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

My question is to the Prime Minister. Tourism accounts for billions of dollars of vital economic activity across Queensland, including in my electorate of Dawson. Labor are slugging Queenslanders with a new tourism tax by increasing the passenger movement tax from $60 to $70. Why do Australians always pay more when Labor breaks its promises?

Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks very much to the honourable member for his question. The honourable member is right to say that the passenger movement charge is going from $60 to $70. It hasn't been indexed since I think 2017, so the change reflects the indexation of the charge.

What the honourable member didn't say in his question, but what the House might be interested in, is that this payment is for people leaving Australia. I have more faith in the tourism industry of Queensland than the honourable member does if he thinks an extra 10 bucks to leave Queensland is going to deter people from coming to Queensland in the first place. They're not sitting around in London or in Brussels thinking, 'I really want to hit the Sunshine Coast, but that 10 bucks on the way out is going to prevent me.' They're not sitting around in the capitals of Europe or North America or throughout our region saying, 'I really want to go to Cairns and drop a few thousand dollars in one of the most beautiful places on earth, but I won't do that because of the extra $10 that reflects the indexation from 2017.'

These are the depths to which those opposite will plummet to try and pretend that the budget that we handed down a couple of weeks ago was something other than a demonstration of the responsible economic management which has been a hallmark of our first 12 months in office and which was so conspicuously absent from the wasted decade of those opposite, a wasted decade defined by rorts and waste and economic mismanagement and deficits as far as the eye could see and a trillion dollars of debt with almost nothing to show for it.

We make the right decisions for the right reasons. You saw that in the budget. I believe in the tourism industry of Queensland. I say that as a proud Queenslander and as a proud Australian. People will continue to come to Queensland because it's amazing, and people will continue to come to Australia because it's amazing. And 10 bucks to leave Australia again won't deter them. (Time expired)