Senator BROWN (8:02 PM) —by leave—I move two amendments to this package of legislation. The first is to A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax Transition) Bill 1998. I move:

At the end of the motion, add "but that the Senate:

(a) notes that the Government's proposed $3.5 billion reduction in taxes on diesel will result in:

(i) increased greenhouse gas emissions;

(ii) increased air pollution, especially in urban areas;

(iii) reduced markets for solar and wind energy;

(iv) the demise of the oil recycling industry; and

(v) contraction of gas-fuelled transport; and

(b) considers that taxes on diesel for road transport should not be cut".

The second is an amendment to A New Tax System (Australian Business Number) Bill 1998 . I move:

At the end of the motion, add "but that the Senate considers it wrong to impose new taxes on not-for-profit community groups working in the public interest".

I will come back to those matters a little later. First, though, let me nail the Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate by exposing the weakness and in fact the falsity in the government's argument that Australians would be better off with this tax package. Just today in here Senator Alston said:

. . . 81 per cent of people are better off as a result of the change in the system.

Ipso facto, 19 per cent of the people will be worse off, by government admission—three million-plus Australians. I await Senator Alston's response to what he said in question time today. Here from the government itself is a statistical admission that more than three million Australians are going to be worse off under this tax package. We do not have to ask which ones. They are going to be the poorer, the people already on low incomes, those who are having the hardest trot of the lot, including indigenous Australians.

This tax package is going to lead to an increase in the gap between the haves and the have-nots in Australia, between the rich and the poor and between the powerful and the powerless. It is going to accelerate the disturbing trend in this nation under successive Labor governments and now this conservative government of the increasing gap between the poor and the rich, as we have seen in the United States where there are some 35 million people living below the poverty line. Those of us who have been there will attest to the numbers of people begging on the streets—the panhandlers, the people who simply cannot make ends meet because they do not have an income or receive social welfare or because if they do get either of those they still do not have enough to feed and facilitate themselves and their families.

In particular, there is now no doubt that this tax package is going to attack those people in Australia working because government has defaulted in delivering welfare and a fair go to all Australians. I am referring here to community groups and non-government organisations. The common theme in the argument from such groups against this GST package has been that it will be forbiddingly expensive for such organisations to implement. Our calculation is that another $100 million-plus would have to go to such organisations just in Tasmania—with three per cent of the country's population—if they were not going to be worse off in their community activities whatever they might be under the GST. Such groups will lose income, sometimes substantial, because subscriptions and fundraising will be taxed.

The GST applied to community groups is essentially a tax on volunteer work. People in this field will attest to the fall off in voluntarism in this nation since the heydays of the 1980s. I believe that one of the underlying factors there is the realisation by many overworked volunteers that they are being taken for suckers by successive national governments, but none so much as the Howard government. People are saying, `Why should we give up our time? Why should we give up our money? Why should we act as volunteers to fill the deficit which occurs as this government continues to cut community welfare and community services, not just marginally but by billions of dollars each year?'

Now on top of that, those community groups which utilise volunteers are going to find themselves faced with awesome added costs as the government moves even to tax them. Those community groups are aware that the hardship they face is not being visited upon corporate Australia and the wealthy in Australia. They realise that serial adjustments to the taxation system in this country, including this package, are transferring the wealth, sweat and labour of volunteers in this country across to the already wealthy and that this is being fed into the profit lines of a booming stock market and the take-home money and spending ability of those people who are already wealthy at the expense of the poor or the people who work for the poor.

This package is going to put almost impossible extra burdens of work on voluntary treasurers in organisations throughout this nation—people who work for Little Athletics through to surf lifesaving and charitable organisations. Volunteer treasurers are going to become a much rarer species as these organisations have to take on professionally paid experts to deal with the GST and therefore give good money to pay for professional services at the expense of the people to whom they deliver such services. And, of course, low paid workers and charities will be hit by changes to the fringe benefits tax.

I did not miss the statement that Senator Lees, the Leader of the Democrats, made on television on 4 March. She said, `I think the question as to whether or not charities will be worse off has been answered, and it is yes.' This is the very point on which the Greens went to the last election. We appealed to the Democrats not to cushion the GST through the elections because, amongst others, charitable organisations around this country were going to be hit. We had done our homework. We understood the impact this was going to have on community groups, but we did not have the firepower and we did not have the public and media space that the Democrats had when they said to this nation, `We will cushion this GST if you take it off your worry list at these elections.' `We will be the agents of a nice GST,' said the Democrats. `We will take food out. We will make sure you are not worse off because we will have the balance of power in the Senate.' And I will come back to this in a minute.

The GST will impact on the poor and on the organisations which work for them—whatever it might be further down the line—precisely because the Democrats cushioned this tax package through the last elections by telling the electorate at large, `We can make it better. We can make it nice. Don't worry about it; vote on other measures.'

Let me give some specific examples from evidence that has been forthcoming post-election of what the GST might do to various people and groups in this country. It is unfair that 15,000 members of the War Widows Guild of Australia in New South Wales, with an average age of 76, should have to pay a GST on the maintenance costs of home units that they have built for their needy members. It is unfair that there will be a rise in subscriptions from $20 to $22 for those elderly members on low incomes. That will be too much for many members, who are subsisting on a meagre pension, to be able to cope with.

It is unfair that the community club at Dulwich Hill Public School in Sydney should have to charge the GST on food sold through the school canteen and on presents that children buy at stalls on Mother's Day and Father's Day at the school. The GST is effectively a tax on the voluntary work of the parents who run the canteen and stalls. It is unfair that ethnic and multicultural broadcasters, who mobilise 3½ thousand volunteers in Australia to provide 1½ thousand hours of broadcasting in 90 languages each week, should have to lose 3½ to six per cent of their gross income because of this GST package. It is unfair that the ACT Monaro District Golf Association, which is non-profit and has no employees, should have to pay a GST on its income from affiliation fees and entry fees. The increased costs and administrative workload could spell the end for smaller golf clubs and, of course, other similar recreational and community service outlets from many small country communities.

It is also unfair that the West Australian Deaf Society should be $49,000 a year worse off under the GST and have to increase the cost to deaf people for its interpreter services because of this tax system. It is unfair that Company B—the Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney—will be $24,700 a year worse off under the GST. Everywhere you look you see that people providing for the wider benefit of the community are going to be hit by a government which, I submit, has already cut billions of dollars from essential services in this country.

Beyond this, what should we be doing? I will not elaborate again on the Greens' alternatives. We should not be using a fifties, sixties and seventies tax from elsewhere, now outmoded and superseded, when there are better taxing alternatives. The Greens have been pointing to eco taxes which give incentives to those people who do the right thing by the environment, in the widest sense of that word, right throughout our community from the bush to the cities, and which penalise those people who do the wrong thing—the polluters, the despoilers; those who work against the environmental amenity. These taxes are implemented in Europe. They raise billions of dollars in countries like Sweden, Denmark and Germany. But this tax package not only does not address that alternative; it is also going to block the path to that alternative for a long time to come. Worse still, it goes in the opposite direction. This tax package will give a $3 billion per annum windfall to fossil fuel guzzling industries in Australia which are polluting our environment, including the living environment of all Australians, and adding to the global warming phenomenon which itself promises to have massive economic as well as environmental consequences for the next generation.

It is almost unconscionable that, in a world in which Australia has been seen as recalcitrant and dragging the chain on its environmental responsibilities, this Howard government should actually be giving a $3 billion a year incentive to the transport, mining and logging industries to use more fossil fuels. I note that the Democrats have said, `Well, let's have a halfway house here. Let's only give them a little bit. Let's preserve it, and'—I would agree with this—`let's not add further tax imposts to the rural community. Let's preserve it for some other activities, for example trucks carrying 20-tonne loads or more,' which I presume means every woodchip log carrying truck and mining truck in the nation.

I do not believe one dollar extra in tax incentives should be given to the big mining and logging corporations as an incentive for them to go about their work. I believe the incentives should go to those industries which are doing the right thing. But what is the Howard government doing? As far as solar power and wind power, the clean green alternatives, are concerned, it is going to add a GST to those industries. So, on the one hand, it gives an incentive—billions of dollars—to the polluting part of modern industry and, on the other hand, it actually adds tax, a disincentive, to the clean green alternative.

I today picked up in the Parliamentary Library an article called `Painting China Green' from Foreign Affairs magazine, a US journal which is conservative, to say the least. Let me read to you two excerpts from this current edition. It says:

According to the World Bank, water scarcity and pollution alone annually cost China about $14 billion in lost industrial output and about $24 billion in crop loss. The health costs of air pollution will skyrocket—reaching $98 billion by 2020.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of the costs of China's decision to trade the environment for economic growth was 1998's flooding of the Yangtze. Official indifference and decades of poor environment choices—failing to protect wetlands and clear-cutting forests for timber, farmland, and industrial development—contributed to the unrelenting floods which killed more than 3,000 people, destroyed 5 million homes, and inundated 52 million acres of land. The economic losses are estimated at more than $20 billion.

This story, written by the fortunately named Elizabeth Economy, says:

If fully understood and thoughtfully addressed, however, China's environmental problems offer a unique opportunity for the United States to cooperate with China on a vital issue.

The vital issue of the environment. She goes on to say that these environmental activities are a multimillion dollar potential. She also says:

. . . as the United States attempts to reduce its growing trade imbalance with China, it should not overlook the sale of technologies and products protecting the environment. The World Bank estimates that between 1995 and 2004, China will require about $100 billion of infrastructural investment in water conservation, treatment, and sanitation. The market for environmental goods and services, already estimated at around $4 billion, is growing rapidly.

That is our future. Where is our attempt to capitalise on this market to the north? This government, through this tax package, is killing it. The United States is way behind Japan, says that article, in capitalising on these emerging clean green industries for the future—with, I might add, hundreds of thousands of potential jobs. But here in Australia, with this tax package, the Howard government is giving billions to the fossil fuel industries and is actually adding the impost. It is killing the clean green future coming from such industries as solar power and wind power.

Let me conclude by coming back to the Democrats. They did cushion the tax package through the election. They lowered the angst that was out there in the community. They said, in effect, `We can make this a better tax. Relax. Vote on other issues.' But we now have the list of Democrat amendments. They want to zero rate food, inbound tourism packages, books, legislated and regulatory services of local government, local government community services run on a not-for-profit basis, public transport, renewable energy equipment, grants to arts and cultural organisations, some forms of sponsorship, telecommunications equipment for the hearing impaired, government approved therapeutic goods, complementary medicine, goods with a specific public health benefit, membership fees for charities, fundraising by charities, hire of facilities and associated catering by charities, advertising by charitable institutions, fees for recreational programs for under 14-year-olds, lifesaving and first aid, tuckshops, purchases by libraries made on a not-for-profit basis, educational institutions, not-for-profit parent and teacher organisations, and adult and community education courses.

The government is not going to wear that. As one headline said today: `The Democrats have been left out in the cold'. They are responsible for this package, but the deal will now be done with the Independents. If the Prime Minister can buy the states, I submit to you, Madam Acting Deputy President Reynolds, that the Independents are also going to be able to pass this package with or without the Democrats. (Time expired)