Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Skills and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to offer my support for the freezing of excise taxes on draught beer, an election commitment that we made during the last election. It's now time to action it. I want to acknowledge the amazing work done by the Australian Hotels Association in lobbying and advocating for this outcome—the work conducted by Steve Ferguson, the amount of kilometres he walks in these corridors to get these outcomes on behalf of his membership, coupled with my Queensland AHA president, Richard Deery, from the Story Bridge Hotel. He is an amazing Australian who run some significant events there at the hotel tucked underneath the Story Bridge in Brisbane. There is also their CEO for Queensland, Bernie Hogan, a tireless advocate.

Interestingly enough, the way this excise is calculated is that there's no cap on it. It would have just kept on going up and up and up and up. In fact, the only way, without government intervention, that the excise would have stopped was if there were no pub left in Australia for the excise to be applied to. It was done originally to keep it in line with inflation, but, unfortunately, the cost of doing business in Australia under this government outstrips the inflationary pressures. There are the cost increases in insurance, labour and energy. Food is up 16 per cent for those pubs with kitchens.

This alcohol tax will raise around $8 million per year. The cost to freeze the excise altogether is going to be about $90 million over the forward estimates, but that's only less than two per cent of what the actual receipts are. More important is what this industry does for Australia. Broaden your mind for a moment and think about the jobs, the economic benefit and the multiplier that goes around the economy. The alcohol industry directly supports the employment of around 176,000 full-time-equivalent jobs. The alcohol manufacturing industry employs about 22½ thousand. Now, in my great state of Queensland, we've got two big breweries up there—XXXX and CUB through their manufacturing location on the Gold Coast. Those jobs are mostly Queensland jobs. There are a further 21,000 alcohol related jobs in the retail sector and a whopping 126,300 alcohol related jobs in the hospitality sector, in the restaurants, pubs et cetera.

I want to offer my support for freezing the excise, because I think pubs need a fair go. The number of pubs I have in my electorate—I think I've been to every one of them. It's just out of a sense of civic duty and Australian patriotism, getting into my local pubs! My favourite little local is a place called Dugandan. No-one can pronounce it, so we all just call it the 'Dugie'. The way it's written, they'll call it the 'Dug-andan' or something. Wednesday night is quiz night. We're always looking for new quiz members to come down. That pub provides that sense of community, that social hub. I get into the quizzes with the schoolteachers who come down. There's a group from the hospital. There are a couple of retirees. There's even a group we let into the pub who call themselves the 'Greenies'. They play and conduct themselves at the quiz night as well.

I actually ran a pub for a very short amount of time after I finished with my time at the bank. It was the Eimeo hotel up in Mackay. Do not kid yourself that it is not hard work. You're up early. You go to bed late. There are big volumes and small margins. You have to have your eye on every bottle, because the margins are so low. If you take your eye off, you can be broke in a very short amount of time.

The coalition welcome the relief for pubs and clubs and beer drinkers, and we'll not stand between the government and a cut to the beer tax. But let's be clear: the freeze delivers less than one per cent of relief per pint. That's enough to give Labor the headline of a cut to the beer tax, but it's just a headline.

We welcome this. To all of my people and all my publicans in the electorate of Wright: I look forward to having a beer with you when I get home.

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