The NSW Government has begun a whinge campaign about federalism.
It is wasting its taxpayers’ money with an advertising campaign attacking small states and territories for spending what it calls NSW money.
In yesterday’s Canberra Times its very clever advertisement said, “”If you never never go, you’ll never never know where $540m of NSW taxes get snapped up every year.” Under a picture of a crocodile it explained, “”The shores of Lake Burley Griffin had a more formidable predator than the salt-water crocodile. It’s called the Commonwealth State Grant system and it costs the NSW taxpayer and arm and a leg. Last year, for example, the combined demands of the Northern Territory, South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania put the bite on NSW for a staggering $1.5 billion.”
Then follows some populist jingoistic drivel about how this money could be spent on NSW hospitals, police and schools.
Well, these are crocodile tears from Bob Carr — a man who has got the intellect to know better.
This is the same NSW Government which announced on Thursday that if Queensland carried out its threat to abolish stamp duty on shares, it would follow, forsaking $300 million a year.
Equally clever was the advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald with a picture of beautiful scenery asking, “”With over $230m of NSW taxes to spend every year, who says Tasmania’s unspoilt.”
Is this coming from the same NSW Government that put in huge land taxes in posh Sydney suburbs so it could raise money to spend in remote, unspoilt parts of the west of the state?
Surely the people of Double Bay could run similar advertisements.
Australia is a single nation, not eight separate ones. Mr Carr is a provincial political leader, not a national one. It means the common wealth of the nation is distributed so each resident of the nation gets, as far as possible, equal access to government services.
Carr would not accept that a resident in Broken Hill or Gulargambone should get lesser services than someone on the North Shore. The same should hold true for Australians in different parts of Australia. In principle. But we are not talking principles here. We are talking voters. And the people of NSW vote next March on Carr’s fate. Tasmanians and Northern Territorians will not get a chance to express their opinion of him so they can be offended without fear.
Carr, of course, has hypocritically now joined John Howard as a raider of the Treasury to pay for electioneering.
Bob Carr’s figures come from the Budget papers. They show that the total states’ and territories’ share of personal income tax is $22 billion, or $1220 per head. The rest goes to federal and local government purposes.
NSW has 6.5 million people, so it should get $8.08 billion from the Commonwealth in general revenue grants. In fact it gets $6.5 billion. Hence Carr’s $1.5 billion squeal. It means $230 per person in NSW is going to help Australians elsewhere.
Of course, Carr’s advertisements obliquely blamed “”Canberra” for this — “”the shores of Lake Burley Griffin”. (Incidentally, the Commonwealth Grants Commission is in Torrens Street, Braddon.) There is some injustice in this. In fact, Canberra, or at least the ACT, fares worse than NSW on this score. Using the Carr rationale, we should get $545 million in general revenue grants. In fact we get $345 million. That is a shortfall of $200 million, or $625 per person. Canberrans are subsidising other Australians by $625 per head, or more than twice what NSW is doing.
Moreover, that is calculating things as if the citizens of each state pay roughly equal average levels of tax. In fact, Canberrans pay more than the national average, so the subsidy is even greater. (Though to be fair we are still getting some self-government transitional funding.)
But should the ACT send a strong message to Canberra about this outrage. Should we waste taxpayers’ money advertising the inequities of the tax system?
No fear. We are Australians.
In fact, Bob Carr’s childish arithmetic is helpful to Canberra. Most people think that Canberra was built because no-one could resolve the Sydney-Melbourne argument as to where the capital should be. In fact, people from the smaller states wanted neither to be the capital. Neither could be trusted to treat the smaller states properly and impartially the way they are treated by the Commonwealth Grants Commission.
Carr’s advertisements should be seen in Tasmania, the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland as advertisements for Canberra.
The answer for Carr is to raise his own income tax if he is worried about revenue to build schools and hospitals. And he should desist from engaging in bidding wars with other states in offering tax holidays for business.