George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will take the interjection and just say I think we'd run rings around the south coast with the spectacular views we have up there and with Whitehaven Beach, which is consistently voted one of the best beaches in the world. You've got to see it to believe it. We're going to get into a breach competition here, so I'm going to move quickly away from this and get back to the bill. The proof is in the pudding. Come and have a look at Whitehaven Beach; it is absolutely beautiful.

Now on top of all the markets that we capture in the Whitsundays simply from their natural beauty, and also the hard work, dedication and professionalism of local tourism providers, we are going to have an extremely high end market coming into that area and spending their money supporting local business and local jobs. A lot of work was done by a lot of members to ensure that the original version of this bill was put together, put to this place and passed. I was one of those members, but I don't want to pat myself on the back. I want to pat on the back the people in the superyacht support industry who were instrumental by coming to this place and lobbying. I was assisting them. One of those people is a local business owner in my electorate. He owns the Coral Sea Marina Resort. His name is Paul Darrouzet. Paul Darrouzet spoke to numerous environment ministers about changing settings in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park area that would allow superyachts to traverse areas in the Great Barrier Reef. Those changes in settings did absolutely nothing to negatively affect the reef and its environments, but it did enable these vessels and that major wealth to come into areas like the Whitsundays, drop their coin locally and create more local business and more local jobs. On top of that, we lobbied the Treasury, the Assistant Treasurer, the Minister for Finance, the Deputy Prime Minister and all the rest of them about getting rid of GST implications on these vessels. Previously, when one of these vessels came into Australia, they were charged essentially 10 per cent of the cost of the hull. That was a major imposition that nowhere else in the world was doing, so they would simply bypass Australia. If you can't come in without being stung a motza, if you can't come in and traverse to the places that you want to come to, the beautiful places like those in the Whitsunday, then you just don't come. You go to Noumea, you go to New Zealand, you go and see the sights over there, and then you leave without spending a single cent or dollar in Australia. That's what was happening.

We changed that. This government changed that with the support of the tourism sector. It's a very, very good thing that we did because it is going to enable a lot of businesses to create a lot of jobs. I noticed at the time when we did change it that it again showed the whole each-way thing of those opposite. Today they're having a bet each way: 'This bill, we're going to support it, but we're wary of it. This bill we're supporting because we could otherwise lose the business that comes from it, but we also warn that it could harm local business and could harm local jobs.' That's a false equation, by the way, but that's what was said. At the time we were talking about removing the GST implications from these superyachts coming into the country, and I've got to tell you, in terms of the taxpayer, there were no GST implications because they just didn't come and 10 per cent of zero is zero. We were receiving nothing, no benefit whatsoever, no taxation benefit and no direct investment benefit, so we got rid of that. At the point we got rid of that, we had some member over on the other side jumping up to talk about GST on tampons and equating that to the removal of GST on superyachts that didn't even visit the country.

It just again showed cheap politics being put in the way of jobs, being put in the way of business opportunities for Australians. I couldn't believe it when I heard that because again it shows talking out of both sides of their mouths. Those opposite were saying to the superyacht support sector, 'Yes, yes, we're going to back you.' Then they'd come into the parliament and issue cheap shots like that.

An opposition member interjecting—

The member opposite might not think it's a cheap shot, but it cost jobs so it was a cheap shot. You essentially opposing the removal of GST on superyachts with silly, cheap comments like that cost jobs.

An opposition member interjecting—

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