John Hewson

You must have listened to

sometimes, you know how the journalists try to get this gotcha moment, like I think there was with John Hewson and the GST and the birthday cake.

Yeah.

And dug himself deeper and deeper into the hole.

The, the issue is labor is not going to want to do it unless they have, they know that it's not going to be opposed by the other side, because it is very easy to take a, to take the opposite position when it comes to raising taxes.

Well, just ask John Hewson-

No, yeah

... how that went.

The Hewson opposition probably forced Hawke into better policy because they opposed well and agreed with some things.

John Hewson said, I think, about the Iraq war, the job of an opposition is to oppose, but when the policy is good, there's no point in opposing it.

And that made for better government.

Because they had to think about why are we doing this? We know that these are smart fellows and women.

Yeah, that was Andrew Peacock.

And John Hewson, you're just a shiver looking for a spine to run down.

Yeah.

Where did he get those lines from? Did he have a script writer? No, I don't think he did.

Andrew Peacock, take two, from 89 to 90.

John Hewson from 90 to 94.

He's the one that Keating absolutely smashes in 1993 because he was way too honest.

He put forward a series of policies that enabled Keating to basically destroy him.

Thank you for that Mark because I think and again some of you will you know blanch when I say this I've been a long supporter of fixing up our tax system where we have a GST on everything with no exemptions at all much much lower income tax much much lower company tax it would work much better.

And of course, if you go back and have a look at it, I've actually thought about getting John Hewson in here one night to explain his GST, the original one that he put up, which would have worked perfectly.

I know a lot of you mightn't like him now, but if he explained, I think that was a huge lost opportunity.

131873 is the number.

Andrew, that was Andrew Peacock.

And, and John Hewson, "You're just a, a shiver looking for a spine to run down."

[laughs] Where'd he get those lines from? [laughs] Did he have a scriptwriter? No, I don't think he did.

There was another one.

Having been around for a while, Ashley, it's...

Fortunate that I'm able to tell you listeners that I was there when John Hewson first promoted the GST, when John Howard then actually introduced the GST and then the change since.

And when John Howard introduced the GST, it was based on a term of horizontal fiscal equalisation, huge economic term.

Basically, it means that we don't want a two-tier Australia where some people in some states have a lower GDP.

We had an office sweep at the Australian and only two of us, and I won the sweep, only two of us picked Labor and the other 20 or 30 across Canberra and the head office in Sydney.

You know, poor Kelly and all them thought Houston would win the election.

But look, that's by the by.

I was a kid then and I could afford to be.

I think he was just being contrary and he was giving Labor a landslide.

And I didn't think Labor would win a landslide.

But I did think Labor had less to lose than the coalition did going into that election because of the way Houston was tracking.

So I think that's happened before, but what was certainly the case towards the end of 2024, Labor had really lost its confidence, especially after losing the voice referendum in 23.