Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Revenue) Share this | Hansard source

Sorry, the member for Moncrieff is here. I also invite the member for Moncrieff to make a broad-ranging contribution to this debate and if, like the Special Minister of State, he wants to contradict the Prime Minister’s energy statement, he should feel free to do so. I know he is not happy because, in the member for Moncrieff’s electorate, less than three per cent of his constituents will have the opportunity to take up the only initiative—that is, the LPG initiative—in John Howard’s energy statement that may have brought his constituents some fuel cost relief. So I can understand why the member for Moncrieff would be disappointed in the energy statement. This is his opportunity to get up in the people’s house, to properly represent his constituents and say so, as did the Special Minister of State yesterday when he belled the cat on the Prime Minister’s energy statement.

I hope the Prime Minister was reflecting, as he drove in this morning, in his chauffeur-driven, taxpayer funded, petrol-driven limousine, on his ‘Let them eat cake’ approach. You can imagine him, waving his hand, as the royals tend to do, in his petrol-powered limousine, saying to all others—other than maybe less than three per cent in each electorate—‘Let them eat cake. Let them queue for their LPG conversion, then let them queue for their grant.’ I am not yet sure whether that will be one day, two days, two weeks or three months. Certainly, if they get the conversion next week it would be a miracle, if they were not already booked in but, if they get it next week they will have to wait until after 1 October to claim the cost back. So there is a huge cash flow issue.

But the Prime Minister does not care. He is not affected by any of these measures. If he were serious about LPG, he would have done something about the Commonwealth’s own fleet. It is a case of ‘Let them eat cake, I’m happy in my petrol powered car; let the others line up for the opportunity to convert to LPG..’ What a disgraceful approach to the pressing energy reform issues that are facing this country—our import dependency; our spiralling cost of fuel, and the tax that is attached; and, the impact that is having on Australian families, individuals, not to mention Australian business, small, medium and large.

So I invite the member for Moncrieff to reflect on those points and respond, if he wishes, on behalf of the government. It is up to him, because he is the only one who came in. Can you believe that, despite the fact that the opposition had about 20 speakers on the Petroleum Retail Legislation Repeal Bill 2006a critical piece of legislation, which goes directly to petrol prices in this country—there is one speaker on the government side? Were they scared to get up in this place and take the Prime Minister on? Or, even worse, were they told by their whip that they were not entitled to speak on this bill because the government did not want a recurrence of what happened with the Special Minister of State, who belled the cat, who exposed the illusion of the Prime Minister’s energy plan? There is one speaker on such an important bill, a bill on which we had foreshadowed some very important amendments to the Trade Practices Act, which would have protected small businesses and consumers generally not just in petrol retailing but right across the board. It was an opportunity for government members to support that amendment.

Another important amendment is the one that will take away this restrictive idea that only the Treasurer should have the power to empower the ACCC to investigate what is happening with not only petrol prices but prices in addition to petrol prices. We believe that not just the Treasurer but any house of this parliament or any committee of this parliament which sees a prima facie case that something is wrong in a market, particularly petrol, can refer to the ACCC the power it needs not just to look at prices but to look behind prices. More particularly, the big disappointment here was the Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources. We asked him a very simple question: how many people around the country, and in individual electorates, will take up his LPG offer? He would not give us the answer. We know he knows the answer, but he refuses to give it because it is embarrassing.

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