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

I join with my colleagues in opposing the Tax Laws Amendment (Luxury Car Tax) Bill 2008 and related bills before the chamber at the present time. Previous speakers from this side have raised in very precise and persuasive ways arguments on why this latest tax grab from a high-taxing Labor government should be opposed.

In my contribution I want to concentrate on the impact that this tax will have, yet again, on the bush in Australia. Labor we all know is renowned for being a high-taxing government. I have just come out of an inquiry looking at state government financial management. That inquiry shows that all of the state governments, as well currently held by Labor, are governments that believe they know best what to do with our money. They want to tax the money so they can spend it on ideas that have originated in the capital cities, in the union movement and in the backrooms of the Labor organisations. You only have to look back from Whitlam to Hawke to Keating to understand that Labor are simply incompetent financial managers and cannot be trusted with money.

In this last budget Labor hugely increased the tax take from the Australian public. That in itself puts the obvious lie to Labor’s claim that they had to address a perceived inflationary problem. The real inflationary problem, of course, was that both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer kept talking up an inflation problem when really it was not there. But having criticised former governments for having an impact on inflation they then brought in this hugely inflationary budget which substantially increased taxes. We remember that the last time Labor was in power they left government with a $96 billion debt costing the Australian public almost $10 billion a year simply in interest payments. It took Peter Costello and John Howard almost nine years to pay off Labor’s $96 billion debt. That demonstrates—and we must keep reminding the Australian public—that Labor simply cannot be trusted with money. That alone is one reason why this particular tax bill should be opposed.

I am concerned about the impact this bill will have on country and regional Australia and on small businesses that operate in the northern and more remote parts of Australia. If the Labor government need a bit more money, I wonder why they do not tax the real luxury items like Rolex watches or jewellery—the sorts of things that wealthy prime ministers and millionaire environment ministers might spend their money on. They are the luxury goods that people in the city tend to be more interested in. People in the country these days cannot of course afford jewellery or Rolex watches, but they do have to have, of necessity, four-wheel-drive passenger vehicles.

What I want to highlight in this debate is that this bill is simply another attack by the Labor government on small business and people in country Australia. Labor is already, in its short term in office, clearly showing its antirural bias: the Regional Partnerships program and the Growing Regions program have gone, with no new money until next year—perhaps—at the earliest; the Agriculture Advancing Australia program was axed; Farmbis and Farm Help have gone; there have been cuts to rural health services, regional arts programs and rural financial counselling services; and it has cancelled the Optus-Elders broadband joint venture, which might have given us decent broadband in rural and regional Australia, which is so essential these days.

On top of that we have this tax, which impacts more heavily on rural and regional Australians than it does on those living in the city. The bill, I would submit, should be renamed. Rather than the Tax Law Amendment (Luxury Car Tax) Bill, it should be called the ‘tax law amendment (stuff the bush) bill’. That is what it seems that this bill has the effect of doing. I am concerned at these impacts on rural and regional Australia.

We saw in the paper the other day that the rural town of Coleambally was offering to sell itself completely because of the inefficiency of the Labor government in dealing with the water problem. That shows that that small country town has absolutely no confidence in the Labor government and what it might do for rural and regional Australia.

Up in my area in the state of Queensland the little town of Aramac was being promoted only a couple of months ago by the Queensland Labor government as a good place to live. They have an interesting land sale arrangement. But part of the advertising for this small town of Aramac was that they had good health facilities and a hospital. The Queensland state Labor government just last week shut the Aramac hospital down. It is a country town. There are not many votes there, so who cares about the health needs of people in small country towns like Aramac!