Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It did. It made me run playing soccer. But what we have to understand is that the changes governments make to the way they price commodities through the tax system can have a dramatic impact upon people’s lives. Whilst it is all very well to talk about trying to introduce cheaper fuels, the fact of the matter is that fuels are not cheap at the moment and they are not likely to get any cheaper and we have to find a mechanism by which people who live in remote parts of Australia are adequately compensated for the extra costs they wear as a result of living where they do.

Presumably, this country wants people to live in the bush. Presumably, this country wants people to inhabit those areas of Australia which produce the wealth of this nation. I am hopeful that when we move on in these debates we will see that not only do we produce the most wealth but also we produce a hell of a lot of the tax income for government. We want to see some of it returned to where it belongs. We want government to return a lot more of it than it currently does to people in the bush—the people I referred to earlier. My friend is from the Hunter where they have a lot of coalmines, they produce a lot of money and they export a lot of coal to Japan and elsewhere. That is terrific, but the people who live in that community do not bear anywhere near the same costs of living as people who live in remote parts of the Northern Territory. I am pleased to have made this short contribution and I look forward to having another chat about it at some later stage.

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