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

As I have said in the past, this is a tax that will, astonishingly and against all the pronouncements of the government and the things that they pretend to care about, increase the cost of some hybrid vehicles in Australia. We have had a lot of noise from the government about how important they think the environment is. They want Australians to produce a hybrid car.

But hybrid technology is very expensive. What we are finding with this bill is that the government will make it even more expensive for Australians to access that hybrid technology. Therefore, they will be driving around in cars that are powered solely by petrol. That petrol is getting more and more expensive. There is great concern about it within the community. This is concern that was stoked by the government in the lead-up to the last election and is echoed throughout the whole community. The problem the opposition has with this scheme that the government are proposing to address is that, even from within their own cabinet, they believe that it will make the problem worse.

This is quite extraordinary. We have a government that professes to care about petrol prices; meanwhile, it is going to impose a policy on the whole of Australia—it is already imposed in Western Australia—that will make it illegal for small retailers in some instances to lower the price of petrol. That would be fine if you could afford to access some of this hybrid technology. We have the luxury car tax bill, one of the many new taxes that are contained within the budget, that is going to make that harder for the average Australian. I think that is a shameful thing.

The coalition believes in lower taxes. It is part of our political DNA. We do not know what is contained within this government’s political DNA, because it is a government that rests solely on the whims of the Prime Minister. We have a Prime Minister who has never revealed to the Australian people what his political DNA is. What are his core beliefs? Is he a hairy-chested economic reformer or is he a soft and cuddly Prime Minister who is worried about Australia being a brutopia?

This is the problem, I think, and why we see them veering around on economic policy and veering around on tax policy. The government say publicly that they believe in aspiration, but then they troop in and talk about this bill as though buying a top-of-the-range Holden—a Calais or a Statesman—or a Tarago is somehow conspicuous consumption and is somehow an affront to their values. This is the problem when we have a government so centralised in the character of a man who has never actually been fully revealed to the Australian people.

This is a bad bill. It contains bad measures which will harm ordinary, decent, hardworking Australians. It has been dressed up as a bill that stokes the old class war. This is one of the things about the Labor Party: you always need to look at what they do and not what they say. It is not a government that prizes aspiration; it is a government that wants to point at people who have gone out and bought a Calais or a Tarrago, saying how outrageous it is that they are involved in this sort of conspicuous consumption. It is a bad measure and is one that I believe reveals the nature of this government. And that nature reveals a government that really has no core beliefs, a government that is veering around hopelessly on economic and tax policy and a government that will be condemned for bringing measures like this before the parliament by the Australian people. (Time expired)

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