Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Now that it is clear that the Prime Minister’s GST petrol review has been discredited by the states, his own minister believes Fuelwatch is anticompetitive and the Prime Minister has admitted that he has done all that he can, will the Prime Minister now stop watching fuel prices and support our policy to cut the petrol excise by 5c per litre?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Responsible economic management means that you do something about ensuring that you have got a reasonable surplus, and those opposite have not had one thing to say about where they are going to find $22 billion worth of savings. Where are they? Where are the savings?

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not hear anything. On the doorstep what they say is, ‘Let’s raid the surplus.’ That is a sure-fire recipe for doing one thing: putting upward pressure on inflation and upward pressure on interest rates—and that flows through to all families and all people with mortgages and businesses across the country. On the question of dealing with the tax matters raised by the Leader of the Opposition, as I said, there is one way of handling the reform of tax and that is to do something which has not been done in more than a quarter of a century, and that is a comprehensive review which deals with the tax system and income support as well as retirement income.

On the question of the competitive dimensions of what is proposed, if the Leader of the Opposition were serious about analysing the responses of those who head the motoring organisations of Australia—the NRMA as well as the RAC in WA and others—what you have is a clear-cut statement that you have either a set of arrangements that puts the power in the hands of consumers or a set of arrangements which puts the powers in the hands of the petrol industry. We stand for empowering the individual motorist, the individual consumer; those opposite stand for the reverse.

On the question of budget measures, they have been put in a responsible economic framework and, as we have said consistently, we will continue to examine further measures to assist working Australians and working families under financial pressure. That is the right thing to do. It is the responsible thing to do. You do it with an economic framework. You do not pull out a budget reply one night and say on radio 12 hours later that you did not bother to cost it. That is the recipe for economic responsibility, and those opposite have shredded what remains of their credibility.