Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the proposed amendment to the Tax Laws Amendment (Luxury Car Tax) Bill 2008 and related bills. The station property I owned for many years was over 350 kilometres from the nearest town of Richmond. My neighbours—Belfield, Esmeralda and Victoria Vale—were all over 300 kilometres from the nearest town. Each of these people had families and each of them had ringers and stockmen, and they needed fairly big cars to be able to travel that distance. That was not a luxury; that was an absolute necessity. If you go to do your shopping and it is a 600-kilometre round trip, you want a fairly decent car to do that in. Whilst I have nothing against the government increasing charges for people who are rich and want to buy very expensive luxury vehicles, I object very strongly when our shearers, for example, are charged. We do a lot of suburban shearing now. The last two shearing teams I was out with were driving an average of 70 kilometres a day. I have 400 or 500 farmers on the southern Atherton Tableland. All are on dirt roads and all of the workers who have to commute are also on dirt roads. What may be a luxury in the city is an absolute necessity for these people. We are not talking about very much money. Surely the government could come to the party.

The cost of petrol for these machines is enormous. We need a cheaper petrol regime. This government now has the ability to deeply embarrass the previous government, which had its chance with ethanol. All it did was tax it at 12c a litre, which country Australia if they have any brains will remember. They will most certainly remember it if this government moves to ethanol. Carbon is such a big issue and is influencing the judgement of the government. We would urge the government to consider that rural Australia has the answers for it with respect to carbon. As I have said before in this place, in An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore’s very first solution to the CO₂ problem was corn ethanol. It provides a 29 per cent reduction in emissions. Sugar, because we do not plant annually, supplies a 196 per cent reduction. So the answers are there. If you want to apply a tax to rural people and if you keep doing this then you will have no rural people. I have said in this place many times before—and I will on all occasions remind the House of this—that our cattle numbers are down about 17 per cent and our sheep numbers are down about 50 per cent. We are closing three sugar mills every four years. I am not an expert in wheat, so I will skip over that one. In manufactured milk we are down about 17 per cent. People say, ‘Oh, that’s the drought.’ Those figures are predrought; those figures are a little bit old. I presume they are a lot worse now. If you are going to close down agriculture and you have no manufacturing, you had better hope mineral prices stay up.

Unlike everybody else in this place, I come from the mining industry. Before I came into this place I worked at the Flora Dora and a number of other mines that I personally developed and owned. I can tell you in mining that what goes up will come down, and when it does it is going to take Australia straight through the floor. We would urge the government to understand that, like every other country on earth, we need a rural sector.

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