Speech on Tax Levels & Housing Assistance

There is no doubt you have to have a special sort of nerve, a particular level of temerity, to come in here as a representative of the Howard government and complain about the level of taxation, because you are a representative of what is now universally accepted as the highest taxing government in Australia’s history. I made that claim first some four or five years ago and it was disputed. We had a debate for about six months as to whether it was correct or not depending upon certain definitional issues. But that debate is over. Everybody knows that the Howard government is the highest taxing government in Australian history.