Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

And a proud one—good on you, Senator Sterle! Why are you supporting what the Labor government is trying to do to the heavy freight industry? Tell me that. If you are such a supporter of the industry—and I hope the union is—why are you acquiescing to this proposal to increase taxes on the heavy freight sector?

We all know all Australians are battling to meet their daily requirements in the face of higher cost-of-living pressures under the Rudd government. Why would you put an extra tax on the road freight industry which will be passed on to battling Australians? The response of the Labor government to increasing costs of living is to slap higher taxes on alcopops, on people movers, on four-wheel drives and on a range of things. Having more taxes will make it more difficult for struggling small businesses and push up costs for all Australians.

I know Senator Sterle and Senator Hutchins would not appreciate this perhaps as much as Senator Williams and I do, living in areas as remote from the capital cities as we do, but everything that comes to country Australia comes by freight, most of it by road freight. By putting increased taxes on the heavy freight industry, what you are doing is yet again slugging country people with higher taxes to meet some ideological goal of the Labor government here in Canberra. We saw evidence of this in the tax on four-wheel drive vehicles. We have seen it with the slashing of the Regional Partnerships program. You can go on and on—the slashing of the Natural Heritage Trust and the salinity programs that put money into country areas. All were slashed under this city-centric Labor government.

So we make no apology for rejecting the higher charges. They are a tax grab. They build on a road cost adjustment formula associated with road construction, and these costs, such as for steel and concrete, are skyrocketing—again due to poor financial management of the Rudd government and, importantly, of the state Labor governments. If you have a look at the report from the Senate Select Committee on State Government Financial Management, you will see how evidence to the committee showed that the mismanagement by state Labor governments of infrastructure spending, or lack of it, has meant that upward pressure has been put on inflation. This is because of the mismanagement of state governments—all controlled, until very recently, by the Australian Labor Party.

These charges penalise productivity, since they fall heavily on the highly productive multicombination vehicles such as B-doubles and B-triples. I hope that Senator Sterle, with his experience in this industry, will get up and tell me why it is that the Labor Party, supported by his union, is putting increased charges on the highly productive multicombination vehicles. I very much look forward to hearing that.

At the same time, the Rudd government wants to increase the effective rate of diesel fuel excise, or the road user charge, as well. This is true, although it seems hard to believe. But it continues on. You will recall the Rudd government sought to increase diesel excise from 19.633c per litre to 21c per litre on the same formula used for the heavy vehicle registration charge. In other words, the Rudd government sought to reintroduce the indexation of fuel excise based on a higher rate than the CPI. You will recall, Mr Acting Deputy President, that it was the Keating government who introduced indexation of fuel excise, and you will recall as well that it was the coalition government that abolished this in 2001. So I am very concerned about these tax grabs designed to raise another $168 million. Put another way, the fuel tax take to the Labor states and territories will rise by $80 million and the increase in heavy vehicle charges will lift Labor’s tax grab by another $80 million.

My time has almost finished, but there are some concerns with what the minister indicated in his second reading speech—notwithstanding that, as I indicated earlier, the coalition support this bill and we do congratulate the government on continuing the coalition’s policy of Roads to Recovery. For that reason, we urge support for the bill.