Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to the Prime Minister's decision to ambush Australian motorists with a $2.2 billion petrol tax without a mandate from the Australian people and without the approval of parliament. How does the Prime Minister respond to Liz Taylor from Melbourne, who said in today's Herald Sun:

… everybody has a car and it will be very hard on people who can't afford any rises in petrol at all. That's what is important to me.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I make two observations in response to the member who has asked the question. First, this is a government that is reducing the overall burden of tax. The budget reduced the overall burden of tax by $5.7 billion. Sure, we are indexing fuel excise but we have abolished the carbon tax—the carbon tax that the member presumably wanted to stay. We gave people a $550 per household a year benefit. That is the first point I make: we are reducing the overall burden of tax. The second point I make is that, due to the operation of the ordinary market, petrol prices at the moment are going down.