Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to put a bit of definition into this debate, because Senator Milne has been spraying everywhere from schools and education to tax and so forth. Today we are debating the amendment that the Greens are proposing. The government is agreeing to it because it needs their vote, and, as Senator Cameron has said, the government has accommodated the Greens and Senator Fielding and Senator Xenophon. Really, the only people they have not accommodated are the workers that are employed in these factories that are going to lose 10 per cent of their production. Like Senator Cameron, I have been involved in manufacturing and I know for a fact that all the profit is held in that last 10 per cent and if you just go and knock the top 10 per cent off any factory’s profits it is going to have dire consequences.

The real definition of this proposal that is coming forward is that we are going to tax the workhorses of Australia—the Nissan Patrols, the Toyota LandCruisers and the Land Rovers—that people need out in the west and we are going to allow in Audis, Alfa Romeos, BMWs, Jaguars, Saabs and a few of those other cars that the superwealthy use around the metropolitan areas.

Senator Cameron says, ‘Farmers don’t need these big four-wheel drive cars.’ That is an absolute nonsense. And if they have the audacity to put air-conditioning in them, when it happens to be 40 degrees in the shade out there, that is just a complete waste of money—you should go around in a car with your wife and family and fry! This is stupid. We are going to let all these expensive, highly-prized cars in but destroy 10 per cent of Australian car manufacturing—and we think it is not going to have any repercussions. There is no question about this. If you take 10 per cent—I think it actually works out at a bit more, let us say 11 per cent—of the cars manufactured in Australia, you are going to affect jobs as a consequence. Senator Cameron does not seem to worry about that. He has been in the manufacturing industry long enough to know that if you tax a product like this then you will tax it out of the market, and we are going to tax 10 or 11 per cent of Australian made cars out of the market.

It is not a luxury to have a four-wheel drive in the regional areas of Australia. They are not a luxury; they are an absolute necessity. They are something that everybody needs and everyone uses. Just the other day I was talking to Bruce Scott, the member for Maranoa. He said that one of his staffers was driving, got into a skid on a gravel road and ploughed into a tree. He said, ‘If I had not had that Land Rover—I think it was a Toyota LandCruiser—I would have been in terrible trouble.’ I have mentioned this before. Members of parliament have lost their wives through road accidents. Mr Cowan and Mr Hicks both lost their wives this way. John Anderson’s wife rolled a Volvo over seven times. Tim Fischer was in an accident where two people were killed. The government then made a decision that everyone who had big electorates—and it was a Labor government that made that decision—had to have a Toyota or a four-wheel drive. That was not because they wanted to see the local member swanning around in a luxury vehicle but rather because it was the only way that the government could guarantee the members and their families a safe way to travel around the electorate.

It is not just a question of driving around the farm in these vehicles. These are people movers. Parents drive them to take the kids to football, and football might be at the next town 50 kilometres away. Parents drive them to take the kids to swimming at the nearest town with a pool, which could be 30 kilometres away. We heard Senator Cameron come in here and condemn farmers for having a safe means of transport. It just shows that he does not understand what happens in regional and rural Australia. He has challenged Senator Abetz to go to a car manufacturer with him. Well, I challenge him to come out west and stand outside the town hall or the shopping centre and count the number of four-wheel drives. They are not owned by wealthy farmers—some of them would be owned by farmers but many of them would be owned by the workers around the area such as vets, nurses, doctors, windmill experts and people who work on the properties. What this is doing is saying, ‘You can drive a Volvo, an Alfa Romeo or an Audi out there but do not drive a four-wheel drive.’

These four-wheel drives are designed and made for rural and regional Australia, and the tax on these is going to penalise people—not the farmers, because they have been excluded, but the rest of the people out there. I would expect that there would be many more people driving these vehicles out there than just farmers. Senator Milne says, ‘It’s a good idea. We’ve got to encourage people to drive these Audis because they have some sort of a fuel mileage advantage.’ It may work in the metropolitan areas, but the idea of bringing in these very expensive imported cars—when you are penalising the workhorses of Australia, penalising the cars that are manufactured in Australia and knocking off 10 or 11 per cent of the cars that are manufactured in Australia—will only end in tears when people lose their jobs.