Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This legislation, the Excise Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025, which I rise to support today, has been very welcomed in the community that I represent because Lalor is home to some of the most community minded pubs and clubs in Victoria—venues that are major employers, community sponsors and essential gathering places.

Australians are a social mob. We like to get together. Whether we're drinking a beer out of a seven-ounce glass, a pint, a pot or a schooner, having a beer together has been part of our traditions for a long, long time, whatever part of Australia you're in, however you want to label the size of your glass and the beer that's inside it, and whatever the brand of beer you drink. Things have changed with our emerging craft beer industries coming through. When I was growing up people were branded by their cars and branded by their beers. In my house, we drank Victoria Bitter. Not everybody did, but all of us agreed, and the parents of all of my friends agreed, that nobody drank Foster's. That was a rule where I come from.

Our local pubs continue these traditions. It's a sector that's faced various pressures, particularly around supply chain pressures and post-pandemic recovery. The draught beer excise pause that comes in with this piece of legislation is a practical, targeted measure that delivers real support to the venues, to our social industry if you like, and to our night economies.

I will give an overview of this measure: it pauses the automatic CPI indexation of draught beer excise for two years from 1 August this year. This prevents scheduled rises in August 2025, February 2026, August 2026 and February 2027. Indexation resumes in 2027 but from the frozen rate, creating a permanently lower excise trajectory. This was very welcome news across my community. The measure has strong industry support, has bipartisan backing and forms part of the Albanese Labor government's cost-of-living strategy. It's supported by other small-business measures, including the increased excise remissions for brewers and distillers.

What does this mean for our venues? What has been interesting about this debate is that we've had some insight into almost every electorate around the country, as people take us on a tour of their social establishments. I'd start locally at the Racecourse Hotel—my local, the closest to my home. It's one of Lalor's most iconic venues. The high draught volume means the pause will directly stabilise operating costs, support staff retention and help keep meal prices stable for local families. Most Saturday nights you can't get a table at the Racecourse; it is booked out by families for the traditional pub meal. The last time I was there I saw three or four families with very young children having a counter meal, and a few multigenerational families celebrating their grans' birthdays. It's that kind of pub.

When I walk into the Racecourse Hotel—to give you an insight into this hotel—in the traditional front bar you'll still find workers in their steel capped boots and shorts, or their long pants and high-vis. The formal lounge is where we have our counter meals. The bar manager is a former student of mine. His name is Dave. To capture the tone of this place, when I walk into this hotel I am met by Dave—who I taught a long, long time ago—and every time, even if he's behind the bar when I walk in and take a seat in the front bar or the lounge, I get a nod, a wink and a, 'Hello, Senator'—just to capture that Australian sense of humour!

Leaving the Racecourse Hotel, I'd next go to the Bridge Hotel, my other local, because it's the closest to the Lalor office; in fact, it's directly across the road! It's central to Werribee's night-time economy. It's popular for live sport and social gatherings and live music. This freeze helps plan operating costs. This pub has a long history in Werribee. In fact, I've told this story in this place before: my mum was the first woman to be served in the public bar of the Bridge Hotel. It was a Werribee Cup night, and she went with Dad, who was president of the Werribee Racing Club at the time, and she just refused to get off the stool in the front bar until they poured her a beer—so she was the first woman served. It's a pub now run by a very-well-known Victorian group that run hotels. It's an incredibly-well-run hotel and it even has a draught beer called 'the Werribee'.

Down the road we have the Commercial Hotel Werribee. This pub was famous for a lot of years because the Geelong Football Club always stopped there on their way home from the game in Melbourne. They would stop and have tea at the Commercial Hotel, which is famous for its large lounge called the Grenada. It has a huge front bar with beautiful billiard tables. It's been a main-street institution for generations. The excise pause will provide certainty for entertainment, functions and employment at the Commercial Hotel.

The Park Hotel, formerly the Werribee Hotel, is a key location for family dining and community events. The freeze will help it, too, with food and produce costs. It's also a live music venue. You can see how this freeze will help this industry plan things and keep their employees paid and in jobs.

We then go to the Italian Sports Club Werribee, a major multicultural and community hub, built by our Italian community some 50-plus years ago. It supports seniors activities, junior sport, large family functions, the Werribee Soccer Club. These measures will help it with its function prices and keeping function prices affordable and keeping its members happy.

The Plaza Tavern in Hoppers Crossing is a large employer of local young people and students. The cost stabilitymeans casual and part-time jobs will be better protected there. Hotel520 Tarneit, one of our newer establishments, is a significant venue in a rapidly growing suburb. This measure helps venues redirect savings into staff, upgrades and better services for the community.

Club Tarneit and the Tigers Clubhouse have a connection to the Werribee Football Club. They're important venues for local sport and multicultural events. These measures will help keep community hiring and event costs down. These clubs sponsor local sport in my community, including Chirnsides by the River at the Werribee Football Club—all our local sporting clubs, whether they be soccer or football clubs, anywhere you are imbibing a beer that is draught beer, on-tap beer or beer poured from a barrel or a keg, depending on which part of the country you want to talk about, these measures will help keep costs down.

Pubs and clubs in Lalor support hundreds of jobs, particularly for young workers. The excise pause helps protect those jobs by stabilising operating costs. It'll help prevent price increases from being passed on to customers. The benefits flow through to food producers; to people working in transport and logistics businesses; to maintenance contractors; to people working in local events, including entertainers and suppliers; and to community sports clubs, as I've said, relying on sponsorship. Hospitality venues are essential social infrastructure in our fast-growing suburbs. They're essential social infrastructure in the Australian ethos. They host sporting presentations, fundraisers, cultural nights, charity events and family gatherings. These venues support social connection.

In terms of the events that I host in my electorate, I have my Lalor Heroes event annually at the Italian Sports Club of Werribee. I have my International Women's Day event there annually. I host my sports president night annually at Chirnsides by the River. These are places frequented by locals to catch up on weekends and to share stories. It's where we actually build the glue that binds us together. The excise pause helps keep these venues open, active and accessible.

These measures obviously complement other cost-of-living measures introduced by this government, including tax cuts for every tax payer; cheaper PBS medicines; expanded bulk-billing, which is going off in my electorate; energy bill relief; paid parental leave expansion; and super guarantee increases, not to mention the most important one in my electorate this week is the 20,000 young people getting the text messages to say they've had 20 per cent cut off their HECS debt. Isn't that being celebrated across my electorate?

This is just one measure that demonstrates that the Albanese Labor government cares about how our communities are getting on. We care about the cost of living and the pressure that is putting on people in our community, and we care about how those families are getting on and how they'll continue to get along. We are continuing our cost-of-living measures to assist families in electorates just like mine.

I say to all the members in my community: I wish you a very, very, very merry Christmas, and I hope you all get to have a draught beer to celebrate Christmas this year.

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