Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

In your home state, Senator McLucas, it will be more expensive for people to take a trip and holiday than to go overseas. Senator Crossin was right: flights out of Australia will not have the tax applied to aviation fuel, but flights in Australia will. So this is a tax that discriminates against domestic tourism. It is a tax that makes it more expensive for people to holiday at home and cheaper for them to go and spend their money overseas. That is what this government has set up. Just as the CEO of Coca-Cola Amatil highlighted some time ago, this is a discriminatory tax because it makes everything in Australia more expensive compared with things imported from overseas. That is the truth of it. There is no arguing about that. Imports do not face a carbon tax impost whatsoever, but locally produced goods and services do and the same applies for the tourism industry, which will be particularly hard hit.

Senator McLucas interjecting—

I am sorry; I will have to be a little quieter to hear your interjections, Senator McLucas. Qantas was not the only company to announce job losses today. Unfortunately OneSteel joined Qantas in announcing 400 job losses. OneSteel is a major employer in the South Australian regional city of Whyalla in my home state. They announced losses of 400 jobs as a result of seeing an 11 per cent decline in their profit over the course of this year.