Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I know that the agriculture minister finds it hard to understand, because I speak in fluent, coherent English, and that hurts him. He has no idea.

Today I went out and spoke to people in my electorate about this fuel tax and what it means. The government comes in here and tells another untruth when it says, 'It is only going to impact 40c a week.' That is a lie. The average person—

A government member interjecting—

No, he said 'week'. Please listen to your own minister—I know it is hard and it is painful and it is shrill, but try and listen to him. Every week the average person in rural and regional areas uses at least 100 litres of fuel. They will now pay extra tax on that fuel—a tax that that lot said before the election they would not have. They also have to pay an increase in the GST on that tax—a tax on a tax that is built on a lie that is built on a lie. It is unfair. Because we do not have shops on every corner, hospitals in every town and access to schools and public transport, which we know this government is afraid of, so the impacts are greater.

The impacts are so great that a former Liberal minister came out of her slumber. The member for Wannon would certainly know this minister who was dragged out of her slumber and said that this tax is unfair and unbelievable. Your former employer Fran Bailey, a Liberal minister in the Howard government, said how disproportionately this affects country areas. It affects country areas because they need cars to travel. Most people travel 30 or 40 kilometres to school and have to travel 60 to 70 kilometres to get jobs in regional areas.

This government before the election said that they would be a government of no surprises and no excuses and that there would be no increases in taxes, but they did every single one of those. The foreign minister, the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, said: 'It's wrong to say we are talking about increasing fuel excise. We're not doing that.' But in actual fact they did. When the Prime Minister was asked before the election whether the conditions of the budget would be an excuse for breaking promises, he said: 'Exactly right. We'll keep the commitments that we make. All the commitments we make will be carefully costed.' We found out through The Weekly Times this week that the government has not done any impact statement on the impact of this fuel tax on rural and regional Australia.

See this speech in context