Treasurer Joe Hockey has been caught out – by John Howard no less.

In 1998 the Howard Government passed the Charter of Budget Honesty Act. It required the Department of Finance to publish a “Final Budget Outcome” by September 30 each year.

In any event, the 2013-14 Final Budget Outcome has just been published. Of course, treasurers can put whatever spin they want on the document. In Hockey’s opinion the document is “a report card on the previous Government’s irresponsible fiscal and economic management”.

Well, Hockey is entitled to his own opinions, but he is not entitled to his own facts. The facts are different. So different, indeed, that the aura that conservative governments are better economic managers is now exposed as myth.

In Opposition, the Liberals carried on mercilessly about Labor’s spending blowouts and rising government debt. But what about the facts? The last report under Labor in August 2013 showed projected year-end debt of $178.1 billion. It remained the same for the next four months – the first four months of Coalition Government.

Then, in December 2013, it rose to $191.52 billion and stayed at that till rising in May 2014 to $197.85 billion. And now in September it is $202.5 billion – up 14 per cent on Labor’s debt level.

So now you have it, the Coalition is as bad at running up debt as Labor.

Yet this government abolished the mining and carbon taxes. It is absurd that we allow mainly foreign-owned mining companies to dig up and take our minerals paying virtually no company tax and very little royalties.

Smart countries like Norway taxed their main resource – North Sea oil – at 78 per cent and built up a vast sovereign fund. The tax did not deter the miners.

. Moreover, spending on the military and security has ballooned. But the problem is not government spending, it is the failure to gather the revenue to match it.

$8.4 billion a year is lost in company tax through evasion and minimisation, mainly by saddling up Australian arms of multinational companies with large interest payments on loans that are used worldwide. These companies should pay full Australian tax on their Australian revenue.

One of the most effective ways of making big companies and high-wealth individuals pay at least some tax is the GST. If you want to buy a fur coat from DJs, you pay the GST.

Australian workers and consumers must stop fearing an increase in the GST, because an increased GST could give income tax relief. Australians on quite modest incomes are now facing significant tax increases as inflation pushes them into higher tax brackets.

We should at least index the brackets. A far better solution – as a reader of this column has suggested – would be not to have the four big steps of tax brackets at $18,200, $37,000, $80,000 and $180,000.

It is manifestly unfair that the $1 earned after $37,000 (a very modest income) is taxed at 32.5 cents – the same rate as the $1 earned after $79,999 (a very comfortable income).

In these days of computerisation why not have a Cartesian scale? We could have the tax rate at zero for the marginal dollar after $18,200 gliding incrementally up to, say, 60 per cent on the marginal dollar after, say, $1 million. And then plateauing. That would be better than having these vicious steps.

And please ignore Hockey’s rubbish about the top 10 per cent of earners paying 46 per cent of total income taxes and the top 2 per cent of earners paying 26 per cent, whereas the bottom 20 per cent pay just 2.5 per cent.

The trouble with this is the definition of “earners”. These are ATO figures. The level of “earning” is based on DECLARED income. As the corporate figures suggest there must be a lot of individuals pulling in very, very large incomes but whose “declared” income is very modest indeed

It is indefensible that someone on just $37,000 will pay almost a third of the next dollar they earn in tax. So, let’s forget the hysteria about government spending and have a rational overhaul of revenue.