DEN71,
You raise perfectly valid points.
I left the military and became a manufacturing executive a bit after the tariff barriers came down so I do not have first hand experience.
I support the GST because it just seems to me to make more sense to tax consumption than to tax effort.
Under an income tax, the harder we work the more tax we pay, which is punishing behaviour we want more of.
Under a GST, we can reduce income tax, and so do less punishing of behaviour we want more of, and tax consumption, over which each person has a degree of control. I can choose to buy a $2000 suit and pay $200 GST or a $200 suit and and pay $20 GST. (Okay, there aren't many $200 suits around, I'll grant you that.)
I know I'm oversimplifying, but with limited space, I'm just touching on why as a matter of principle, I prefer a GST.
I didn't like Howard as a PM and I'm slightly left of centre in my political views, but I do think our gun laws and the GST are the two great legacies he left behind that left Australia a better place than he found it.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

If there were too many guns in Denver,then why did not someone have a gun in the audience to stop the assassin? We have strict gun control in Aust,yet in Sydney we have daily driveby shootings by criminals.

Our Govts have always been the perpetrators of mass murder by far.Hitler 6 million Jews.Starlin 20 million Russians.Mao 60 million Chinese.180 million killed WW2.If the the citizens were armed like the USA,then these atrocities would not have happened.

Never trust any Govt.Especially ones controlled by large financial interests.They view the world as been too over populated and destroying their planet.They refer to the masses in their circles as ," Useless eaters".

History repeats in the most unexpected ways.

Arjay,
In order to be irrelevant, it's not necessary to be absurd.
Not one of the governmets you cited meets the criteria required to legitimize the use of the word, 'our'.
They were indeed governments but they weren't 'our' government.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.a

Anthonyve.Ever heard of the Patriot Act,Preventative Dentention,Legalised assassination,Defence Authorisation Act and now the fact that Obama has control of all media in the USA? We have similar laws here.

See Naomi Wolf's 10 easy steps to fascism.They are they all done bar, "suspend the rule of law." Where is your logic?

Arjay,

"....If the citizens were armed like the USA, then these atrocities would not have happened."

America's gun carnage is one long drawn out atrocity.

Here's an article that examines the deaths of 474 people shot in one week from May 1-7. ("This year more than 30,000 others will share their fate")
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,152220,00.html

"Yet more Americans die of gunshot wounds every two years than have died to date of AIDS. Similarly, guns take more American lives in two years than the entire Vietnam War....."

That's "every two years", Arjay.

"....But in the end, there is a sense of embarrassment, and even shame. How can America think of itself as a civilised society when day after day the bodies pile up amid the primitive crackle of gunfire across the land."

Correction - should be 464 people shot.