Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

Lyons is not a large regional electorate. Let me just tell you what the impact of this GST is on those communities—I'll speak up on behalf of their constituents, even if they won't. Let me be very clear: the fuel excise will have a dramatic impact on people who live in those communities. We heard the Deputy Prime Minister say today in question time that the major impact of the tax is on the trucking industry. Well, I've got news for him. The major impact of the tax is on residents and constituents of mine who live in remote parts of northern Australia.

If you index fuel in the way that is being proposed and it also cops the GST it becomes a cascading tax. So if you pay fuel at $1.53 a litre then the current excise plus GST is 53.2c. If, however, you are paying $2.50 a litre you are paying 63c tax, a difference of 10c. But, of course, the people opposite do not acknowledge this cascading impact of this tax on the cost of fuel for people who live in regional Australia. They need to understand the impact of this tax on those people and on their lives, because families will be adversely affected by this silly tax. The Deputy Prime Minister has already said, and others have spoken of this: '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 of the capital cities. It is a tax on farming and the distant parts of our nation. It is a tax on living and setting up a business in a country town.'

Let me tell you that at Numbulwar in the Northern Territory people are currently paying $2.57 a litre for fuel. At Ngukurr, close by, the price is somewhat similar. Ngukurr is 300 kilometres from Katherine in the Northern Territory. People play football in Katherine of the weekend. The round trip is 600 kilometres and they are paying about $2.50 a litre for fuel. Who can say that this is sustainable? Who can argue that this impost that is going to have a cascading impact and increase over time will not have a major impact on those communities?

It is not the trucking industry, it is the people who live in those places who are most adversely affected by the changes which are being made. They already suffer huge costs. For example, the Central Land Council did a remote communities store price mark-up survey of the price in the CLC region compared to in the nearest regional centres of Tennant Creek, Alice Springs or Katherine. It found: fruit and vegetables, 35 per cent mark-up; essential health items, 55 per cent; variety products, 150 per cent; takeaway foods, 100 per cent; clothing, 80 per cent. It is the people there who are going to suffer, yet people in this chamber from the National Party and those people who purport to represent regional seats are not prepared to get up on their scrapers and represent the interests of those people.

We have an obligation in this place to tell this government that the people who will be most adversely affected, in this case in the Northern Territory, are the poorest people in Australia. They will be most gravely impacted by the whole suite of measures in this budget and this fuel indexation proposal will most adversely impact upon them. It is an absolute shame that we cannot get the members of the National Party to come in here and explain why it is they are going to support this measure when they know it is contrary to the interests of their constituents. I make it very clear that there is no way on God's earth I would support such an impost on the people in my community. Why would they?

See this speech in context