Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Take a bow! There is one New South Wales registered four-wheel drive that has a few bumps on it and a fair bit of mud on it, and it has obviously been to the bush. I declare an interest; it is mine. Every other vehicle down there that is a four-wheel drive never, ever gets out of Canberra by the look of it, unless someone goes for a trip down the coast at the weekend to do a bit of fishing. There were one or two people who used to do that instead of going back to Tassie.

What is the definition of a luxury car? I am sure that the bureaucrats who, in good faith, drew up this dream that has to be lost, because the government most surely has to rethink this legislation, were probably like a former minister for the environment who lived in the inner city suburbs of Sydney and thought the bush was the two trees in his backyard—and you cannot blame him for that; that is where he was born and bred. These bureaucrats probably thought, ‘Oh well, four-wheel drives are a luxury car, they are 70 grand.’

I agree with every word that Senator Macdonald said—that I heard him say, that is; I do not know what he said that I did not hear. But four-wheel drives are a tool for the bush. They are an occupational health and safety item on every farm that does not have a tarred road from the mailbox to the homestead. I can give you instances of tragedies that have occurred. I declare an interest: I have a place where the last 35 miles into my place is a black soil road and when it rains 30 points you cannot drive a two-wheel drive on it. If you have an accident of some sort you do not get out unless you have a four-wheel drive—so it is an occupational hazard not to have a four-wheel drive; it is not a luxury.

You can see by the look of my vehicle downstairs that it is a workhorse. I do not drive it because I feel good in it—as a matter of fact, the seat is crook and I get a sore neck. It is a tool. Just as Senator Macdonald gave his experiences in Queensland, it is no different in the bush in New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia or anywhere else. It is not a given that there are all-weather roads in the bush. If you are going to get your kids out to the school bus—and they usually follow the tar road and that is all they follow—in the middle of winter you will not do it in a two-wheel drive car when there is rain about. And I wish there was more rain about.

Does the government expect we cockies—and I am one of them, worn out, cranky and grumpy as I am—to go back to the bloody horse and sulky? When I was a kid, my sisters used to ride a horse to school. Do they expect us to go back to that? There is a logical argument that these vehicles are a work tool. There is a solution. At the present time in the bush, if you have an ABN and are registered as a primary producer, you get a rebate on your insurance and you get a different registration schedule. That is because you are not driving in the city where it is actuarial sum insurance, where there is likely to be someone running into you at the next set of lights. Those things are doable. But then you have to go to the contractor. Senator Hutchins, you would understand this on behalf of your people in your union: a lot of people use a four-wheel drive as part of their work model because, if you are going to back into a building site and it is full of mud and rock and rubbish, you will not do it in a car.

The best example—and the message I have for the bureaucrats who dreamt this rubbish up—is some years ago I argued that we should have four-wheel drives for people, like me, in the Senate, and there was an objection. We were not allowed to do that originally; we had to have a car because it was all to do with the price of the car. Some government officials came out to our district that year—they were Landcare people, as I recall—in a car in the middle of summer to go onto a farm for a farm inspection. You can guess what happened, because they had a catalytic converter: not only did they burn the farm but they burnt the car. Cars that are petrol driven are a fire hazard off-road in the middle of summer. That is why these things down in the car park are pretend vehicles. I do not want to dob in whomever drives those eight ACT registered, petrol four-wheel drives, but they are proper gas guzzlers, and I do not care what the government does for four-wheel drives that are registered to people who run their kids down to the soccer at Woollahra or out to wherever in the city. Obviously the future of the household budget is going to be the contest between what is in the fridge and what is in the garage, because the fridge is going to become very important.

My plea to the government is to either chuck it out, go back to the bureaucrats and start again or figure out a rebate which will pick up people whose four-wheel drives—so-called luxury vehicles—are a tool of trade and a safety vehicle for the farm and the family. We can have a signal on efficiency. I agree with Senator Milne and I think most people agree and I am sure the minister agrees that we ought to put a price signal into the market to say that if you are prepared to drive a Prius—and my congratulations to the minister for driving a Prius—then perhaps there ought to be a little reward by way of a price signal in the market. You can give them a rebate on their rego or something like that because they are driving an efficient car.

Can I also talk to the Senate as a whole. If you go out there to the front, there is that big, long line of Ford and GMH vehicles that probably do about 10 or 12 litres to 100 kilometres. Mostly one or two people get in, generally with one or two suitcases, and drive a short distance. There is absolutely no reason that we should not show an example to the Australian people by having a lot more fuel-efficient cars. It might feel good to be in a big vehicle but, if we are fair dinkum about the future of the planet, we will do away with that ego trip. We really should give consideration to calling up one of the bigger vehicles where there is a necessity for more luggage room or, for example, there are three passengers. But generally there is absolutely no reason why we should not have fuel-efficient cars in the Comcar fleet. By the way, there is only one pushbike down in the car park at the present time in the Senate. So my congratulations go to whomever is on the pushbike.

It just does not make sense. There are a lot of things that do not make sense. I was out at Broken Hill recently and a mate of mine lobbed out there in a Peugeot. It was a diesel. I said: ‘What the hell are you doing driving that thing? It’s a bit alternative.’ He was sticking to the tar and he said, ‘Mate, I’m driving it because it does 80 miles to the gallon.’ And it was a diesel. It makes a bit of sense, doesn’t it? We have seen the hypocrisy of ‘do not do as I do, but do as I say’. There is a really good example of that in the car park.

Why we continue to sell liquid natural gas to China and not put it into some of our cars here is a mystery to me. I suppose it is to shore up the financial plan for the early contracts from the North West Shelf gas field. Why GMH in America had the coal liquefaction licence for 15 years and did not use it because they wanted to exhaust the world’s oil supplies is a mystery to me. The licence is now back in Australia. I do not understand why we cannot go to more energy efficient car fuels. I do not know why, when you drive into Sydney, every light in every office building is burning brightly at three o’clock in the morning; it is a mystery to me. I asked that question in a conference one day. It was a climate change conference and it was the middle of the day and the place was full of sunshine, and I said, ‘Why are all the lights on?’ They said, ‘Because the building’s engineered in such a way that you cannot turn them off.’

So we have a long way to go, but my plea, Minister, to the government is to not consider a four-wheel-drive which is a workhorse as a luxury car. I was in Rose Bay the other day and a bloke rocked up in front of me in a brand spanker Rolls Royce. Generally people who drive Rolls Royces do not want you to say g’day to them—although John Symond drives a Daimler and he does not mind if you say g’day to him—but this bloke was a bit surprised when he got out of the car and I said, ‘G’day, mate; how are you? How does she run? This is a brand spanker.’ He said, ‘Oh, it runs pretty well, thanks.’ I said, ‘How much would that car cost?’ I said, ‘Would it have cost between $480,000 and $500,000?’ thinking that was a pretty good shot at it. He scratched his head for a while and said, ‘No, by the time I put all the extras on it, it was $1.2 million.’ That is a luxury car and that bloke, I dare say, could afford to pay the tax.

But for a mother of four kids on the road between One Tree and Booligal, who has to drive 30 miles to pick up the school bus in the middle of winter, a $70,000 or $75,000 LandCruiser or a Nissan Patrol or something is not a luxury vehicle. Anyone who is awake does not drive petrol cars in the bush anymore, because they light fires. A turbocharged diesel has rewritten the rule book in the bush for getting about. I would have thought there were mechanisms that the bureaucrats probably already know about but have not presented to the government as to how you could overcome that. I am not going to repeat myself. This is stupid, and it is unfair to the bush. I have to say that maybe the government did not think it through; I do not know. I do not think there is actually anyone in the government at the present time who lives and makes a living in the bush. There are one or two people who have a home in the bush but they do not actually live or make a living there. I am pleading for the ordinary old mums and dads who live down all the weather-beaten tracks in the bush—that we do not penalise them because they live where they are and do such a fantastic job for Australia. When you go to Woolies and Coles and see the bananas and oranges and everything there, these are the people who put them there. We are saying, ‘Not only have we trebled the price of fertiliser on you and doubled the price of fuel; we’re also going to tax you extra for driving a four-wheel drive because we think it is a luxury vehicle.’ What sort of rubbish is that? Thanks very much!