David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak after the member for Wentworth, having now heard where the opposition stands on this issue. As with many other issues and many other points of contention in recent weeks, the opposition is clearly choosing to embrace this brave new era, this bold new policy option, of neither supporting nor opposing. They were neither supporting nor opposing changes to their Work Choices laws. We now hear that they will not be dividing on this issue but they think it is bad legislation.

The member for Wentworth went through a whole series of criticisms of this tax, and I would like to go through and respond to those criticisms one by one. But I make the obvious point that the member for Wentworth seems not to be aware of: this particular taxation measure is an increase to a rate of a tax that is already in existence, a tax that has been in existence since the former government put it in place back when the new tax system, the GST, was introduced in 2000. Prior to that, taxes on luxury cars have been commonplace in this country since 1978.

Taxing conspicuous consumption of this sort is a matter that has never previously been the subject of the sort of contention that we are now seeing. That raises all sorts of questions about the commitment of those on the other side to delivering a tax system that delivers equity. It is all right to have an efficient system. It is all right to have a system that delivers the revenue that governments need for the outcomes they need to deliver in communities. There needs to be equity in the system, and the member for Wentworth has completely failed to take account of the equity considerations.

So we are talking about a threshold that was already in place. There is no suggestion that the threshold is being changed, but the tax that will be applied to cars on values above that threshold is to be increased. It is a sensible measure that is driven by the need to be economically responsible. That is the pervasive theme of the budget that this government has handed down. It is about delivering economically an economy that we know will sustain itself into the future, running a surplus that ensures we are not fuelling inflation, that we are taking the heat out of the economy so that we are not driving up inflation, which ultimately will drive up interest rates. We all know that interest rates and petrol prices are probably the two biggest factors currently squeezing the household budget. So the No. 1 objective in this budget is to demonstrate that this is a government committed to sensible economic management. We have delivered that and this important measure is part of that.

To oppose this, if those on the other side choose to demonstrate their intestinal fortitude by doing that, would be to leave a further hole in the surplus. To oppose this is to mount a continued campaign, a raid on the surplus, and the opposition seems intent on doing that. I commented yesterday in this chamber that I thought those on the other side were pretty good at spending money when they were in government. In fact all the figures show that they were spending money at a rate faster than we have seen in recent history. They were pretty good at it in government. But their capacity to spend money in opposition is unrivalled. Whether it be raiding the surplus for the 5c cut to the fuel excise or forgoing important revenue measures such as this, what we are seeing on the other side is that the fig leaf of economic responsibility they have hidden behind for so long is now being removed, and I must say that what is left for us to gaze at is not a very pleasant sight.

The member for Wentworth came in and said that the government is confused on the issue of taxation. It seems to me that he is rather confused on a range of matters, and taxation is one of them. I was interested to go back and look at an article that related to the member for Wentworth’s tax plan that he released a couple of years ago. In this brave new era under the new opposition I am interested to know how many of the particular proposals that were contained in that series of proposals now form part of opposition policy—to the extent that they have any policy. At the time there were some very serious critics of the member for Wentworth’s proposals. In particular I note that the member for Higgins was foremost amongst those critics, and he is a person whom those on the other side are very quick to cite as a beacon of economic management—

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