Selwyn Johnston… Independent Advocate

Many years ago the then Federal Government attempted to introduce a concept called Option 3, which was a form of a Goods and Services Tax. The time wasn’t right apparently for its immediate introduction and we all remember the following fiasco when John Hewson made the matter an election referendum instead of a policy, naturally he lost.

Then along came John Howard who uttered those memorable words, ‘… there will never ever be a GST’, then subsequently went on to introduce a 10% GST, with the connivance of the Australian Democrats.

Part of the promise made to the public at the time was that the States would get the GST in lieu of their then present taxes and stamp duties, which were seen to be negative forces on the economy and were to be reduced and ultimately eliminated. It therefore comes as something of a shock to hear that Ms Anna Bligh, Queensland’s Premier-in-waiting, is increasing the stamp duty on the sale price of motor vehicles. Incidentally the increase falls heaviest on Australian made vehicles, which in most cases are as fuel efficient as many of the four cylinder counterparts.

And the increase is NOT to fund better roads, but mental health services. Now mental health services is a field desperately in need of funding if not in fact total reorganisation. What we have to remember is that for the last 20 years our State Government has totally ignored the mental health problem and it appears that the proposed method of improvement will simply be more of the same.

For those last 20 years the burden of the failure to properly manage mental health problems in our community has fallen largely [and increasingly] on our Police Service. As managers of last resort they have done a good job, certainly the best that could be expected but we can only hope now that the real mental health managers will get some assistance, and funding, and that the Police Service can be given some long overdue relief.

Taxpayers must remember that any improvement will be funded by a tax we were not supposed to have. By now we have become desensitised to election promises and only hope that we get any sort of positive result from the additional tax burden.

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