Background
After winning leadership of the ailing Liberal Party, Hewson launched a comprehensive package of proposed reforms called Fightback! in November 1991, after years of Australian Labor Party dominance in Federal politics. The package included new social structures, industrial reforms and radical economic policies. One of the key elements of the package was the introduction of a consumption tax called the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the compensatory abolition of a range of other taxes such as sales tax, deep cuts in income tax for the middle and upper-middle classes, and increases in pensions and benefits to compensate the poor for the rise in prices flowing from the GST.
Bob Hawke and his Treasurer John Kerin were unable to mount an effective response, and in December, Paul Keating successfully challenged Hawke and became Prime Minister.
Through 1992, Keating mounted a campaign against the Fightback! package and, particularly, against the GST, which he described as an attack on the working class in that it shifted the tax burden from direct taxation of the wealthy to indirect taxation of the mass of consumers. Keating famously described Hewson as a "feral abacus".
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