Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

I repeat for the sake of Senator Fielding that, with great respect to Terry McCrann, most economic commentators do strongly support the government’s position in not cutting the excise. As Senator Fielding knows, we did freeze Labor’s indexation of the excise. We cut the excise twice, in 2000 and 2001, but any cut in excise that was going to have any impact on the cost of petrol to families at the moment would require a 10c cut. That is about $2½ billion to $3 billion of revenue forgone per annum. We do not think that is responsible and, as I have said in this place, we are pleased that the opposition acknowledges that that would not be responsible. We are doing what we possibly can to encourage diversity in alternative fuel supplies and, in this case, this week we announced a very significant initiative in relation to LPG.