Mr SNOWDON (5:42 PM) —I want to welcome to the House today some residents of Christmas Island, who are here visiting parliament. We just had a discussion and one of the things they raised with me was the impact of the GST on their community. The reason why it is important is that they were told prior to the election that the GST would have no impact upon them because they do not pay any wholesale sales tax. Of course, those people who said that neglected to tell them that any goods they purchased in Perth would all have the GST applied to them. So they will feel the full impact of the GST on goods and services they purchase off the mainland. This was not something that was discussed with them, nor was it something that was owned up to by the government. Nevertheless, I am happy to say that they voted overwhelmingly for me, so I want to thank them for that support.

There has also been a lot of misinformation given about the GST in terms of its impact on regional and remote Australia. I was interested to see yesterday that members of the government were giving fulsome support for the idea of a GST because they thought it was going to be good for regional Australia. I come from a part of regional Australia where it will be an absolute disaster. I want to give you an illustration of what a disaster it would be.

Tangentyre Council is a town camp organisation in Alice Springs. It looks after the interests of Aboriginal people who live in those town camps. They undertook a study of the `town camper' community and its impact upon them of a GST. They came to the conclusion that a single aged pensioner who receives $377.50 per fortnight would, under the GST proposal, receive a four per cent increase, which would take that up to $392.60, or $15.50 in addition. The work impact of the government's GST, on its own estimates, would be an additional cost to them of $25 in the same period. In other words, they would be $10 shy. These people are not silly. They understand when they are being told porkies, and they have been told enormous porkies by this government about the impact of a GST upon them.

Work has been done on the effect of the GST on remote communities. I will raise another example to give you a comparison of the impact of a GST on, say, middle-class Manuka as opposed to an underclass of people at Kalkaringi in the far north-west of the Northern Territory. There is a chicken takeaway at Kalkaringi. You can buy a roast chook there for 10 bucks. A roast chicken of a similar size costs $6.50 in Manuka. I give that example to note the impact of a GST. The difference between a 10 per cent charge on $10 and on $6.50 is fairly obvious, even if you discount it for the other taxes that the government say they will be removing. These are the poorest people in Australia.

Mr Lloyd —They will be better off.

Mr SNOWDON —Who will be better off? Comrade, come with me to the Northern Territory to visit these people and tell me how they will be better off. They will be worse off.

Mr SPEAKER —The member for the Northern Territory will address his remarks through the chair.

Mr SNOWDON —Comrade chair, there is no question about it.

Mr SPEAKER —The member for the Northern Territory does not intend, I am sure, to insult the chair, but he should be careful.

Mr SNOWDON —They will be far worse off, they know it and you know it. The other support we had during the election campaign was with regard to a GST on fuel. Lachlan McIntosh, from the Australian Automobile Association, blew that one out of the water. He said:

I think it is more likely that the GST, being 10%, will be larger on a 75 cents a litre petrol than on 60 cents . . .

That is fairly obvious, you would have thought. He continued:

. . . it'll be one-and-a-half cents more, it'll be rounded up to two cents, so you are going to see slightly larger margins than in the city.

It costs 88c a litre to buy fuel in Alice Springs. Are you telling me that, with the imposition of a GST and the removal of other taxes, petrol is going to be cheaper in Alice Springs? Are you sitting there telling me truthfully that it will be cheaper? The answer is no and you know that I am correct.

What we heard in the lead-up to the election was the GST being paraded around the country as a panacea for everything that was evil for the community in terms of taxation. What we have come to learn, however, is that it will be a grave impost upon remote and regional Australia and that the gravest impost of all will be on those Aboriginal Australians who live in very remote communities and who do not have the discretionary incomes of the type of people who live in Manuka. (Time expired)