Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The Passenger Movement Charge Amendment Bill 2008 is yet another bill which conclusively shows that this government is just another high-taxing, financially incompetent Labor government—the sort of government we have come to expect from the Labor Party over many decades. It is a government without any real compassion or care and it is a government which will preside over a huge increase in unemployment—even their own budget figures indicate that. It is a government which will see business bankruptcies increase quite dramatically and it is a government which will throw many hard-working Australians onto the welfare market. One would almost think that the Labor Party is happiest when it is dishing out money to people and having people dependent upon the government rather than dependent upon their own hard work and initiative. The sort of Australia that we have known over the last 11 years, where enterprise and hard work was encouraged and rewarded, will again disappear under a Labor government. Business confidence is at its lowest level in 16 years. This legislation before the parliament is another example of why those problems will be confronting Australia over the next several years.

I bring to this debate a particular Northern Australian viewpoint. The area around Cairns, which includes the Great Barrier Reef and the wet tropics rainforest, has long been a preferred destination for international tourists, but the tourism industry is now in real difficulty. The huge increases in oil prices are really having an impact on tourism and on any sort of activity in areas that are remote from the capital cities or which rely on transport from international sources. In spite of Mr Rudd promising before the last election that he would bring down oil prices, we now see oil prices at their highest level on record. Rather than do anything about it, rather than adopt the opposition’s approach and cut excise by 5c, the Labor government sits on its hands and watches. Before the OPEC meeting last week we had the same sort of talk as we had before the election. Mr Rudd was going to send his minister to put the blowtorch to OPEC countries, but they barely got a whimper from Australia and, of course, there was no progress. The sorts of activities over which the Labor Party is presiding will destroy many of the businesses and activities that have built Australia so wonderfully in the last 11 years.

It is quite clear in the Cairns area that tourism is in difficulty. The exchange rate has meant that tourists from Japan, who were a very big part of the Cairns tourism boom over the last decade or so, are finding it not as financially attractive to come to Australia. Add to that the high price of fuel and the fact that QANTAS, because it has those fuel and wages constraints, is now cutting services quite substantially in and out of Cairns. The last nail in the coffin is this government raising the tourism tax by $9 at this time. This will have a substantial impact on the Cairns tourism industry and indeed the tourism industry right across Northern Australia and Australia as a whole. The impact of this additional tax by the Labor government will not be seen for a few months, but it will be there. I understand that the difficulties with this particular measure will be long felt in regions like Cairns. Cairns International Airport was substantially modified and upgraded by the Fraser government many years ago and became a real mecca for international tourism, but it is now struggling under the continued imposts made by the Labor government and the exchange rate. What the industry in Cairns needs is a new approach to governance that will seriously help the tourism industry. It is suggested to me by people in the north that the best thing that the government could do would be to completely abolish the passenger movement charges. That would be the single most helpful thing the government could do.

What did the Queensland Labor government do when Qantas made its shock announcement a couple of weeks ago? They said—would you believe—‘We’ll throw in $4 million for an advertising campaign to help Cairns.’ That is of no assistance at all. Not to be outdone, a few days later the federal government announced—very belatedly, because the local member, Mr Turnour, was missing in action at this crucial time—that it would match the Queensland government’s $4 million. So we have this pool of $8 million, which, as anyone in the advertising industry knows, will not go very far at all. That is not what Cairns wants; that is not what Northern Australia wants. We need a different approach to the whole issue. The best thing the government could do would be not to increase the passenger movement charge but to abolish it altogether. I am given to understand that, if the passenger movement charge were abolished, the gross domestic product just in the tropical North Queensland region would increase by something like $60 million to $70 million by the year 2013. It is a difficult issue for the tourism industry generally, but it is a particularly difficult issue for the tourism industry across Northern Australia.

As the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs report that has been presented to parliament clearly shows, export tourism operators are under extreme pressure at the present time because of the increasing oil price and subsequent reductions in aviation capacity; the strength of the dollar; inflationary aspects resulting from labour, food and beverage cost initiatives—I will come back to that; and external events, such as the Olympic Games and the liberalisation of visa requirements. But they are also suffering competition from places like New Zealand, where the international departure fee is only $25. In Australia, we have a departure tax that is almost double that amount. We cannot even keep pace with our cousins in New Zealand.

While Mr Rudd, prior to the election, promised Australians that he would bring down grocery prices, we have seen anything but that since, and this has had an indirect and ongoing impact on the tourism industry. They are getting attacked from every angle, and what does this government do in its first budget? It simply adds another nail in the coffin of the tourism industry in Australia. But this government does not care. It is not interested in the tourism industry, because the tourism industry is principally made up of small business operators and mum and dad shows—people who work much longer than union hours, I might say, to get ahead. They have enterprise; they have initiative; they want to work hard; they want to look towards their future without government assistance. But this government is not interested in those sorts of people, and this increase in the passenger movement charge simply exemplifies that.

As the Australian Tourism Export Council told the committee:

It is the small businesses in regional parts of Australia in particular that go first. And that is happening as we speak. We have got to the point now where even that strategy for absorbing the costs has come to the end of its cycle and my members now have to pass on to the customer the price increase …

That, of course, means a less competitive tourism market for Australia. The Tourism Export Council also said that the impact of the increased charges was compounded by other budget measures which it considered also had a negative impact on the tourism industry. They identified a number of these additional impacts, which they said—and it is mentioned somewhere in the report—will add $1 billion of costs onto the tourism industry in Australia.

Representatives of the Tourism and Transport Forum said this to the committee:

We have a rationalisation of air services routes by our domestic carriers, we have historically high fuel prices, we have a high Australian dollar and there are potential trade barriers on long-haul travel emerging from the European Union. There are significant issues facing the tourism and aviation industry and so the timing of the PMC increase—

on the part of this inexperienced Labor government—

could not have been worse.

The promises and the comments that Mr Rudd made before the election that led Australian people to believe that he would reduce oil prices and reduce grocery prices have just been shown to be a complete and utter sham. As we go through the cycle of this three-year Labor government, we will continue to see that sort of insensitivity to business and to job creation. We will continue to see the sort of spin for which after seven months Mr Rudd is already becoming renowned. It is at last getting through to the Australian people that good governance requires decent action and good management skills, not just good media-spin skills. This particular bill here today is another example of everything that is wrong with Labor governments: they simply cannot be trusted with money.

This is a budget bill. I am delighted that the coalition insisted on referring this bill to a committee even though, because it was a budget bill, the committee reporting time frame was very short. That, of course, prevented a number of people who would have liked to have given evidence to the committee from getting in a submission and being able to appear, but at least this Senate did its job by looking at government legislation. We do not want to be destructive. We recognise that, even under false pretences, the Labor Party were elected as the government and should be allowed to govern. This is one of their budget bills. Although we do not like it, we are not going to oppose it, because it is a budget bill.

However, I am delighted that the coalition was able to insist that this bill go for scrutiny by a Senate committee—that is what Senate committees are about. They are about subjecting government legislation to scrutiny and giving Australians the opportunity to point out to the government the mistakes it has made. Whilst those deficiencies have been pointed out, it is quite clear that any comments to that effect fall on deaf ears when it comes to this Labor government. But at least Australians have had that opportunity.

If the government had any sense or any real concern for Australia into the future, especially over the next couple of years, it would take notice of the report, particularly the part for which the Liberal senators on that committee were responsible for. They have summarised the concerns that were raised at committee hearings. If the Labor government had any sense, it would do something about this bill. As I say, it should withdraw it now and look not just at the additional tax it can shove in its pocket at the moment but also at the ongoing impacts this sort of legislation will have.

We can see that this is just a tax. Some attempt was made by the Labor Party to say that this is to cover costs. But, again, the evidence to the committee clearly shows that the increased revenue from this measure far outweighs the cost that is required. In fact, the figures show that border security, which this was supposed to assist, is impacted to a greater degree by the budget; there are cuts in real terms to the customs department and to other border security measures but, at the same time, the tax to allegedly pay for these has increased.

This new tax by the Labor Party is like the alcopops tax; it is all about taxing Australians. It has been demonstrated clearly that the alcopops tax has nothing to do with binge drinking, which seems to concern Mr Rudd so much—and well it should, I might say. It is really not about that, because the evidence has shown that that tax will have very little impact, and it is the wrong approach if we want to address binge drinking. Similarly, this additional tax on the tourism industry, on small business, is just revenue raising by the Labor Party, with no benefit being returned to the Australian nation or its small business people, who constitute the principal part of the tourism industry.

The Cairns tourism industry and tourism industries right across Australia will continue to operate. They will succeed in spite of this adversity and in spite of what seems to be increasing antipathy from the Labor Party and the Labor government. They will succeed because they are hardworking, initiative-driven people. Whilst things will be pretty tough for them over the next little while, they will hang in there. But this government should be doing things to help them. It should be doing things to increase the economies of regional Australia, of Northern Australia, rather than trying to decimate those economies by this additional tax on small business and on Australians.