George Moran CDP Candidate for Casey

State Rights

The CDP fully supports the constitution of Australia, including the sovereignty of the States. Each state is a sovereign jurisdiction and in 1901 they came together and formed a federation of states giving to the federal government (the Commonwealth Government) responsibility for areas, such as defense, international trade, international affairs, which a federated government could handle more expeditiously than 6 state governments. The states strongly maintained areas such as police, law courts, education health, public transport and roads. During the second world war income taxation was handed to the Commonwealth Government. It is however noted that little by little areas such as health, industrial affairs, education and now water and indigenous affairs are being assumed by the federal government either by legal stealth, necessity or states handing over areas they believe are to hard. Or expensive to be dealt with by the states. This is to be done with caution, as it it feasible that the states could hand over to the Commonwealth so much that they leave themselves replaced by commonwealth officers. This is not what was envisaged by our forefathers, in the setting up of the Commonwealth Govt.

GST: GST was introduced around the turn of the millennium. It was set up by the Commonwealth, administered by the Commonwealth, as a state funding tax. All other state taxation was supposed to be replaced by the GST. However this has not entirely happened in all states and the treasurer has threatened states which continue with some of their own taxes to withhold equivalent amounts of GST. GST for the states has the disadvantage of being distributed on what the larger states call an iniquitous basis. In that NSW and Victoria raise the largest amount of GST because they have the largest populations yet under agreement Tasmania, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia receive much larger proportions per head of population to help then deal with their remoteness.

GST Policy:

• The States be encouraged to terminate all state taxation and the distribution formula of the GST be renegotiated 12 months after the election of each new Federal parliament.

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