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

and then ran away—wanted to talk about Labor's record or Labor's policy. He did not want to talk about his own. There was no way in the world he was going to come to that dispatch box and defend this new tax measure.

Let us talk about what this new tax measure means for rural and regional Australia. It is just so axiomatic—it is just so obvious—that this is a tax that falls disproportionately on rural and regional Australia. It falls on those who drive most. Of course, this is not just an increase in the excise; it is an increase in the GST. The further you drive the more excise you pay and the more GST you pay.

I want to mention something I touched on in the matter of public importance debate last week. I want to go back to some mathematics. John Howard understood this problem very, very well. He understood that placing GST on fuel was going to have a big impact on motorists and on the budgets of families everywhere. He further understood that it was going to disproportionately impact on rural and regional Australia, so he reduced the excise. He took almost 7c off the excise so that, when the 10 per cent went on, it would result in a nil increase in fuel prices. That was fine while ever fuel prices were less than 77c. Let's go through it. Your fuel is at 70c, you take 7c off—that is the excise—and you get to 63c. You put 10 per cent on, which adds 6.3c, and you end up roughly back at 70c. So the GST in John Howard's day did not necessarily impact upon petrol prices. But let's take fuel to $1.50 a litre, around where it might be now. You take 7c off and it becomes $1.43. You put 10 per cent on, 14.3c, and fuel is now 157c, or $1.57. It is simple mathematics.

John Howard conceded the impact of this GST—a tax on a tax. He fixed it by reducing the excise, but this mob do not care about that. They are now putting extra burdens on fuel prices. If John Howard had not indexed the excise, it would now be 50c a litre and, on a rough calculation, depending where the price is, would mean that motorists would be paying around 16c more a litre for fuel than they currently are. Of course, that figure would be bigger in rural Australia, where we drive long distances to get to what we need to do, unlike the Treasurer. He goes across the Harbour Bridge and he has reached his point of destination a few minutes later. But in rural and regional Australia we can travel hundreds of miles to our destination—and tens of kilometres, if not more, to the supermarket, for example. This is why this falls disproportionately and, of course, transport costs and fuel costs become embedded in that formula as well.

To ensure that as many members as possible have an opportunity to contribute to this debate, I will leave my remarks at that, but I assure those sitting opposite—oh, the member for Mallee is leaving! He is not even going to attempt to make a contribution to this debate. I leave it to my colleagues to follow. I will give as many coalition members as possible an opportunity, but this government stands condemned for this terrible broken promise.

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