Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

We just heard a personal explanation from the member for Dawson. I say to the member for Dawson: it will take more than that to save you in your electorate following the bringing down of this horrendous budget. It will take more than your opposition to that terrible PPL scheme to save you in Dawson. I hope constituents in Dawson are listening to this debate this afternoon because I have no doubt that, at the conclusion of this debate, my colleagues and I will have convinced them and left them in no doubt that this is a bad budget for rural and regional Australia. While there is a lot of competition in measuring which is the biggest broken promise in this budget, I suspect many of them will come to the conclusion that the increased fuel taxes in this budget will go down as the worst broken promise of all. I hope that the constituents of the member for Dawson are listening. I hope that the constituents of the member for Eden-Monaro are listening. I hope the constituents of the members for New England, Page, Capricornia, Braddon, Lyne and Parkes are listening. They are all members who represent rural and regional Australia who I know fear going back to their electorates again this weekend because of their incapacity to sell this terrible budget to their constituents.

It is Thursday afternoon and I know everyone is pretty tired and, indeed, they are probably tiring of budget debate, so I thought I would keep everyone alert this afternoon by starting with a quiz. I have a quiz for members this afternoon and I invite all members on both sides of the chamber to participate. I have six questions this afternoon. The first is about people who have embarrassed themselves in politics. The second is about political parties which have embarrassed themselves in politics and then I have three questions on mathematics—three maths questions just to keep people alert.

The first question is about people embarrassing themselves in politics. I am going to share a quote with the chamber and then I am going to ask people who this quote is from. I am going to give people hints because, as I said, I know we are all a bit tired on Thursday afternoon. So I am going to give people hints. This is a person who has actually served in this place and, in fact, it is a person who remains in this place. The person says this of fuel taxes: 'Fuel tax is a tax on distance. If ever there was a country that should not aggressively tax fuel it is a vast country like Australia. It is a tax on doing business outside the capital cities. It is a tax on farming in the distant parts of our nation. It is a tax on living and setting up a business in a country town.'

Now, who do members think might have said that in this place?

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