Amid the clamour of uproar about a leaked federal discussion paper canvassing a public education “co-payment”, there was one voice remaining conspicuously calm.
Premier Jay Weatherill today eschewed an obvious opportunity to rail against the Abbott Government, instead musing merely that “it’s only a discussion paper”.
That’s despite his own backbencher, Fisher MP Nat Cook, tweeting today that “all must engage and demand the Federal Government doesn’t increase societal gaps through mandated co-payment”.
“We’ve been asking them to canvas the broader range of options,” Weatherill told InDaily this morning.
“There’s a broad debate going on about Commonwealth/state relations, which is a good thing.”
READ MORE: Pyne rules out public school payments
The Premier spoke to InDaily this morning ahead of his keynote speech to a Committee for Economic Development of Australia conference in Canberra. Weatherill stepped into the limelight after the scheduled keynote speaker, Prime Minister Tony Abbott, was a late withdrawal.
It’s also a symbolic chance for the SA Premier to put his stamp on the national debate about the future of federation, and he today revealed his Labor Government had its own submission on public education funding.
“We’ve got our own propositions we’ll be advancing in due course,” he said.
“We’re not ready to reveal them just yet (but) we’re doing some work on it ourselves, and we’ll make some announcements about that and promote some of those ideas to the Commonwealth as well.
“Obviously, any attempt to unravel free public education is a regressive step … this is something that distinguishes us from countries like the US.”
Weatherill suggested tax reform measures in Thursday’s state budget, headlined by the abolition of stamp duty on commercial property transactions, were a political tactic to maintain faith with the Commonwealth’s broader reform agenda and create leverage in the ongoing debate over health and education funding.
“Our taxation reforms have their own intrinsic merit for our state, but they’re partly a response to the Commonwealth white paper on taxation,” he said.
“We’re saying: ‘We’ve got clean hands, we’ve tidied up our taxation system, let’s talk about how we can deal with this rather large problem you’ve created for us’.
“We’re trying to approach this in a relatively constructive way.”
He hopes Labor’s commitment to reform will give weight to his argument against broadening the base or increasing the rate of the GST, which Labor argues is a regressive tax. Instead, Weatherill has advocated closing loopholes by extending the tax across financial services and applying it to online purchases, which he says accounts for around $1 billion “leakage” each year.
“There are some sensible measures that could improve the system,” he said.
Weatherill argues “the national reform agenda at the moment really is shifting towards the states and territories, with states having greater control over infrastructure … and the Commonwealth thinks that as well”.
“It’s neither positive nor negative, it’s just how it is,” he said.
“The big reform agendas of the past were principally within the province of the Commonwealth, but the future reform agenda is principally within the province of the states and territories.”
