Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) | Hansard source

What do you say of a government that constantly gets wagged by the tail of others? We have a situation where, in the Senate, this government is being wagged by the tail of the Greens, and, when it comes to providing fuel excise, this government has wagged been by the tail of the coalition. Before this government put forward excise relief, the coalition had been calling for it for many weeks. We understood that Australians were doing it tough, that prices were rising at the bowser and, of course, because of global conflicts and conflicts in the Middle East, that there were going to be supply constraints. So what did the coalition do? It rationally looked at the challenges and said to the Australian people, 'We need to make sure that these price rises aren't being needlessly passed on to you when we're already living through the greatest cost-of-living crisis in recent years.'

The response from the government was to dismiss and say it wasn't necessary and for the Treasurer, in his usual dismissive and mocking way, to attack anybody who put a proposition forward. But eventually they buckled. As another example of this government buckling and being humiliated again, eventually they accepted that perhaps Australians needed excise relief. The difference was, when we put forward a proposal to relieve Australian households of the pressures of excise when the prices of petrol and diesel were going up, we offered inflation offsets. We understood that, if you just increase access and reduce excise, it has is an inflationary effect on Australian households where the government seemingly gives with one hand but, later down the track, takes with the other.

This is the entire economic model of the Albanese government. They offer an incentive on one hand, and, through the political process, argue that they're somehow giving this great relief to Australians, but they're using it by enabling a pathway to spend, which stokes inflation. They then come along and tax inflation, and then, of course, they spend the inflation again in a vicious cycle of slowly taking the wealth and standards of living of Australians. We offered inflation offsets to say: 'There is a limit. We have to make sure that Australian households are protected from the consequences of these international events.' But the Albanese government in their usual—I don't know what you'd say—arrogant, dismissive, uneconomic and ignorant way decided they would continue on with the fuel excise relief without paying any heed or attention to standard economics or understanding the consequences of what they're doing.

Of course, we've seen this now in many different ways. It's not just in the fuel excise relief. We've seen it in their federal budget, where they have directly assaulted the livelihoods of Australians. They've directly assaulted the investment strategies that young Australians and older Australians—that every Australian seeks to employ. They've attacked and assaulted those employee share ownership schemes, directly assaulted those who build businesses, directly assaulted those who have startups and directly assaulted those who own investment property. The list keeps going and going about the number of people they've directly assaulted. They don't understand economics, but they also don't understand the consequences of their policy and how it flows through to the Australian people.

So here we are now, and we're a few months into the crisis in Iran. In light of that, the government—in addition to the first three months of fuel excise relief—is now offering a further month, but they still have not offered a single inflation offset as a trade-off to make sure that they protect the financial best interests of Australians from the decisions that they've made. We made recommendations, around $2.9 billion, and now they're offering further fuel excise relief in the vicinity of $400 million. We know the trade off from this downstream is going to be more stoking of the inflation pressure and more debt petrol on the inflation fire.

We don't even understand why it's necessary. When you come into this parliament, we hear so often from the Minister for Climate Change and Energy that there's more fuel in Australia now than there was at the start of the crisis. Remember that, Member for Gippsland? So many times he has come into this chamber and said, 'There's more fuel in Australia now than at the start of the crisis.' There's so much fuel that he could reenact that scene in Zoolander where they pull out the petrol bowser and spray it upon themselves. That's how much fuel there is in this country. And yet that's not what Australians are living. Despite there being more fuel in Australia right now and despite there being cheaper prices at distribution in Singapore, it's not flowing through to the bowser in Australia. Despite the fact there's more fuel in Australia right now, we're still having to offer tax relief to address the consequences of a shortage of fuel. I don't know about you, but that doesn't make any sense to me. But this is the consequence of how the Albanese government has approached this crisis and the consequences of its decision-making.

We absolutely believe that Australians should be able to go about their lives and be able to afford fuel to engage in the normal activities of life—such as drop families off at Saturday sport. But it's not just impacting families; it's also impacting small businesses. Let's not forget, Speaker, that we currently have record small-business insolvencies in Australia under this government, and I see you nodding your head. It's very disappointing.

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