the passage, in modified terms, of the GST, because they believed, if we go back to their speeches, that that would have an effect of improving the GST. Once again, they should welcome this inquiry—if we can carry this motion—because that would prove whether or not they were right or wrong. But most importantly the Australian people should welcome this inquiry because coming up to an election it is very important to test the credibility of electoral promises. There is nothing more important than the GST, because it has dominated Australian political debate for the last decade or more and it is an area in which all of us have participated in debate.

There are in my view a number of quite significant promises that have been made that ought to be tested. Before the last election the Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, and the Treasurer, Mr Peter Costello, promised that all Australians would be better off under the GST. Both of them have repeated that promise since the election and in respect of the legislation that has been carried. For example, the Prime Minister said in the House of Representatives on 10 April last year:

Recent opinion polls show that after a year's experience of the GST the great majority of Australians consider that they are not better off. Who is right? The purpose of this legislation is to perform a beneficial act for the community, and it appears from those surveys that the community does not believe that a beneficial act has been performed. If that is the case, then perhaps the GST should be reversed or rolled back or changed in some way. That promise that we will all be better off is something that an inquiry could look at.

The promise that all older Australians will get a $1,000 savings bonus is a matter of some contention. That is a significant promise. I do not believe that has been delivered, but an inquiry could examine that matter. The government in its pre-election documents promised that pensioners would get a four per cent pension rise. It is true that the age pension went up on 1 July 2000 by four per cent, or about $7.25 for single pensioners and around $6 a week for each member of a pensioner couple, but in March of this year, when the pension was to be automatically adjusted for inflation, half of the four per cent pension increase was clawed back. Has that promise been kept?

We have seen the promise that the GST will be good for the economy come under a staggering level of attention. That is a promise that should be checked. There are at least two others. There is the promise that the GST would be a simple tax. We all know what small business think about the BAS compliance burden that they have to deal with, of the attempts by the government to change that and of the still continuing protest that it is as complex as before. And there is the promise that the GST will not increase the price of petrol.

There are six areas—and I conclude on this point—on which there ought to be some accountability. If the Senate do not conduct an accountability audit of political promises—if we allow political promises to be made, to be implemented and then not pay attention to see whether in fact they have been delivered—I believe we are failing in our duty to ordinary Australians. This would be an important inquiry, and I do hope this motion can be carried.