Bazz, I offer no pretense of fairness to the conservative side of politics. No more than you would offer such a concession to the left. Please none of this piety here. Neither of us will sway opinion on the forum one way or the other. Like a parliamentarian holding forth on a particular bill, no matter what he may say, he doesn't sway the vote one iota.
You said
"Now, I know that you know the truth about that because you have been
told previously.
The GST was introduced AFTER an election during which it was part of
the campaign to introduce a GST."

I know that, but it does not diminish the fact Howard made such a promise, and that sometime later the promise was no more, How Howard achieved that circumstance is irrelevant.

Rubbish. Initiate new Govt Banks and we can actually reduce taxes. Iceland told the banksers to take a jump and now has unemployment of 2%.

Arjay, once upon a time we had government owned banks. the Feds had the Commonwealth Bank and the states ran their own banks. Not only did they offer competition to the private banks they actually lead the market. this was no good to the big end of town and they made sure such juicy plumbs were given over to them at rock bottom prices. The politicians gave the usual assurances that the new privatised banks would operated as per usual serving the ordinary Australians first and share holders second. That provided to be an unreal expectation. the "new" banks soon abandoned any semblance of serving the people and fell into line with the rest of the money grabbing oligopoly.

Retchub
Yes, yes to your transaction tax. Finally someone who's mind is not hypnotised.
It beggars belief that we continue to be entrapped with this patch work of crazy inefficient tax methods. And the GST would challenge for being the least efficient.

A transaction tax has all the advantages and no disadvantages. It instantly captures the widest number, it is entirely progressive as the more you transact the wealthier you are. It captures speculation which nowadays is huge and entirely tax free.

In fact there is really only one problem with a transaction tax - it works too bloody well and would make avoidance near impossible. And probably put a lot of accountants out of business.

Spindoc
Who exactly are these producers? I doubt more then 15% of our economy is made up of what could be labelled as producers. Farmers, miners, manufacturers, builders and those who support them retailers, transporters, while the rest of us play in an imaginary world of little more than entertainment. Administering Byzantine laws, regulations, procedures, speculations.

What do lawyers, accountants, financial planners, lenders, consultants, council staff, parking officers, politicians and their staff, psychologists, social workers, business studies teachers, defense personnel... Produce? Our entire economy is riddled with excess, inefficiency, waste. We take all this for granted as production but it is a perversion of the words meaning. It is certainly not production. It maybe a kind of bloated administration but largely its boredom and people just inventing things to do.

Our capabilities have entirely outstripped our intellect. What is now possible is so much more and we instead are fixated in 19 th century thinking and 19th century debates.
A pox on that. Our tax system is not of this century. Having everyone complete these stupid forms each quarter or year in an electronic marketplace which operates 24/7 is quite frankly laughable. By the way are my Internet charges tax deductible?

Paul said;
I know that, but it does not diminish the fact Howard made such a
promise, and that sometime later the promise was no more, How Howard
achieved that circumstance is irrelevant.

Paul, it is not irrelevant, the opportunity was offered to the voters
to reject it.
What you are saying is that no politician can either change his mind
or find a change of circumstances forces a change.

That is what has happened to the greens and the labour party.
They have both become hoist on their own petards (policies & dogma).

You wrote the way you did to delude the unaware to think that Howard lied.
It was cynical