Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Of course we are, and I am concerned about the government's handling of the impact on the industries that are installing LPG. In that case, I will leave alone the rooftop solar installers. Hundreds of companies have built an industry around installing LPG conversions, and we are given to believe that three in Victoria have already closed shop. The industry would have thought it was on solid ground when making its investment decisions. It would have thought: 'Australia is looking for a cleaner future and for a lower CO2 emissions future. We might invest a bit of money in a low-CO2 alternative. We will invest some money in gas and clean up the nation's cars.' You would have thought it was a rolled gold investment, but things have changed now and it is not a rolled gold investment. The government is planning to change the riding rules and that decision is already impacting on those industries.

On top of that, and as previous speakers have pointed out, this decision will impact on families. It is my experience, and to my knowledge there is no empirical evidence to back this up, that those who have LPG gas conversions are more likely than not to come from a lower income group. Apart from the taxi industry and those people in business, there are many ordinary Australians who choose LPG as a low-cost alternative. Many are running pretty old cars. I often run into people who are touring around Australia and pulling a caravan who say: 'This is great because I can do it on LPG. I am saving a few bucks as I go around.' I think those Australians will be very angry about this decision. They have already decided this is their low-cost alternative and feel pretty good about it because they were making the environment a bit better as well.

The information I received about South Australia shows that we are the second highest per capita adopter of LPG technology under the government programs. In fact, one in 44 individuals made the decision to access the government program to convert their vehicles to LPG—just behind Victoria where one in 39 accessed the program. In South Australia, almost 36,000 vehicles have been converted under this scheme. You would think we should continue to encourage the adoption of LPG, but if this legislation is passed it will mark a move in the opposite direction. You can understand why a government may want to phase out the subsidies that go with the installation of LPG equipment, but to undercut the guiding mechanism that allowed it onto the market at a cheaper rate seems nonsensical.

More than just small consumers will be affected; 90 per cent of Australian taxis use LPG, as do many buses. Those people who use the buses and taxis are not often the people who own the Mercs and the Audis; they are not often people at the top end of the income stream. The people who use public transport, by and large, are normal workers and those on lower incomes. This tax grab will impact on their cost of living because bus fares and taxi fares will have to rise. And it comes at a time when there are incredible cost-of-living pressures around Australia. In my own state, and probably in the rest of Australia as well, the cost of water will double in the next two years. That was announced in the recent state budget. Electricity is likely to double over the next five years. I think those figures were compiled before factoring in a carbon tax. Council rates will typically rise around 10 to 12 per cent this year, and the cost of fresh food is rising quickly. And now there will be a 20 per cent tax grab on the fuel of choice for a significant portion of the population. This is a new tax the Australian public have not been consulted about. We well remember the election of this government as fiscal conservatives and the promise of no new taxes. Since then we have had alcopops, proposals for mining taxes, flood levies and talk again of a carbon tax. These are not little taxes; they are big ones that affect the price of everything. It is not a bad list, but just imagine if the Labor Party were a party of high taxes—heaven forbid!

I have repeatedly said that whatever we do about CO2, whether it be a carbon tax, an ETS, direct action or another scheme, or a combination of all those, it will achieve nothing unless there is a change of behaviour. If an $11 billion tax to redistribute wealth does not change behaviour as far as CO2 emissions go, it will achieve nothing. But a tax on LPG will change behaviour; however, it will change behaviour in the wrong way. If we look at these things in the broad sense of changing behaviour, you can put them into three categories. One is where an industry can change and you ramp up the cost of CO2 emissions until they reach the point where they say, 'It will be better for us to change our behaviour.' In the case of coal electricity, it has been mooted that that point might be $60 a tonne. On the other hand, you may have industries, as in my electorate at Port Pirie where there is a lead smelter and at Whyalla where there is a steel mill, which cannot change their behaviour because the physical act of making these products includes a CO2 cost. In the case of car fuel, you can change behaviour, but if you put a tax on the cleaner alternative motorists will revert to a product which will put more CO2 into the atmosphere.

The government would say that this is part of running a responsible budget, that they must make savings and that the half a billion dollar tax that they will raise from LPG is important to the budget. Fair enough, they should run responsible budgets. But there will be a $50 billion deficit this year and a $22 billion deficit next year, so the government hit motorists up for half a billion. How did we get to this stage? If it had not been for the government's chronic mismanagement in the first place with the sorts of schemes already mentioned—and I will not run through them again; I will not test your patience, Deputy Speaker Slipper—they would not need this half a billion dollars.

There are four bills in this package of legislation and the government have presented them as a group. We get a little bit of the good and the great big slab of the bad at the same time. The good are the bills that preserve the taxation treatment of renewable fuels and the bad is the targeting of the LPG industry with a 20 per cent increase in tax for motorists.

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