Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

Could I indicate at the beginning of my contribution that the government will not support the opposition’s amendments. Unlike Senator Macdonald, I have not been convinced by Senator Abetz’s oratory. This is just another part of the raid on the budget surplus. It is further fiscal vandalism. This is what the Leader of the Opposition said in relation to the size of the budget measures that the opposition is blocking:

Clearly, $6 billion is a gigantic amount of money in anyone’s terms ...

It’s a huge amount of money ...

So they admit it is a gigantic amount of money, but they plan to block it anyway. The raid on the surplus continues, with the opposition last night trying to exempt more cars and reduce the tax paid for cars over the threshold. They say they want to exempt Toyota Taragos, but only one model will pay the tax anyway. It is only one model, despite their attempts to continually misrepresent the impact of this tax.

What they forgot and they are a little bit embarrassed by—and we have already seen a little bit of dissembling by Senator Abetz on this—is that by lifting the threshold they are giving a tax break to Porsche drivers. This is because the 33 per cent rate is only payable on amounts above the new threshold. They bleat about people in the bush, but at heart we know that their new threshold is just another tax break for Porsche drivers. It is the same old reckless spending.

I note that our trading partners will take a very close interest in any changes to the luxury car tax. It is therefore important that we observe our international trade obligations in any amendments. These obligations require nondiscrimination between domestic and imported vehicles. For those opposite to continue to try and misrepresent the impact of this measure just shows that they have learnt nothing from the last election. They have learned nothing from the 20 warnings from the Reserve Bank that they all chose to ignore—which led to the highest inflation rate in 16 years. It put upward pressure on interest rates to the extent—