Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Revenue) Share this | Hansard source

You did provoke me, Mr Parliamentary Secretary. Can I point out to the parliamentary secretary, for his benefit and the benefit of the House, that this bill amends the Excise Tariff Act 1921 to implement certain elements of the government’s fuel tax reforms. So this is an important bill that gives effect to those fuel tax reforms. On that basis it is in order and appropriate for members on this side of the House to raise issues as contained in the fuel tax bills. I know that the government does not like us speaking about them, because they are very embarrassed publicly about the impact on small to medium businesses in particular. I know they are very embarrassed about the impact of the abolition of the Fuel Sales Grants Scheme on rural and regional motorists—indeed, on some motorists living in outer-metropolitan areas of capital cities. I know they are embarrassed about that, and do not want to have the debate. We guarantee them that we will keep having the debate and alerting the general public to the fact that, at a time of record high petrol prices, this government is now removing, abolishing, the very compensation that was put in place to offset the compounding impact of the GST in outer-metropolitan areas and in rural, regional and remote Australia.

But what really disappoints me about the parliamentary secretary’s contribution is that he failed to take up my challenge to give the House some guidance, some indication, about where the government is going, firstly, on ethanol—whether we can expect more proposals to change the taxation regime as it applies to ethanol and biofuels generally, whether we can expect proposals to change the Customs duty to delay the implementation of some import competition on the domestic ethanol industry and whether the government has any new initiatives to ensure that the major oil companies themselves do more to produce ethanol rather than remaining so reliant upon one particular company, which remains a very dominant force in the ethanol market in this country.

Secondly, it disappoints me that I requested from the parliamentary secretary some response from the government to the recommendation of the Senate Economics Legislation Committee on alcohol taxes. They have called for a public debate in this country on those taxes. Again, we do not come to that debate with any particular issue or concern, but it is a debate worth having, particularly in the context of what is happening in the Northern Territory with the difficulties in some Aboriginal communities and whether some changes to alcohol tax arrangements could address some of those very significant health and social issues. So I would have thought, given the strength of the Senate Economics Legislation Committee report, and its somewhat unanimous nature, that the government might have taken the opportunity to indicate to the House whether it does intend to take up that recommendation and proceed with a review of how the taxation regime applies to alcohol in this country.

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