Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Tax Laws Amendment (Luxury Car Tax) Bill 2008 and related bills. I think it is reasonable for us to ask what is going on in this government. Two weeks ago the Treasurer in his budget announced the new luxury car tax. Yet today, if we are to believe what we read in the Australian, it is going to be sent off to the Henry review anyway. We really need to ask ourselves: why we are here debating this? What is the extreme urgency to get this measure through parliament today when apparently it is going to be leisurely reviewed over the next 18 months anyway? Apparently there is a newfound concern within the government. We have seen over the last couple of days that they do not like taxes on a tax. Apparently they are going to review the GST on petrol excise and they are going to review this tax because it is a tax on a tax. They are very worried about taxes on taxes. I will wait with bated breath—and the opposition will wait with bated breath—for the government to start to review taxes on taxes when it comes to the GST on alcohol and the GST on duty imports.

We are seeing, with measures such as these—which apparently before they are even passed through this parliament will be reviewed by the head of Treasury—a government that really do not have a clue on tax policy. They are really just making it up as they go along. Their position appears to revolve around whichever public persona the Prime Minister is trying on on any given day. We really need to ask ourselves, when he wakes up in the morning: ‘Which Kevin do we have today? Do we have Kevin-the-caring?’ That is the Kevin who rails against the fundamental injustice of the most comprehensive tax reform that had occurred in this country for many decades. That was the tax reform that ushered in a new era of simplicity, the new tax system that was passed during the coalition years. This is the same Kevin—Kevin-the-caring—who was so concerned about the economic reforms of the Howard and Costello years that he labelled Australia a ‘brutopia’ under their rule. I note just in passing that the ‘brutopia’ phrase, like so much of the Prime Minister’s work, was directly plagiarised from somebody else. One day we might have ‘Caring Kevin’, worried about Australia’s brutopia and railing against fundamental injustice, or we might have—

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