Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, that is correct, Senator Brandis. I am sure that my good colleague Senator Brandis would agree that we always thought it would take a little longer before the Labor Party got clever and tricky; but it did not take long at all. They immediately started taking the Australian people for granted and became clever and tricky instantaneously. It was interesting reading through the speeches in the other place. I noticed that the Minister for Resources and Energy and the Minister for Tourism had not made a contribution to the debate by the time Mr Ciobo made his speech. It is a crucial issue in his portfolio and he did not show up. Maybe he appeared later on. It is vitally important that we see how the Labor government are going to deal with this—amongst a whole range of other problems that they seem to have stewardship of at the moment or have managed to exacerbate. You cannot deal with problems by creating a new tax.

During the campaign, Labor grabbed on to something former Prime Minister John Howard said. They accused him and tried to drag him backwards and forwards through the prickles because he said that working families had never been better off. There is a very clear question that has to be asked now. I strongly believe that working families were better off under John Howard than they are now, with what is happening to them. Working families now, under the government, are certainly worse off. Working families now are certainly paying more for fuel. Working families now are certainly paying more for groceries. Working families now have to deal with the tourism industry that is in decline. Working families now have to deal with the impost of ridiculous taxes that the government are trying to place on them, such as the alcopops tax. Working families now have to deal with the ridiculous issue of changes in the Medicare levy surcharge that is coming forward, so more people are going to be pushed into public hospitals and working families will not have the capacity with the problems they have got. The government are going to make the problems worse. These are the sorts of issues that I believe are coming into clear focus for working families—what the world looks like now under Mr Rudd and the Labor government. That is why it is important that, with this piece of legislation, we clearly understand that this will become yet another impost—another mechanism that will make things worse for Australia.

I can understand it, especially around the unfortunate circumstances of September 11 and the increase in charges that was required to maintain the security of our airports. That is understandable. One now has to ask, with regard to the capital that is currently in place: do we see a greater reason for this sort of increase in the charge? It will be another $106.3 million in 2008-09 alone. Sometimes in this job these numbers just roll off the tongue. We have to understand that when that money disappears—because there is an opportunity cost—from places such as North Queensland, shops go out of business, tourism operators go out of business, and there are a whole range of things. You give the people who have the smarts in the industry—the tour operators in Japan, the tour operators in China, the tour operators in the Middle East, the tour operators in Europe—another reason to select another destination. And when they select another destination, that is another amount of money that is taken out of the Australian economy, not to be replaced.

In closing, I would say that you have to be extremely careful, especially in the north of our great state of Queensland, of the sorts of unforeseen implications of policy from certain pieces of legislation. These unforeseen outcomes may not be apparent when the ink is on the paper, but become very apparent for the people of those areas when the rubber hits the road. The rubber has hit the road for the tourism industry, and there are other issues on the horizon for North Queensland and other areas that we need to be completely aware of. Even though the government has to, I suppose, run the show and it has to get its appropriations through, I think that this bill before us is not good law.