Government services at both federal and state level have suffered for years because of a shortage of cash and an unwillingness on both sides of politics to increase taxes. Funny thing is that it is OK to do things like increase government charges but not to do anything that can be labelled a tax. Even funnier, successfully, labelling something as a levy may be OK while the same thing labelled as a tax is not. (Perhaps Gillard would have survived if she had talked about a carbon levy to pay for certain climate action instead of a carbon tax.)
