And in return? Permanently higher pensions and family payments to compensate low income earners. Lower personal income taxes. Freedom from pesky and inefficient state taxes such as stamp duty. More spending on schools, hospitals and vital infrastructure. Are you up for it? The alternative is to allow personal income taxes to bite an ever greater chunk out of your growing income. Either way, you pay. Economists like efficient taxes: ones that do not distort behaviour. Income taxes discourage work and encourage tax avoidance. Company taxes also encourage tax evasion and ultimately lead to lower wages for workers.

But everyone buys bread. Taxes on consumption are efficient for the very reason they are reviled: it's hard to avoid paying them. Critics argue that increasing the GST is regressive: it hits low income households the hardest. True. That's why any reform package must include compensation for these households. For the rest of us, it's time to cough up. At the last election, the Coalition made a trio of promises it could not keep: lower taxes, no spending cuts, and a budget back in the black. Nearly two years later, we have higher taxes on petrol and incomes, spending cuts so unpopular they'll never pass the Senate, and a budget that still drips in red. The government has unwisely ruled out touching tax breaks on property and superannuation.

That leaves it with really only one option. Hockey says the government will only increase the GST with the support of all state and territory governments and the federal opposition. Former Treasurer Peter Costello always argued that the GST was a state tax, because getting it off his books made him look like a lower taxing government. But the GST is a federal tax – albeit one where all the receipts are promised to state governments. The GST is underpinned by federal legislation and collected by the federal government. Hockey could introduce legislation to increase it tomorrow. Of course, it would fail. Labor too must examine its own blanket objection to raising the GST. But the onus is on Hockey and Abbott to make the case for GST reform and bring state Treasurers along – not the other way around.

As today's modelling by the Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand shows, the revenue from such a bold reform would be more than enough to fund compensation for low income earners while also make significant inroads into Commonwealth and state budget deficits. The alternative is for the Coalition to slide into the next election as a reform free zone; a party delivering budget deficits and higher taxes on incomes. Increasing the GST may not be politically palatable. But nor is the alternative.