Coalition planning GST hike: Shorten LABOR cabinet member Bill Shorten has warned Tony Abbott would hike the GST rate if elected as prime minister in September. The federal government claims Mr Abbott's plan for a tax "white paper" within two years, announced in his budget reply speech on Thursday, was code for increasing the rate of the GST. Mr Shorten said there was no chance a Labor government under Julia Gillard would consider altering the GST. The coalition, meanwhile, would hike the tax rate while giving money back to the world's richest mining companies, he said. "But he's saying to Mum and Dad doing their shopping on a Saturday, 'I want you to pay more tax'," he told reporters in Melbourne on Saturday. These are crazy priorities. Liberal MP Michael Keenan dismissed the claim as "hysterical," but did admit it would be "odd" if the GST wasn't addressed in the coalition's white paper. However, the coalition had "no plans" to hike the GST, he said. "It is a state-based tax anyway, so you couldn't make any changes to the GST without the agreeance of every government in Australia," he told Sky News on Saturday. Clearly that's not on the agenda. Mr Abbott has previously suggested the premiers of NSW, Victoria and Queensland were in talks with Western Australia about some possible changes to tax distribution, sparking Labor accusations of a "secret deal" on GST.