Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Leader of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister really committed to cutting the GST on fuel excise or is he expecting Australian motorists to wait another 18 months while yet another committee looks into it?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. People in rural and regional Australia are doing it doubly tough when it comes to the cost of petrol. As a consequence, their concerns, as well as those of people in urban Australia who are struggling with the increasing cost of fuel, are important in our overall consideration of the support we should give those families and individuals into the future.

What we have done in the budget package is to bring forward a $55 billion support package for families under financial pressure. That includes, of course, some $45 billion in taxation relief. If you add to that what we are doing by increasing the childcare tax rebate—which applies to rural Australia, regional Australia and metropolitan Australia—from 30 per cent to 50 per cent, you will see that also helps with the family budget. Add to that the education tax refund—a $4.4 billion program. It also assists in delivering some extra money to the hard pressed family budget bottom line.

But I am first to say to the honourable member that there is no silver bullet on this matter. Therefore, these measures that we have introduced, we believe, provide some assistance. But as we have also indicated, we believe there are other measures which can be embraced into the future. That is why the government commissioned, on budget day itself, a wide-ranging, comprehensive, long-term review of how we best handle the tax, income support and retirement income policy into the future.

We think that is an appropriate and responsible course of action. We think it is also a unified course of action on the part of the government, as opposed to the views of those opposite, who have five different positions now on the question of fuels policy—so much so that they now correspond with each other privately and publicly on this question, as the member for Wentworth helpfully did on budget day itself.