The Labor party is promising to remove the Goods and Services Tax on sanitary items if it wins the next election. It’s been a long time coming for many women, almost 20 years in fact.
Opposition spokesperson for health Catherine King told the ABC that tampons “cost women over $300 million each year, $30 million is in GST”.
So why aren’t men complaining? Because they don’t have to spend $30 million a year in GST just so that they can still contribute to society when they have their period. Apparently, the sanitary items that prevent woman bleeding everywhere as they go about their daily life are not essential enough to be GST free.
Former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard introduced the Goods and Services Tax in 1999 and refused to make an exemption for sanitary items. So here we are almost 20 years later, still arguing about the necessity of sanitary items.
I just want politicians to give women the same break in GST that they give men who buy Viagra, which is GST free. I want to be equal.
Condoms, barrier dams, lubricant, sunscreen and folic acid all made it onto the GST-free Supply (Health Goods) Determination 2011 list. Yet, I fail to see how lubricant is classified as an essential item while sanitary items are not. After all, blood is a biological hazard.
Considering the ground-breaking #MeToo movement, there is no better time to remove the sexist tax on tampons. How can women truly feel empowered when they are taxed on a bodily function they have no control over?
Taxing tampons is a modern-day form of oppression.
Imagine the shame and embarrassment of a woman sleeping rough on the street, she struggles to buy anything at all and can’t even afford the essentials. Yet the tampon tax affects women of every economic status, it doesn’t distinguish between those who can begrudgingly afford the tax and buy the products out of absolute necessity and those who can’t afford the products at all and must make ‘homemade’ sanitary items.
On average, the price of a 10-pack of sanitary pads is $5 and some women may need two packs every time they have their period. So, with the 10% GST women are taxed $1 every time they have their period. While this doesn’t sound like much, if a woman bought two packs of pads each month from the ages of 12 to 50 it equates to $456 in a lifetime. I hear you thinking ‘well that’s not much money’ but imagine if you lost $500, dropped on the ground and never seen again. I doubt you would be forgetting that in a hurry. And that’s only in tax, if you add up the total amount women spend on sanitary items over a lifetime it averages $4560.
The tampon tax is an unfair tax on women. That’s why we are getting rid of it. pic.twitter.com/S3vHNMZCVQ
— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) April 28, 2018
The Labor Party plans to avoid a revenue deficit by taxing alternative medicines that are currently excluded from private health insurance rebates as they are not endorsed by a medical officer.
“What we have proposed is that the offset loss to the states on pads and tampons would be applied to 12 natural therapies that are sometimes exempt to the GST such as herbalism and naturopathy,” opposition spokesperson for health Catherine King told the ABC.
Promises to ditch the tampon tax are not new. Just last year the Greens proposed that a GST tax on imported goods under $1000 would cover the cost of removing the tampon tax, to no avail. Moreover, before International Women’s Day this year deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek called the tampon tax “a dumb decision we just have to fix”.
Former treasurer Joe Hockey pledged to abolish the tampon tax in 2015, but this was squashed by former prime minister Tony Abbott who told 2GB “look, once you start having these sorts of exemptions where does it end?”.
Mr Abbott, who made himself responsible for women’s policies in 2013, described a proposed exemption on sanitary items as “politically correct”.
Removing the GST tax on sanitary items has absolutely nothing to do with being politically correct. It is a health issue, one that women have been crying out for politicians to address for almost two decades.
The tampon tax is inherently misogynistic and proof that middle-aged white men are not willing to give up control over women’s lives.
Tampon tax debate is not something we need to discuss any longer it should not be there at all 2018 come on it’s not a political issue!
It’s a woman’s right to live with confidence what are we talking about
Or are we going backwards? Leah