Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Finance, Competition Policy and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

It is with a great deal of pleasure that I rise to talk on fuel. That is a revelation because, if you listened to the contribution of the previous member, you would have thought this debate was about anything but fuel. Speaking particularly as a person who comes from Western Sydney, where families will, under Fuelwatch, be paying more to fill up their tanks, I think families would be disgusted at the contribution that this person made to this debate. The member for Blaxland embarrassed himself and, I think, frustrated his constituents because he did not address the issue of how Fuelwatch is going to help people, apart from saying that, where petrol varies in price, they are going to fix the higher price. How that is going to be of benefit to constituents in Western Sydney or in outer metropolitan or rural areas—or any areas in Australia—or make a better situation for consumers, for motorists, is way beyond anybody who is part of this debate.

It is important to recognise the history of this debate to understand why it is that the Prime Minister is in a dilemma over petrol at the moment. Before the last election and in the lead-up to this budget, the Prime Minister promised the Australian people that he would bring downward pressure on petrol prices. He promised the Australian public that he would bring downward pressure on grocery prices. And he promised the Australian people he would deliver more affordable home loans and housing affordability to first home buyers in particular. He has delivered nothing of that promise. The reality is that in the run-up to the election, the Prime Minister and this government knew about the issue of world oil prices. They knew about the way in which prices operate in the domestic market in relation to fuel and the way that people pay at the bowser. They knew all of those external and internal factors at the time that they made a promise to the Australian people that petrol prices would be lower if they voted for Kevin Rudd. The reality is that, six months into this term, this government has thrown its hands up in the air and said there is nothing more practical that they can do to provide assistance to motorists who are suffering at the moment with bowser prices at record highs.

They lifted expectation, they promised the Australian people and they are suffering at the moment as a result of that. It is a very similar story to the way in which they conducted themselves in the inflation debate. They built up expectation that there was going to be a budget which would cut through government spending and deliver downward pressure on inflation in this country. It did no such thing. They did a similar thing in relation to pensions. They went out to the Australian public before being elected, and since, promising pensioners that they would offer support to people who were finding it difficult to manage their household budget, as pensioners are, understandably, with the pressures of cost of living at the moment. They ramped up expectation that they were going to deliver cheaper prices—both petrol and grocery prices—to pensioners. In this last budget they delivered no such thing. That is why there is so much anger about this very tricky and clever political strategy by the Rudd government in relation to petrol. They ramped up expectation. They promised Australian families, Australian small business and the public at large that they would bring downward pressure on interest rates, on inflation and on petrol prices. They failed on all of those counts and that is why we find ourselves having this debate today.

The person we lovingly refer to as ‘cygnet’ on the other side of the chamber—Baby Swan—is in the mould of Daddy Swan, the incompetent Treasurer. He is the person, the genius, who came up with the Fuelwatch scheme. He is the person who authored this disastrous policy. He walked into cabinet and said: ‘Prime Minister, we need a political fix for petrol because we’ve got one big problem out there. We promised the Australian people we would deliver cheaper petrol and we have got no hope of doing so. So how can we cloud this debate? How can we suggest to people that we are doing something when in reality we are doing nothing?’ He had a look at the scheme in Western Australia. He had a look at the only politically viable option that they had, and that was to create this political belief that somehow Fuelwatch was going to deliver cheaper prices across the eastern states where it currently does not operate. Any forensic analysis of the way in which FuelWatch has operated in Perth and in Western Australia over recent years quickly arrives you at the position of realising that petrol has indeed been dearer in Perth than in the eastern states over the time that FuelWatch has operated. This scheme would deliver higher petrol prices to Australian families. That is why this Rudd government should be condemned.

There is no doubting that this is a clever and tricky political manoeuvre but it is certainly in the avenue of style and not substance, which this government has come to stand for. This is a clever and tricky political strategy by a clever and tricky political Prime Minister but it is not going to deliver one cent in savings at the bowser for Australian motorists. The Prime Minister in question time today refused to take up the opportunity to say that motorists would not be worse off financially under this Fuelwatch scheme if it is implemented eventually by this government.

There are people who have different views about Fuelwatch. One of the most informed views as part of this debate is indeed from the Minister for Resources and Energy. The minister for energy, with the resources of his department, has researched Fuelwatch. He, like other cabinet ministers, including the Minister for Finance and Deregulation and the Minister for Small Business, Independent Contractors and the Service Economy—and no doubt others, of whom we are not yet aware—opposed this policy in cabinet. They opposed this policy in cabinet and they opposed it, in the case of the minister for energy, in writing as well. He felt so aggrieved by this Fuelwatch scheme that he put his concerns in writing to the Treasurer, to the Prime Minister and to the Assistant Treasurer. Having researched this scheme, he realised that it would reduce competition in the marketplace, that it would take away the cheaper day in the cycle that particularly low-income motorists use to fuel up their cars under the current system and that it would have a negative impact overall on Australian motorists.

As part of his budget reply speech, the Leader of the Opposition realised that the only way the federal government can have downward pressure on fuel prices is to reduce the excise. The reality is that, with his announcement of 5c, he has caught this Prime Minister out, because the public understand now that this Fuelwatch scheme is nothing more than a political stunt. It was extended over the last couple of days by sending off the issue of GST on excise to the Henry review, which will not report back for 18 months. Families are suffering at the moment and they cannot be told that they need to wait another 18 months before there is any possibility of them receiving some sort of relief in the amount of money that they have to pay to fill their cars with petrol. That shows how cynical this Prime Minister is, it shows how he is not concerned legitimately about the pressures that apply to families at the moment and it shows that he has squibbed his only opportunity to bring downward pressure on petrol prices—that is, by adopting the stance of the Leader of the Opposition to reduce the excise.

This government says that the opposition does not have a right to talk about bringing excise down. But they realise that it was this opposition when in government, under John Howard and Peter Costello, that froze excise in 2001 and that reduced the excise in the year 2000 when the GST was implemented as part of the new tax system. Had we not done that, petrol today would be almost 18c per litre dearer than it is at the bowser for families. So I say to families: when you are filling up your car tonight, add 18c a litre, because if it were not for the action on excise by the coalition government over the last few years, those petrol tanks would be 18c a litre more expensive to fill up today than they are at the present time.

The reality is that this is a government that realises that if they are to deliver on their promise of reducing petrol prices they have to cut excise. They do not have any other power. Fuelwatch is a political stunt that has been dreamt up by an Assistant Treasurer desperate for attention, because he knows the Treasurer is a person that probably will not see another budget and he is auditioning for that position, like the Minister for Finance and Deregulation at the moment. They are both auditioning and trying very hard for the position of Treasurer. Fuelwatch is a political stunt. (Time expired)

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