Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) | Hansard source

In continuing my contribution to the debate on the Passenger Movement Charge Amendment Bill 2024, I want to go back to where I was when I began the speech in the House and give this quote from 2017 from the then shadow tourism minister. The then shadow tourism minister in 2017 said:

… the increase in the Passenger Movement Charge has real consequences for tourism and will have jobs impacts in the tourism industry, which employs a million Australians, is Australia's largest services export and has been nominated as one of Australia's five super growth sectors …

There was a bit of frowning from the other side when I read that quote because I don't think they quite understood who the 2017 shadow tourism minister was. It was the now Prime Minister. It's quite funny that the Prime Minister, in 2017, was aghast at any idea of increasing the passenger movement charge yet now we see it going up by $10.

What are we doing here? What are we seeing now? We are seeing the consequences of a government that can't manage the economy. What happens when you can't manage the economy, the cost of living goes up and the cost of doing business goes up? It is that, sadly, you have to tax more and you have to charge more. That's what we're seeing right here and now. The tourism industry, at a time when the cost of doing business continues to increase, is now seeing the passenger movement charge go up, even though the Prime Minister knows that this will have real consequences. One of the great shames of a government that can't handle the economy, especially for smaller businesses, is that they are impacted by the decisions that governments have to make as a consequence of their failure to manage the economy. This is one of those decisions. We already know that the passenger movement charge in Australia is one of the highest departure taxes in the developed world. At a time when we want to be doing everything we can to help and support our tourism industry, it is unfortunate that we now see that the passenger movement charge is increasing.

One of the things that is very fortunate is that the last time the passenger movement charge increased—and that's when we had those fine words from the Prime Minister—is that the then government put a five-year freeze in place through legislation. That obviously has rolled over and that five-year freeze has ended, but we saw the passenger movement charge stay stationary for five years. This $10 increase is consistent with the CPI over that time. For that reason and because of what we did previously, the opposition is not going to stand in the way of this passenger movement charge increase. In the end, given the government's economic mismanagement, we know and understand that they have no alternatives as a big-spending government to, sadly, being a higher-regulation, higher-taxing government as well. We're not going to stand in the way of it, but what we would say is: please, government, get your economic management right, because you cannot continue to put higher taxes and higher regulatory costs on every industry in this nation. If you do, to quote the Prime Minister's own words, it will have:

… real consequences for tourism and will have jobs impacts in the tourism industry, which employs a million Australians, is Australia's largest services export and has been nominated as one of Australia's five super growth sectors …

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