Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes. Mr Bracks kind of managed to negotiate his way around the government’s decision by noting in his final report that the tax rise was before the parliament. That is the only comment that he made in his fearless report into the automotive industry! He did note that states and territories should consider the harmonisation and reduction of stamp duties, vehicle registration and compulsory third-party insurance to facilitate the purchase of new or newer, second-hand vehicles. So he seemed to think that every other impost on vehicles should go down—that anything that actually encouraged people to purchase new vehicles was a positive for the automotive sector and that lower prices were a key part of that. He seemed to recognise that. Somehow, though, he conveniently left out the luxury car tax from that list of taxes, imposts and charges that should be curtailed.

Senator Hurley commented that there had been no change to the rate since its introduction. Those are the words she used at the beginning of her remarks. The luxury car tax rate was set at 25 per cent when it was introduced and there has been no change to it. Well, nor should there be a change to it. That is the contention of this side. When you set a rate, a percentage, you do not need to jack it up to take into account inflation or other factors; it is a percentage. It takes into account inflationary aspects along the way and growth in the dollar value of cars. The argument that somehow this should occur because there has been no change in the rate since its introduction is quite amazing. Are we expecting to hear the government say the same thing about the GST or other percentage based taxes along the way? Are we expecting to hear them say, ‘There has been no change since their introduction so maybe we should increase those too’? It is, of course, a foolish argument and approach.

Finally, can I tackle the idea from the government that the opposition should not vote against measures like this. This is the ultimate case of, ‘Do as we say, not as we did,’ coming from the government. Anybody in this place who is being honest knows just how much the now government stood in the way of measures the previous government introduced over the years. Anybody who is being honest knows how much they stood in the way of true tax reform—not tax hikes, not tax slugs like this, but true tax reform—and efforts to reign in the enormous budget deficit left to the Howard government when it took office. This government have been left a fabulous prize, a fabulous windfall, an enormous budget surplus. Not satisfied with that, they have to put this slug onto ordinary families. Then, when the Liberal Party and the National Party stand up for those working families, for those small businesses, for those farmers and for others and actually say, ‘No, we don’t think this tax slug is acceptable and we’re going to vote against it,’ the government have the gall to say that somehow that is irresponsible.

What is irresponsible is slugging all of those hardworking Australians more than is necessary when the budget has an extremely healthy surplus, regardless of this tax measure. Future budgets, thanks to the hard work of the previous government, will all have extremely healthy budget surpluses—and the government inherited that. The government, if it were being honest, would take this proposal off the table. It is a proposal that will hurt too many parts of the Australian economy, will hurt too many people and is totally unnecessary. Instead, they are hell bent on persevering with it, without recognising the pain that it will cause. The Liberal and National parties will not stand for that. We are proud to stand up for ordinary Australians, for all Australians, with measures like that, and that is exactly what we are doing with our opposition to this measure.