average personal tax needs to move back up to 28-30% from the current 24-25%. Years of politicians gleaning votes by dropping taxes is now coming home to roost. Scandinavian countries have these level taxes and consequently don't have the same problems: they have free university education! Abbots problem is he feels he has to raise taxes idealogically, when its a lot fairer to tell the whole population to get ready for a period of slowly rising taxes.....raising the GST would be one very fair way of doing this too.