Minister downplays GST snipes after PC says ‘line was crossed’

A federal minister has downplayed Labor’s “colourful” criticism of the Productivity Commission’s feather-ruffling GST review after the agency’s chief said “a line was crossed”.

The PC is an independent body that probes issues at the behest of the federal government and offers solutions.

The former Coalition government ordered it to review 2018 GST reforms that introduced a 75 per cent floor to stop Western Australia’s share dropping too low.

To avoid other states and territories losing out, the federal budget topped up the total pool of funds distributed.

But the PC’s interim report released last week branded the reforms a “costly mistake” that has “made the system less equitable and more complex while costing Australian taxpayers almost $23bn”.

The findings drew fury from West Australian Premier Roger Cook, who dismissed the PC as “east coast clowns” and accused it of launching “an attack on every hardworking Western Australian”.

PC Commissioner Angela Jackson said on Wednesday that she and her colleagues were “aiming … to inform public policy debate”, accepting that debate “can often get heated”.

“Our view is that a line was crossed in terms of the nature of those comments from the Western Australian Premier,” Ms Jackson told the ABC’s Radio National.

“We welcome debate and we welcome criticism of our work and our report more broadly because it makes our work stronger.

“But to undermine and attack our integrity, I think is an additional bridge too far and I think something that more broadly we are seeing in public debate internationally.”

Anthony Albanese also belittled the PC’s work this week, saying that people “shouldn’t be surprised” by the agency’s “economic rationalist view of the world” before pledging “no change to WA GST arrangements whilst I’m prime minister”.

He also repeatedly distanced his government from the Coalition-commissioned review.

“It’s important for us to indicate that that process will not be influenced by the Prime Minister’s comments, that we are above politics, and that’s a very important position that we hold within the public policy landscape in Australia,” she said.

But appearing on the same program a short time later, Industry and Innovation Minister Tim Ayres brushed off the language as part of a “colourful debate”.