David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The community were donating in other ways in respect of some of those levies—for example, through the prices that consumers were paying—but can we just have a look at this question of levies. There is almost a religious fervour in the way in which people on the other side are opposed to the imposition of a levy. You would be forgiven for thinking that this was the first levy to be imposed on the Australian people, but indeed it is not. In recent history we can see that the coalition in particular has made an art form of introducing levies.

There was the gun buyback levy, for example. I am not disputing the merits of some of these levies, because they were applied to confronting some challenges in the national interest. There was the East Timor intervention—the subject of a levy which was not implemented because it was not required by the time it was set to come into effect. There was the dairy industry restructure, the payout of the Ansett staff, terrorism reinsurance and the sugar industry restructure. Those opposite—who say ‘It is almost criminal for a government to come forward and do such an outrageous thing as to impose a levy on the community’—had great form on this in government. There was not one levy, not two levies, not three levies but six levies—you could call it a bevy of levies—and the mother of all levies, in a sense, was the one proposed by the Leader of the Opposition at the last election. We know that those on the other side do not really like to talk about this because it was a matter of some division—

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