Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in strong support of these bills, the Excise Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025 and the associated bill. For so many Australians, including my community of Bennelong, the local pub or club isn't just a business; it's a place where people gather after work, it's where communities come together, it's where members of parliament like myself hold our events, it's where families meet, it's where sporting teams celebrate or commiserate and it's where local musicians get their start. In many suburban pockets across the country and in regional towns as well, the pub is the social anchor for communities right across Australia. It keeps people connected, it provides jobs for local hospo workers, it supports local charities and it sponsors local sporting clubs. And when local venues are under pressure, as they have been for a while now, the community feels it. That's why this legislation matters. It's not just economic policy; it's community policy.

Our hospitality sector has been riding wave after wave of pressure and a pandemic that hit venues harder than almost any other industry. They had supply chain shocks. They had rising input costs, from energy to transport to ingredients to labour, during the pandemic. Today, an automatic excise indexation that exists in high-inflation years hits small businesses right in the margins. For a small pub or club, another automatic jump in the excise can mean the difference between that little bit of extra margin in hiring another worker or cutting back their hours, and between keeping the price of a pint stable and having to raise prices again on customers who are already feeling it. These aren't abstract pressures; these are day-to-day realities for thousands of family owned venues across the country. We heard this, we listened and we acted, because publicans, brewers and small businesses that operate at these venues asked for relief—and this is precisely what these bills deliver.

The bills will pause the automatic increase in excise on draught beer for two years, starting 1 August 2025. It will apply to kegs and containers used in pubs and clubs that are between eight and 48 litres. This is targeted and is designed to support venues where people go out and recreate, venues that support draught beer, helping to manage their costs and facilitate jobs in our local communities, all while keeping prices steady. It's a practical step to help local venues stay successful and be the place, and continue to be the place, where communities come together. There are around 10,000 hospitality venues that stand to benefit from this two-year pause.

About 75 per cent of those hotels and clubs are small family-run businesses. As someone who comes from a small-business background—not in the pub or club sector—I'm proud that this government is making this part of our policy offering to them. It is support for small businesses right across the country. Small businesses employ local people. They support local footy clubs, they host charity days and they give young people their first job. In total, 160,000 Australians work in hospo and brewing sectors—and that is all connected to beer. This measure gives those small venues a bit of breathing space to stabilise, to plan, to reinvest and to keep their staff on.

In Bennelong, where many hospitality businesses operate on tight margins, certainty matters. It matters to the workers behind the bar, to the chefs in the kitchen and to the restaurants that are also businesses within businesses that operate out of these clubs. The more people who come to these pubs and clubs the better it is for them. Just to show how connected to our community these pubs and clubs are, I'd like to give a shout-out to some of the amazing venues in Bennelong: the Eastwood Hotel, who have recently signed up to sponsor the Eastwood Rugby Club down the road; the Bizzo, which hosts the Eastwood Chamber of Commerce; and Moko Eastwood, which runs a great trivia night.

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