Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was not going to speak on this bill, because I find these red tape repeal days or stunts of the government to basically be a sham. They are nothing but cheap tricks trying to distract the community. Quite often the bills that we have before us deal with minor things like fixing grammar and spelling, yet they claim that these changes are making massive savings to the budget. This particular red tape repeal charade only contains $1.8 million in savings of the total $2.33 billion that they are claiming. What a charade—to guillotine, to gag other debate on legislation to rush on a bill which is about correcting minor grammar, spelling and punctuation within existing bills and legislation.

So, why am I speaking? Because what has been revealed in these documents is the further extent of the ambush that this government has had in the last 24 hours in relation to increasing the petrol tax. It is an ambush on Australian motorists, in particular an ambush on regional families, because we all know that if you live in the regions you spend more on petrol because you have further to drive. In the government's own documents that we are debating today it is revealed that the impact of the petrol tax ambush is even wider, with every petrol station now being slugged an extra $800 a year in new compliance costs to collect tax for this government. I thought this bill was about reducing compliance and red tape, yet this government is whacking a further tax, slugging compliance costs, on every petrol station, including many of those in regional Victoria. According to its own documents this government will hit the nation's 6,300 petrol stations with a compliance cost of $5.1 million. They will pay for the privilege of collecting this government's increased petrol tax. There is little doubt that this increased compliance cost will be passed on to motorists when they fill up at the bowser—and by 'motorists' we mean mums and dads, we mean pensioners, we mean small businesses. We mean everybody that needs a car or truck that relies on regular petrol to get from A to B.

This Prime Minister is addicted to taxing Australians. There is just no other way to go about it. Quite often, as we are seeing, rather than debating it properly in this House and in the Senate, they are simply ambushing the Australian people. This new tax increase to the petrol stations is not the only problem that we are seeing with their whole approach to petrol. As I have said, the increase in the petrol tax will hit local motorists. The fuel excise will mean that central Victorians and regional Australians will pay more for their petrol.

And it comes from a government that also tries to claim that poor people do not drive cars or drive far. Let's leave for a moment that some of our poorest households struggle in their pay cycle to put money in the car to get from A to B when it gets to day 11 or day 12 in their pay cycle. Let's leave for a moment the fact that for many regional Australians the car is the only way that they can get from A to B. It is the only transport available, because we do not have public transport in large chunks of regional Australia. Let's also leave for a moment that this statement by the Treasurer is not only elitist but somewhat patronising. Poor people do not drive cars? Isn't it a problem if people cannot afford the very basics in life? Hasn't this government failed? Hasn't the Treasurer failed to support the most vulnerable people if they cannot put petrol in their car to get from A to B, particularly when it comes to regional Australia and regional MPs? They should be standing up and speaking against the changes to petrol. They should be speaking against the increases to the petrol tax—increases which are in this red tape repeal day hitting petrol stations—because that would just be a further increase to motorists. Petrol stations will simply pass that on.

How do we know that low-income households pay more for petrol than those on higher incomes? It comes down to percentage. We need to talk about the percentage of income that low-income households spend each year on the basics such as petrol.

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