Well John, the GST was a bad tax from the day it was rammed down our collective and unwilling throats on day one by a conservative coalition! where were you when this granny killing tax was imposed, albeit with negotiated exclusions?

When right wing conservative Meg Lees and her democrats signed off on this dog's breakfast of a tax, it sounded the death knell of the middle, keep the bar stewards honest, party. And the bar to a virtual liberal supporter remained silent?

A bit late in the day to be bemoaning the fact that folks can't afford basic justice, which may have a lot more to do with exorbitant fees than the GST that's added to them!?

This was never reform just revenue surety, and only imposed because there wasn't enough ticker to do real tax reform? Which to my mind, would have seen the whole convoluted complete mess completely jettisoned.

And replaced by a single stand alone unavoidable modest expenditure tax everyone pays,even tax avoiding multinationals!

And given it is a fixed expenditure tax, paid involuntarily as funds exit accounts, everyone absolutely according to their means!

Why even pensioners could be better off, relieved of the ubiquitous and cascading GST and fuel excise.

As for saving money, we could save around 70 billion+ per just by disbanding the entirely unnecessary middle tier of government! I know they won't go quietly but invent all sorts of vacuous imperatives for their retention?

As always with our pollies, self interest trumping the national interest!?
Rhrosty.

Rhosty, what have you been smoking?

The GST "exclusions" you mention reflected no more than Meg Lees's dietary preferences: no GST on fresh food, GST on processed foods, etc. The exclusions were no more than worthy posturing.

And to call Meg Lees a "right wing conservative" is ludicrous. Would you also pretend that Cheryl Kernot, Natasha Stott-Despoja, Michael Macklin, Aden Ridgeway and Andrew Bartlett (who pinched five bottles of wine from a Liberal barbeque on one occasion and was later a senate candidate for the Australian Greens) were "right wing conservatives"? They were not.

The Australian Democrats were only slightly to the right of the Greens, though they prided themselves on their pragmatism and their willingness to negotiate - something the Greens are congenitally incapable of. The Australian Democrats were hand-wringing, left of centre, yuppies.

The fundamental problem with the GST as it was introduced and currently stands is that - far beyond the inequities in legal burdens outlined in this excellent article - it is in many, many circumstances a tax on a tax.

Your gas, electricity and water bills, for example, are artificially inflated by imposts and subsidies for wind and solar farms, outlaid by governments on the basis of previously collected taxes, then you pay GST on the inflated amount on top of the taxes you previously paid.

The GST on the whole population was imposed simultaneously with a 17% cut in the corporations tax rate. The many were made to pay more so that the few could pay less.