Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

Sorry, the member for Wentworth says nothing, the Leader of the Opposition says five, the member for Aston says 10—he is still out there promoting his policy—we have got the leader of the National Party promoting 20, and the member for Tangney has today got his own version that nobody can quite work out. That is typical of the member for Tangney—it is Triton or Mars or somewhere that he is inhabiting. The member for Tangney has got a policy position about the GST and the excise that nobody can quite work out, but it is number 5. It appears that there is hardly a member of the opposition who has not got their own personalised, customised fuel excise policy. There are undoubtedly going to be more to come.

We face a very serious inflation challenge in this nation. The government has a strong budget in position to deal with that challenge, with a strong surplus and long-term investment in the nation’s economic capacity to enable us to take the benefit of those huge additional funds flowing through our economy without fuelling inflation and very substantial tax cuts to ease the burden on working people, who are coping with higher prices as a result of those inflationary pressures. We are committed to delivering that budget. I would call on the opposition to get its act together, to get a single policy and a single position not just on petrol but on all other things—including what the budget position should be—to advocate that forcefully and to pass the budget.

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