Ken Henry’s Christmas present – a new tax system

Don’t ring Wayne Swan.

The Treasurer will  be busy reading a “comprehensive report”  over Christmas on ways to make Australia’s ramshackle tax system “fairer, simpler and more competitive.”

If it actually achieves all that, of course, it might well qualify as Mary MacKillop’s third miracle.

The Treasury Secretary, Ken Henry, risked spoiling his boss’s Christmas, by handing the heavy report to him on December 23.

At  this stage, Mr Swan is giving no hints about what might be in the  report.

He said, only, that the government would consider  the document and release it “in early 2010.”

“I won’t be responding to any of the recommendations in the report,” Mr Swan told journalists.

“There will be enough time for that in the New Year,  when we will release the report and the government’s initial response.”

Mr Swan refused to say exactly when that would be.

“This is a comprehensive report,” he said.

“The government will take some time to study it in great detail

“And we will release it in the New Year.”

He thanked Ken Henry and the four other members of the Review Panel, which produced the report, after 18 months’ work.

The panel received some 1,500 formal submissions, zs well as more than 4,700 letter, during the course of its study.

It also held discussion panels right around the country.

Mr Swan said the government “will not be engaging in speculation” about the report, before it is publicly released.

It will leave that to the media.

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