Joe Hockey has dismissed criticism by the Business Council of Australia president about the poor quality of political leadership in Australia.
Catherine Livingstone took aim at both sides of politics after Mr Hockey on Wednesday outlined the case for fundamental tax reform, only to have members of the major parties rule out key elements.
"I'm not sure that a blanket attack on everyone is going to be helpful to the debate," Mr Hockey told a small business forum in Sydney on Friday.
He said if there was to be tax reform, there needed to be a focus on areas of agreement.
"I welcome the opposition's participation in the debate, I welcome comments from the business council ... from everyone," he said.
The treasurer on Wednesday hinted at individual income tax rate cuts that are set up in a way that don't push talented Australians into working abroad.
He also said bracket creep must be addressed to stop people being forced into higher tax brackets through wage inflation.
But he ruled out leading the charge on increasing the GST rate or broadening its base, even though he wants to see the revenue raising capacity of the states to be more aligned to their responsibilities of funding and service delivery.
Opposition finance spokesman Tony Burke warned if Mr Hockey wants the states to raise all the money they spend, it would result in a "massive" hike in the GST rate.
Victorian Labor Premier Daniel Andrews said he would not support a GST increase or broadening it to include food.
The central bank believes negative gearing should be reviewed with other housing-related tax concessions that could be fuelling speculative investment in housing.
But the treasurer is sticking with his opposition to making changes, saying there is a lot of misinformation about negative gearing.
Ms Livingstone in her statement on Thursday accused political leaders of "resiling from the challenge".
"Their leadership responsibility is to ensure that there is a constructive, well-informed debate, leading to implementable outcomes; it is not to undermine the debate in the cause of party political positioning," she said on Thursday.
"Any policy reform is hard, but that is not an excuse for resiling from the challenge."
Share
