Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have been blessed this last fortnight with being able to observe in this chamber the rise of a new branch of economics, ‘brendanomics’. The beneficiaries of brendanomics are big oil, big alcohol, big insurance and people with big incomes. Brendanomics is about reducing government income while maintaining or increasing government expenditure. Maybe there is some sense to this, but I note that the member for Wentworth did not see a lot of sense in it and I suspect that the member for Higgins did not see a lot of sense in it. You cannot have economics without economic experts on the front bench, but the opposition appears to be trying to do that.

The member for Bradfield has set out on a $22 billion smash-and-grab raid on the budget. Where is the money coming from? He is not prepared to say—or he will not say. Maybe he has some ideas, but he is not going to let the people in. Who is going to miss out through these proposals of his? I suspect that it is going to be the pensioners or people on government supported incomes—people who can least afford to miss out and who are looking to this government to give them some assistance in the future as the inquiry reports back to us in about February.

Why would the opposition set out to punish decent Australians simply because they did not choose them to govern Australia at the last election? For a decade those opposite have bragged about their economic prowess. You would have thought that they were doing that economic management for the good of the country, but it appears not. It appears it was all about them or all about their idea that they were better than us. Well, they have been exposed. Their reaction to the favourable reaction to the Swan Labor budget has been one of petulance. They have no idea what they want to do, so they are setting out to obstruct. For example, we talked about the luxury car tax in this chamber today. They do not know whether they oppose it; they do not even support it, I suppose. They did not support the member for New England’s amendment. But they do intend to refer the issue to a Senate committee—to delay, if you will, a government revenue measure. You cannot be sure from one day to the next or from one hour to the next, really, where the opposition stands on any question.

Sitting over here we gaze at the faces of the opposition backbenchers and what we see are a bunch of people who are as confused as a three-legged dog on the wrong side of the tree. What this opposition is about is taking cheap political populous points and running with them and knowing that they do not have to suffer any consequences from doing that. Sending the luxury car tax bill off to a Senate committee should give all their chums time to buy a new Ferrari, a Rolls Royce or an Aston Martin. We are getting the picture.

Fuelwatch: do they or don’t they support measures that give consumers vital information? Apparently not. They talk about the efficacy of Fuelwatch at great length. Let me put on the record the statistics. The Automobile Association of Australia figures show that against the three capital city average—that is, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide; Brisbane is left out because in Queensland there is a state government fuel subsidy—Perth consumers paid on average about 2½ per cent more for petrol between 1980 and the year 2000. Since FuelWatch was introduced in Perth, on average Perth motorists have paid marginally less. I am going to be fair: that margin is as close to zero as you can get it, but it is on the positive side of zero. But what does it mean? It means that since the introduction of FuelWatch in Perth, Perth motorists have saved on average 2½ per cent.

There are a lot of things that go into fuel prices. The world price of oil has doubled in the last little while; it has more than quadrupled since the turn of the century. Petrol prices are rising. I have seen some documents that suggest that crude oil will be $166 a barrel in 12 months time, up from the $130-odd that it is now. Are we going to bring in government subsidies such as they do in India, where 1.5 per cent of their GDP is spent in government subsidies on fuel? (Time expired)