Who spends more on GST-exempt health goods – mainly wealthy people.

If you imposed the GST on those things, as Smith proposes, you would make it less, regressive, not more so.

And it you increased it to 12.5 per cent, you could give compensation to lower-income people. And that is not self-defeating as Morrison suggests.

To the contrary, it means that wealthy income-tax dodgers would have to pay more tax if they wanted to enjoy their income.

And if it removed payroll tax, it would generate jobs – you know the jobs, jobs, jobs that Morrison harps on about all the time.

Tax is a disincentive. People reduce taxable activity as far as possible. So employers are more reluctant to employ if they have to pay more tax.

Similarly, people are more reluctant to move to more suitable housing as they age because they do not want to waste very large sums of money in stamp duty.

Morrison’s position is made worse by the timing.

NSW and Victoria are both making noises about replacing erratic and economically damaging stamp duties and dealing with the eroding GST revenue base because spending on exempt health is spiralling while spending on GST-applicable consumer goods is stagnating.

The Liberal Party has supposedly been the party of states’ rights. John Howard and Peter Costello made a point of saying that the GST is the states’ tax. Yet Morrison dismisses any changes without a hint of consultation with the states.

The Smith proposal was an ideal opportunity to invite all the states and territories to do something about Australia’s increasingly inefficient and corrupt tax system. Instead Do-Nothing Morrison flicked it to the too-hard basket.

The only upside to the do-nothing approach to the country’s finances would be if Morrison applies it to private health insurance.

If he resists the selfish pleas of the health funds to be propped up with ever more taxpayer money, maybe enough people would abandon private cover and go to Medicare so that no government would be able to get away with the obvious need to expand and improve Medicare so that waiting times could be cut and a lot of the lucrative private work for specialists would dry up and they would be forced to work more in the public sector.

But the track record of the Coalition is to always pander to business special interests, rather than adhering to what they say is their pro-private enterprise policy.

The recent review into government in the ACT made a whole lot of solid recommendations and observations – and one utterly asinine one. That was the proposal that the ACT have, like the Northern Territory, an Administrator, or equivalent of a state Governor.

There is simply no need for one because the federal legislation providing self-government for the ACT set out the rules in such a way that an Administration was unnecessary.