SA Premier Peter Malinauskas puts Labor on notice over GST

SA Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas is bracing for a GST brawl if Anthony Albanese is elected prime minister, saying he will be ‘agitating”\’ for change.

Peter Malinauskas at the National Press Club on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

South Australian Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas is bracing for a GST brawl if Anthony Albanese is elected prime minister, saying he will be “agitating” for change.

It comes as Mr Albanese faces pressure to rule out any GST changes from Western Australia – which stands to gain an extra $4.4bn compared to what it would have received before reforms in 2018 – following a meeting with Premier Mark McGowan on Wednesday.

The Coalition has committed to keeping the deal in place until 2026 before conducting a review, with Mr Albanese also ruling out any changes before that time.

“I certainly can guarantee that that will not occur on my watch,” he said in Perth.

It followed opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers ­revealing he had told the states he did not intend to tamper with the carve-up of GST.

However, Mr Malinauskas, who took power last month, said the GST changes in 2018 had been made to benefit WA “at the ­expense” of all other states.

He said he had raised the issue with numerous Labor colleagues and was speaking to Dr Chalmers on a “semi-frequent basis”.

“They are well aware that I am concerned that the GST deal … gave Western Australia that massive leg-up so they could have a multi-billion-dollar surplus at the expense of a lot of other states, ­indeed my own,” he said.

“I will absolutely continue to agitate on this. I am well familiar with the fact that Jim yesterday ruled out changes, and that’s his prerogative, but my prerogative as the leader of my state is to stand up to the commonwealth whether it be the Coalition in charge or federal Labor to advocate for the case of fairness.”

Mr Malinauskas said he “couldn’t see any rational justification” for the changes made, apart from “political concerns” in WA, which went from getting back as little as 34c in the dollar it sent to the commonwealth to at least 70c in the dollar.

“What Premier McGowan, and premier (Colin) Barnett before him, demonstrated was that they could use the power of politics to deliver their state a better deal,” he said. “Well I intend to the same in South Australia.”

He said he was “cautiously optimistic” there would be a change of government at the next election, but would not offer Mr Albanese any advice.

“Albo doesn’t need advice from me, Anthony Albanese is one of the most experienced leaders our country has ever had,” he said.

However, he did raise concern about former SA senator Nick Xenophon running again, citing concerns with his connections to Chinese company Huawei.

“Nick Xenophon has always ­espoused being a politician associated with transparency and I don’t see too much transparency around what his personal financial arrangements were with Huawei,” he said. “What I’d say about his candidacy is that … I don’t know if the times suit the Xenophon style. I don’t know if people want stunts over solutions, I don’t know if they want politics over policy.”

Mr Malinauskas also called for the national cap on humanitarian visas to be at least doubled given the conflicts in Afghanistan and Ukraine.