David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I want to commence my remarks on the Excise Legislation Amendment (Condensate) Bill 2008 and this tax, which is essentially one of the greatest assaults on the living standards of Western Australians I have ever seen in the history of Federation, by saying that it discloses all of the morality of carpetbaggers and burglars. That is what we are looking at here—carpetbaggers and burglars. This is a wacky government. It has got absolutely no idea of good public policy. Their first real act was to obliterate the exceptional circumstances regime for drought stricken farmers. That was their first contribution to public policy in this country.

Of course, we have seen today the luxury car tax. What a wonderful thing for a car industry that is on its knees through lack of confidence, a manufacturing industry that is going to be assailed by an emissions trading scheme, and here they are—the wisdom of Job!—implementing a luxury car tax. Then of course we see alcopops. I can tell you that the distillers are thinking this is the best thing since sliced bread. They are selling more raw spirits than ever before. What a wonderful contribution to our youth. Of course, we have got an emissions trading scheme green paper. How brilliant is this? The LNG industry is not included as an emissions intensive industry receiving permits. This is the one industry that Australia puts to the world to reduce global greenhouse gas, particularly in East Asia, and they are not included in the scheme. It is just unbelievable.

Of course, they then give road transport certificates, which I take no issue with, but they leave rail out. The most energy efficient, combustion efficient and emissions reduced area of transport in Australia and they do not give them a permit. Then of course we see them attack our uranium exports to India. In one fell swoop they would eliminate a whole year of Australian emissions by seeing the Indians produce electricity through fission. This is another wacky tax. This is an absolute smash and grab raid and I want to style it right here and now as the drive by shooting of the century. Here is an industry that has drawn in international players—we have investment from Japan, America and Australia—building what is Australia’s premier and biggest oil and gas project. It has paid billions of dollars in tax royalties since 1984. So what does this government do as one of their first acts? It thinks: ‘How can we get into the pocket of these people? How can we grab the money and run?’

Of course this $2.5 billion tax grab must be passed on. What business in the world could possibly tolerate a $2.5 billion assault on their bottom line? So the people of Western Australia, the mums and dads and their businesses, are going to have to pay this money to Canberra to fund Labor’s profligate, stupid, hopeless state governments in Victoria and New South Wales. That is what is happening. Look at what has gone on in New South Wales. The frolicking in the offices, ministers going to jail for all sorts of drug offences and goodness knows what. There is no water. They cannot build a desalinator. These two states cannot get themselves organised to do a damn thing in this country and this government is bailing them out with Western Australian money. That is what is happening. We are paying taxes in WA for these guys, for these incompetents.

We have already seen what the party brings to the table in terms of good governance. We saw it in Western Australia. We saw what happened after eight years of the Carpenter government. We ran an ad on television that said: ‘Think of three things the Labor government in Western Australia has achieved.’ Everybody thought, ‘Well, that’s a bit tough. What have they achieved?’ Do you think the Labor Party responded to that ad? Do you think they got the money together to put their ads on TV to say, ‘We’ve done good things’? They sat there like stunned mullets and did not respond to that ad—ipso facto they have done nothing in eight years. They have done nothing in the world’s best economy, with mineral prices and agricultural prices through the roof and they have done nothing—and they admit it.

May I predict: we will take the other viable marginal federal seat from Labor at the next federal election. We will take it because, when Kevin Rudd said, ‘We are going to put this tax on the pockets of Western Australians,’ what did the then Labor Premier do? He sided with Canberra and said to his constituents, ‘Pay up and shut up because we’re Labor, we know what we’re doing and we’re going to take your money.’ That is what he said.

What did that mean for the wonderful strategies of Labor in Western Australia? It is going to follow on federally, I can say. In Morley we had a 9.5 per cent swing. This was a blue ribbon Labor seat where they would strut around haggling over who was going to get the seat. There were parachutes landing every day with beautiful media stars who were going to be the new state gurus, but there was a 9.5 per cent swing to a fabulous Liberal candidate who nominated five minutes before the closing of nominations. That is how good this government in Perth was.