With further floods in Queensland taking the bill to $5 billion, and in Victoria, to around $2 billion BEFORE last weeks deluge, and now bushfires in Perth, it is clear that the government's original idea of having a flood levy is shot to pieces. It is not sound policy to be inventing a new levy for each disaster, and trying to exempt people affected.
Therefore, I propose a much simpler solution of increasing the gst by 1%, taking it from 10% to 11%.
According to my calculations (correct me if wrong), this will provide an additional $5 billion p.a. in revenue to be allocated to disaster migation and recovery.
If not all is spent in any year, it can be rolled over to later years. If more is needed in any year, it can come out of accumulated funds or general revenue. But we will always have that buffer of $5 billion already sitting there.
This seems to me a perfectly sensible, equitable and practical solution to financing a Permanent Disaster Fund, which avoids cutting other programs such as the Greening Australia programs.
