Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Customs Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025 and the associated bill. From the outset, I make it clear that the beer relief offered by these bills is a bit of a 'Furphy', but it is very important; I'll come back to that shortly. I love a beer, like many Australians. Indeed, I co-chair the Parliamentary Friends of Brewing group with my good friend the member for Cunningham. We co-hosted a Parliamentary Friends of Brewing event this week. But beer isn't all about consumption; beer is good for the economy.

The Australian brewing industry spends around $500 million on domestically sourced agricultural ingredients such as barley and hops. A lot of that barley is grown in my electorate of Nicholls. Some of the hops is grown in Tasmania, and a lot of it's grown in the electorate of Indi, around the Mansfield area. Agriculture is at the heart of the beer supply chain, and around five per cent of all beer is made in Australia for local consumption with wholly Australian beer supply chains.

We did a brewers tour of Nicholls, and I was honoured to have people—among them the member for Casey, the member for Monash and some Victorian parliamentarians—come and visit a barley grower in a place called Dookie, the Shepparton Brewery and, very importantly, J Furphy & Sons, which makes the tanks that a lot of beer is brewed in around Australia. J Furphy & Sons has been manufacturing in Australia since 1864 and is one of Australia's oldest continuously operating family businesses. Furphy water carts are world famous, and the tank ends are highly collectible. Consistently embossed on the tank ends is a little poem:

Good, better, best.

Never let it rest.

Till your good is better

and your better best.

In many ways that reflects the endeavour and entrepreneurial spirit that took root across the region as one of the world's greatest irrigation schemes breathed new life into the Goulburn and Murray valleys.

The Furphy water cart also gave rise to the term 'furphy', which is slang for an erroneous or improbable story that is claimed to be factual. I've heard a few furphies in here very recently! The story goes that, during World War I, soldiers would gather around the Furphy water cart, and it was a place where rumours and tall stories abounded. Then Furphy became a beer, not just any beer but one of Australia's top-selling beers. Little Creatures Brewing built their breweries in Fremantle and Geelong and used stainless steel tanks and fermenters supplied by Furphy Engineering, in Shepparton. When they completed the Geelong brewery, they were keen to make a beer with a local connection to Victoria and approached the Furphy family about adding a new beer to their repertoire—a Furphy refreshing ale. J Furphy & Sons continues to make specialist equipment for the brewing industry, and those vessels will house ingredients grown by farmers in the same district and finish up as a refreshing Furphy ale.

Why is this excise freeze a little bit of a furphy? Well, the government's two-year freeze on draught beer excise indexation sounds great, but there's not a huge amount to celebrate. It will provide modest relief to venues, saving about 18c per keg, or less than 1c per pint, even over two years. The sentiment of this is right, and the coalition supports the freeze to beer excise indexation. We will not stand in the way of a cut to the beer tax, but it is very light relief and it's temporary. Even if a drinker consumed the average of 78 litres a year and it was all draught beer, that would be an annual saving of $3.08. I'm not recommending that people consume 78 litres of beer, although I think some people around this place have attempted it! Something is better than nothing, but, if Labor were serious about alcohol excise reform, they'd have Treasury conduct a comprehensive review of the alcohol excise system.

Beer might be treading water, but we are drowning in increased costs. This measure will pause indexation of the beer excise for two years, but it does nothing about inflation in the cost of everything. Just recently, inflation smashed through the RBA's target band, and that means more expensive mortgages and more expensive groceries. The freeze also only applies to on-premises draught beer, not to bottled beer, packaged drinks or wine. If Labor were serious about the issue, it would be looking at every part of the excise system. A pint that's 1c cheaper is not cost-of-living relief. Households need genuine action on the cost of living. Government spending is running at more than four times the rate of the economy and is at its highest level, outside of recession, in nearly 40 years. This reckless spending is keeping inflation higher for longer, and Australian businesses and households are paying for it.

As we debated during question time, the costs of energy for Australian households and Australian businesses—including brewers and the farmers who need to get the agricultural products such as the hops and the barley to actually make the beer—are going through the roof. Despite significant efforts during question time to ask the minister responsible when prices will come down and what the government's plan is to bring prices down, we couldn't get a straight answer.

This minister has made a big deal of his presidency of COP negotiations, and he's made a big deal of going to Brazil and making agreements that are not necessarily in Australia's best interest when it comes to our fossil fuel exports. But we on this side are very concerned about this minister's focus on bringing the price of energy down for people in industry. Those people include not only the people who make the beer—the brewers across Australia—and the people who grow produce that goes into that beer but also the people who operate the hospitality businesses.

The shadow Attorney-General gave the example of a fish and chip shop in his electorate. I don't know whether they sell beer with their fish and chips, but I do recommend a Furphy Crisp lager to go along with a battered piece of whiting and some chips. He told that story, and the quote that stuck with me when he asked his question was that these increases in energy costs are making this business untenable.

Now, when small-business people who take risk put their personal savings on the line, they don't get paid wages from the government. They have to pay themselves a wage through their toil and their hard work. They have to jump through a lot of red tape to set up a business, and that's getting worse. Small businesses are telling me that the red tape, the bureaucracy and everything you have to do to set up and operate a small business are getting worse and worse. I'll give you the example of a fish and chip shop. They say to me: 'I buy some fillets of fish and some chipped potatoes for X and I want to sell them as a lovely cooked product for Y. But in between X and Y, there is an amount of government bureaucracy, whether it be local, state or federal, that wants to take a cut. When you combine that with the increasing energy cost and it is getting impossible to run a small business.'

More should be done for Australia's hospitality and alcohol industries. This measure is worth just $90 million over the forward estimates. That's a minuscule amount compared to the $8 billion collected annually from alcohol taxes. These businesses have gone through COVID, record high inflation and endless cost-of-living pressures, and we need to do more to support the ongoing viability and growth of our local industries and Australian jobs.

Now, pubs and clubs aren't just places to have a drink and socialise; they are places where great Aussie music is played and created. As a musician, I know pubs and clubs are culturally important places. They foster new and emerging artists, and I've had some great moments at the Aussie hotel—even during my first campaign—playing with the legendary Mick Harrington, who appeared on The Voice. We played some great songs, including Oasis's 'Don't Look Back In Anger'. That might've been picked up by the ABC in relation to national leadership debates, but I won't go there. More recently I had the honour of playing 'Never Tear Us Apart' with my Liberal colleague at the Parliamentary Friends of Brewing.

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