In 1985, the first big outing for the newly formed Business Council of Australia was the National Taxation Summit. The managing directors of two of our grand old companies, Westpac and WMC, represented the organisation at the summit. The Business Council and its predecessors had been seeking a tax switch for many years—the introduction of a tax on the consumption of all goods and services—to pay for a reduction of taxes that they didn't like. Prime Minister Bob Hawke had called a National Taxation Summit after the 1984 election, and this was the new council's big chance.

Officials of the Treasury and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet had prepared a white paper for presentation to the summit. It included three possibilities, two of which were carefully worked out live options. Option A included the introduction of taxation on a range of activities that the political system had shielded for many years, and hence had increased the burden of taxation on everyone else. These included a tax on fringe benefits, a tax on capital gains, limits on deductions or negative gearing of property, and extension of the normal company tax to income from gold mining (which had been temporarily excluded from taxation in 1922). Option C included all of option A, plus a broad-based retail sales tax to replace the wholesale tax and to help fund large reductions in income tax.

The prime minister invited the meeting to consider carefully the relative merits of the three options before it.

Bob White, the president of the Business Council, was then called to the despatch table of Parliament House by the prime minister. He rose to his feet amid great expectation.