Mr WAKELIN —My question is addressed to the Treasurer. Can the Treasurer inform the House of any recent contribution to the tax reform debate from key community groups representing low income earners and the disadvantaged?

Mr COSTELLO (Treasurer) —I thank the honourable member for his question. He would note, as I have noted, that not only does business in this country support tax reform but the Australian Council of Social Service also supports tax reform. We welcome the fact that the Australian Council of Social Service has entered the tax reform debate, a debate which the Labor Party is incapable of entering because it is incapable of delivering any policy.

Ms Macklin —Rubbish! Absolute rubbish!

Mr COSTELLO —I hear the member for Jagajaga interject. I was hoping that she would because she got up here in this parliament and asked a question on Monday of the Prime Minister about the effect of broad based indirect tax and a goods and services tax on married pensioners and wealthy couples. She referred to research from ACOSS, which notes a price effect of any changes in relation to indirect tax. She said to the Prime Minister, `Wouldn't it be a terrible thing?' I interjected at the time, an interjection which she denied, that the research on which she relied, which she did not have the decency to disclose, was instructed to model all changes on the basis that there had been no compensation to any pension involved.

What do you think you get from a piece of research when you say, `Model a tax change without any effect on a pension as a result'? What do you expect to get? At least ACOSS had the decency to say in its report, which the scaremongering shadow minister did not have the decency to say, `No attempt was made to model compensation for low income households.'

Let me ask the scaremongering shadow minister this question: when the Labor Party introduced a two per cent increase in wholesale sales tax after the 1993 election when it took one rate from 10 per cent to 12 per cent, what compensation was there? When the Labor Party increased the wholesale sales tax from the 20 per cent rate to the 22 per cent rate, what compensation was there? When the Labor Party took away the l-a-w income tax cuts, what compensation was there? When the Labor Party increased the price of the excise on leaded and unleaded fuel, what compensation was there?

We have a Labor Party that, in government, had no compunction whatsoever about increasing taxes without compensation. We get these little scaremongering cameos wandering in with the ACOSS research, not reading out the particular assumptions on which it is done, as part of some kind of attempt by the socialist left of the Labor Party to join forces with economic Hansonism.

There are some people in the Labor Party who still think about economic issues. The last dinosaur in the Labor Party prepared to talk about economic issues was the member for Werriwa. Do you remember him? We do. He was removed from any involvement in the economic policy of the Australian Labor Party because he used to make Crean, Evans and co. look bad. Alan Wood summed it up in the Australian on 22 November 1997. I quote:

One of Labor's bright young hopes, Mark Latham, has been heard to remark to colleagues: `Oppositions are allowed to be irresponsible.' But the last word belongs to a former Labor minister in the Hawke and Keating governments who confided his alarm that Labor might actually win the next election. `We could never govern,' he said, `with policies like these.'

Well, ain't that the truth, Mr Speaker.