Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Look around the world today. We are confronting the full dimensions of the global oil crisis, which has seen global oil prices go up by 400 per cent since the Iraq war. As we know, the Iraq war of itself represented an enormous impediment to the successful continued flow of oil onto the global market. But it is just one element. There are other supply-side factors, including supply-side constraints in Nigeria and huge demand-side challenges which come from the rise of China and the rise of India. With the Indian economy booming, you are going to have another one million-plus Indian motor vehicles on the road each year. Look at the rise of China and the projections out from where China was just a few years ago onto 2010, 2020 and beyond, and the total proportion of world oil consumption which China will represent is a huge new demand factor in overall global oil prices. China’s global energy demand means that we also see, through Australia’s resources boom in the coal sector and the resources sector more generally, that that demand is leading to an acceleration of our own terms of trade. On the question of supply and demand, the other responses which are important in terms of global oil deal with what we are going to do in terms of alternative fuels into the future. This government is embracing that as a strategy for the future through work being done by several of my ministerial colleagues.

On the question of fuel-efficient cars, Australia needs its own manufactured hybrid car. That is why we have put money through a half billion dollar green car fund to assist Australian motor vehicle manufacturing to bring onto the streets of Australia our own hybrid car so that Australian consumers can go out there and buy with confidence, knowing they are supporting Australian manufacturing jobs when they buy that vehicle and at the same time contributing to a better outcome for themselves in terms of what they pay at the bowser, not to mention a better outcome in terms of the environment.

Beyond these measures—how we deal with the demand-side and supply-side factors, how we deal with alternative fuels and more fuel-efficient cars—is the great challenge of public transport investment. Historically the government which has preceded us has said, ‘That this is not our zone; we don’t go there.’ In fact they have said that this is exclusively a responsibility for the states. We have said the reverse. If you look at urban congestion in the major cities of Australia up the east coast—in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne—and the fact that we still, in the 21st century, do not even have the beginnings of anything that looks like a comprehensive metro system in these large cities, surely that is an indictment on us all that we have failed to act. We are facing gridlock in Sydney, gridlock in Melbourne, gridlock in Adelaide and gridlock in Brisbane and in other cities because of this: an absence of effective measures to deal with public transport. That is why we have, in part, a Building Australia Fund: so that we can investigate these sorts of proposals for the future and, if they pass muster, to get behind them to get people out of cars, into decent public transport and to work on time so that they can also contribute to the overall challenge of reducing demand on global oil.

Of course, the other thing which governments can do is to make sure that the family budget is assisted to the greatest extent possible. What we have done through this budget is to make sure that through the tax measures, through the childcare tax rebate and through the education tax rebates that we are providing, we are also delivering extra dollars into the family budget each week. Let me give you one example: a family of four with a combined income of $87,000, one full-time worker $60,000, one part-time $27,000, two kids, one in child care and one at school. What do they get as a consequence of the budget that we have just passed?

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