Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak on the Excise Tariff Amendment (Fuel Indexation) Bill 2015 and other fuel indexation and road funding bills. I am even more pleased that today Labor has delivered an additional $1.1 billion to the Roads to Recovery program. If not for this proposal from the Labor Party, the government would have provided all the revenue it has collected as a result of the fuel indexation changes to the big oil companies. That is the political reality we have at the moment. The regulation would have been disallowed, and they would have been paying off the big oil companies with the money from motorists. That is the brutal truth of where we are now, and I am very pleased that Labor has achieved a compromise where $1.1 billion is delivered to the Roads to Recovery program instead. The alternative of refunding this money to the petrol companies was not acceptable to Labor.

At the outset I would like to draw the attention of the House to the comments of the President of the Australian Local Government Association, Mayor Troy Pickard, who said this morning, 'The Australian Local Government Association welcomes and strongly supports the proposal today from the ALP to direct the revenue from the first two years of the fuel excise indexation towards additional Roads to Recovery funding for local government.' This is an important point. The area of government that deals with the brunt of road maintenance and building, local government, has welcomed our sensible proposal.

The Roads to Recovery program supports maintenance of Australia's local road infrastructure. This $1.1 billion boost to the program will stimulate regional economies, generating employment and boosting important local infrastructure. This is a very important point. I will go on to the infrastructure requirements in a moment, but I just want to comment on the impact of this on regional economies.

Regional economies are doing it tough at the moment. We have unemployment rates significantly above the national average, and the national average is at a 12-year high. That is very well known. We have very patchy growth in these regions as mining comes off and manufacturing struggles under this government. We have recent reports that 20 per cent of the growth in the economy comes from six locations throughout this country. So our regional economies need this additional stimulus. It is a stimulus that my region welcomes. My region has a youth unemployment rate of 18.6 per cent. Any money from projects like this will be expended almost immediately because the projects are over the next two years. They are not capital-intensive; they are more manpower intensive. This is good news for my region. It is good news for unemployed people in my region and good news for the economy as a whole. There is a $15 billion local government infrastructure deficit, so this extra funding is vitally important for regional areas.

It is shameful that, in their first budget, the Abbott government froze local government assistance grants, cutting $925 million from communities. Because of this, local councils have had to pull back on important roadworks. My electorate of Charlton takes in two local government areas—the City of Lake Macquarie and the City of Newcastle. These are two very large local government areas that, combined, have around 480,000 ratepayers. So almost half a million ratepayers reside in local government areas encompassed by my electorate. Because of the freezing of grants by the Abbott government, Lake Macquarie will have $5.7 million in funding cut and Newcastle will lose $4.6 million. Given these cuts, it is a great result for regional communities that this extra $1.1 billion will be invested in helping local councils address the significant roads backlog.

Under the current Roads to Recovery funding, Lake Macquarie will receive $7.5 million in the five years between 2014 and 2019 and Newcastle will receive $4.9 million. The current funding model for Roads to Recovery is over a five-year period. Although it is too early to say exactly what extra support these two local councils will receive, as this proposal will inject $1.1 billion into the program in only two years it is a significant win for both the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie councils. That is why I am supporting this proposal. It is a proposal that immediately injects much-needed money into my local economy. It is a proposal that significantly increases the infrastructure investment going on in my local government areas to target backlogs in my region, a region that is expanding rapidly and desperately needs this additional infrastructure funding. It is a region that has suffered due to the cuts from the Abbott government to the tune of $11 million already. This is in addition to the $1.5 million we also lost that was allocated to the Glendale transport interchange, a project that all 11 local government areas in the Hunter region declared the most important infrastructure priority in our area. It was a project that the Abbott government saw fit to cut funding to. So the Labor proposal to inject $1.1 billion to address infrastructure backlog is great news for my region.

Having identified the benefits to regional communities from this bill, I would like to draw to the attention of the House to the government's approach to this issue and what would have happened had Labor not brought forward this proposal. As I said earlier, in a bid to bypass the opposition in the Senate, principally led by the Labor Party, the Abbott government had threatened to return the extra fuel excise it had collected over the last eight months to the oil companies. This is the sort of tricky, arrogant and devious ploy that we have come to expect from this government. The people of Australia should be very clear of the different approaches to fuel indexation of the coalition and Labor. The coalition were happy for this revenue to be returned to the big oil companies. Labor could not accept this proposition. Australian motorists would have been outraged if this were to occur. That is why we have made this sensible proposal to spend the money on regional roads.

I would now like to turn to the broader issue of taxation more generally. The facts are that, before the last election, the Prime Minister solemnly promised there would be no new taxes. How much garbage did we hear from Liberal spokespeople that they would be a low-taxing government? On this issue, as on so many other issues, the Prime Minister completely misled the Australian people. He was a man so hungry and desperate to win power that he was prepared to say and do anything to be elected. Upon winning the election, he immediately started to breach the promises he made to the Australian people.

The Abbott government is taxing Australians at a higher rate than the previous Labor government did. It is a fact that both the Howard and now Abbott governments have taxed Australians at a higher rate than the previous Labor government did. At the same time, the government have doubled the budget deficit. So they are taxing us more and they have doubled the deficit at the same time. This puts lie to the claim that the coalition are the party of lower taxes. This is clearly false, and this is confirmed by their own budget papers. The most recent budget saw tax receipts rise each year over the forward estimates. The coalition cannot be trusted on taxation. The most recent budget includes at least $3.9 billion in new taxes, tax rises and charges. The people of Australia should be very aware that the coalition's rhetoric on taxes are not matched by their actions in government.

In summary, today Labor has secured significant extra funding for the Roads to Recovery program that will be of great benefit to regional communities such as my own of Charlton. It will stimulate our economy. It will get people into work. Just as importantly, it will tackle the significant infrastructure backlog we have in our region, a backlog exacerbated by the government's heartless and short-sighted cuts to financial assistance grants to councils all throughout Australia, including Lake Macquarie City Council and the Newcastle council. On the basis of this important proposal winning acceptance from the government, I am very happy to support Labor's compromise and I commend it to the House.

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