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

We always hear, don’t we, that somehow the Labor Party knows where you can buy a Ferrari for $57,180? The only way you can buy a Ferrari for $57,180 is if it is hot—if it is dodgy; if it has been stolen. That is the sort of policy that we currently have with this: something that has been manipulated and turned around. These people know where to buy Porsches for about $57,180 because they are so dodgy. This is a dodgy policy from a dodgy premise but it is also an attack on manufacturing workers at Australian manufacturing and car plants—an attack on Australian working families. It is an attack on those who are in a precarious position by reason of the stresses manufacturing plants are under. In their infinite wisdom, the Labor Party have decided that they are going to help the show by putting another tax on it. They are going to be responsible for putting Australian manufacturing workers out of a job. That will be the effect of this. If they believe in market principles and price signals then the price signal is to stop you buying. So what are people going to buy? They are going to buy cheap imported Chinese and Indian cars or, if they do not care about the price, they will buy European cars. But it will be Australian cars and Australian manufacturing workers that are dealt such a cruel blow by this.

In the government’s insistence on trying to put this through, they have come up with a horse designed by committee which has become a camel. That is the sort of legislation that is being put before us. They are corralling the Greens and corralling other sectors. There are exemptions for environmentally friendly cars. There are rebates for people who have rural property. Possibly I will get one because I am a primary producer, but the person who comes to do the contract farming on my place will not. The person who builds a fence on my place will not. The mechanic who comes to my place will not.

A saying that goes round now is that the only tractor you need on a farm these days is a contractor. They are the people that the Labor Party think do not exist. So a big thankyou from absentee landlords like myself to you good people for helping us out, but you have left out the people who actually do the majority of work on so many places. You cannot go into a town and start dividing people up—‘You are in; you are out.’ You cannot walk down the streets of a place like St George and say, ‘You over here will get an exemption for buying that Toyota wagon to put your family in but you over there will not.’ It is a ridiculous concept. And these are the sorts of things that are coming forward.

This legislation is based on a ridiculous premise that we will now have arbiters elegantiae who will determine what luxury is. We look forward to the Henry review—what an absolute document of wonder that will be!—to discern other things that are luxuries. The government have already said they will be looking at jewellery and artwork. I look forward to the day when somebody on the other side will be discerning whether my fridge is a luxury fridge or just a regular old Kelvinator. Some bastion of information will sit down and ponder the universe as to what is and what is not luxury and tax me accordingly. That is the sort of ridiculous scenario that will descend on us.

The government have thought about it for a long while! The legislation failed about a week ago and it is back here today, like a lost dog looking for a bone. It is back here wandering around the chamber, and we are going to see if it struggles through this time. The legislation, Labor’s idea of structural policy, is evolving into bathos. It has hairs all over it. Why can’t we do what is reasonable and just kick it out? It is too confusing. Why didn’t the Labor Party at least have the decency to look at the sorts of cars that Australia produces and at least exempt them—to at least keep out of it the Australian workers who are going to have their jobs threatened by this?

Maybe they have not been reading the mail lately, but a fair few stresses are coming onto the manufacturing workers in the manufacturing plants of Victoria and South Australia. They will be absolutely fascinated to know that tonight the Labor Party has created basically an upside-down tariff—a reason for Australians to buy a product made by workers overseas. They will be thrilled to bits with the logic.

Then there is this concept of luxury. I truly believe that if we walked down the street and asked people, ‘Do you believe that your Statesman is a car of luxury? Do you believe that your Toyota LandCruiser wagon is a sign that you are up there with those people who have been terribly fortunate in life—the people who occupy the BRW 200?’ I wonder if these people feel that they are in possession of an item of luxury.

The reality is that the motor car, for so many people, is the one article that they can extend themselves to that means so much. How many times do you drive past a house and see the car in absolutely immaculate condition? They might live in a house where they are actually struggling a little bit, in a street which might not be at the best end of town, but they concentrate on that vehicle because it means so much to them. It is something that personifies just a little bit of a corner of their life where they have something that they are proud of. It might be the highest-range Monaro, but for the government those sorts of vehicles might be a luxury. I think the people who are listening tonight would be saying, ‘It is nice to own one but I don’t see it as a luxury.’

It is an arbitrary tax, where the government have plucked a figure out of the air: ‘It’s going to be 33 per cent.’ That is a fair hit to put on someone because they dare to want something that, for all intents and purposes, may be just a bit nicer. Government senators may come in and say, ‘We are looking at the top of the range’. They always talk about Ferraris and Porsches. You know their argument is lacking when they keep referring to something that is a stellar orbit from the price where this tax cuts in—it is a million miles away. But they do not say, ‘You are helping all the people who won’t own Holdens. You are supporting all the people who won’t own Fords. You are supporting all those terrible people who want to own Toyotas.’ No, they have to go for the ridiculous notion of being mischievous and they mislead and suggest to the Australian people that this is a tax that comes in at a quarter of a million dollars or $150,000 for a period of elasticity.

This comes in where the demand for the motor vehicle is very elastic, where people respond to price. People do respond to price. That means that when you put the price up they buy another product, so they will buy a product from another country and they will be putting an Australian worker out of a job. They will be forced to do this because of politics of envy. And it is not just politics of envy but a misguided and completely implausible premise in a piece of legislation that now has so many junctures and amendments that it has become an absolute farce—all for the purpose of saying, and this is what it is all about: ‘We won. We got that through.’ The policy, if it ever gets through, will be the archetypal grandpa’s axe: the head will have changed, the handle will have changed, but somebody somewhere will be able to say, ‘That was successful. That was good government tonight. We managed to really deliver to Australians a sign of how we will manage the economic times that are in front of us and how we will deal with the precarious nature of what is before us, because we brought into parliament something that had been shot to pieces to prove a point.’

We should be using this time tonight to debate other things that are far more important, like how we are going to deal with the effects of the threat to superannuation by reason of the international turmoil; how we are going to deal with the effects on the people who are going to be losing their job because of this international turmoil; how we are going to deal with the effects on the people in the western suburbs of the major capitals who are probably looking at negative equity on their homes—how we are going to deal with those issues. The Labor Party is going to deal with those issues by putting another tax on their vehicle. That is how they are going to do it. And if they live down south they are going— (Time expired)

Debate interrupted.