Andrew Willcox (Dawson, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

That's a good question, Member for Nicholls. I know what they'll be doing. They'll be lying awake at night thinking of ways of getting more red tape and green tape to wrap around the productive people in this country. That's what they'll be doing. They'll actually be making sure that it's harder for all of the people who actually contribute. That's who you should be looking after: the people who contribute, the people who feed us, the people who clothe us and the small-businesses people who've got to get up every morning and make a dollar. Their dollar is not guaranteed.

Now, let's look a little bit more at indexing. Let's look back a few years ago. I'm getting a little bit older now, but what was a house worth, say, 30 years ago? You could buy a house in my neck of the woods for 100 grand, and now they're close to 500 grand. So $3 million in 30 to 40 years is not going to be a terrible lot of money, and yet you want to tax them. You want to tax them on that and tax them on the unrealised gain. It's absolutely ridiculous that you would do that.

But we understand the taxing, and look at what happened today: you gagged the debate on the new vehicles tax, on the family car and ute tax. You gagged that debate today because you didn't want to see that. It's absolutely ridiculous. Even a Corolla is going to have an extra fee of more than 1,000 bucks, let alone a LandCruiser. And lots of people in my area drive LandCruisers—you have to—as well as HiLuxes and Ford Rangers. You all want us to jump into EVs. I'll tell you something very simple about EVs. They can't carry the weight, they can't tow the load and they can't cover the distance, so, once again, it's just another tax and another shot at hardworking Australians.

See this speech in context