Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very proud to speak on this legislation, the Excise Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025 and the associated bill, because this is one of the most popular commitments that we took to the election on 3 May—a two-year freeze on the draft beer excise, the first time this has happened in 40 years. I note the amendments moved by some on the other side. I'm not quite sure what side the member for New England is on these days; he was deputy prime minister not once but, believe it or not, in the sequel that no-one asked for, twice. Did anything happen on his watch? No. It took a Labor government to freeze the beer excise, making sure this was part of our cost-of-living measures we implemented—not just talking about cost-of-living pressures but doing something about them. Forty years is a long time between drinks, but it is just one of the rounds of cost-of-living measures that our government has taken.

As local MPs we're all a bit biased, but I happen to think that the best small breweries in Australia are in my electorate in Grayndler, in the Inner West—and there is a fair bit of evidence. We have the Inner West Ale Trail. We not only have breweries—16 at last count, in a small area where you can walk from brewery to brewery, in the Inner West; another industry has grown up, of the food trucks and food small businesses establishing themselves outside those breweries. But there's another one as well—the tourism trail. People can book, and they go in a bus from brewery to brewery, sampling the wonderful produce that is produced there in my electorate in the Inner West. Importantly, I am not aware of a single social issue that has arisen at any of those breweries. People engage collectively. They engage in a really positive way.

Can I also say that the many pubs, sporting clubs and RSLs around all our electorates are the heart of our communities. They're the organisations that will sponsor the local rugby league or netball or cricket clubs. They are important at a time where more and more we see social isolation being a feature of our society, as families become smaller, as communities become less connected and as more and more interaction is online rather than in person. The capacity of people to gather at their local pub, club, RSL or local leagues club is so important because there's that sense of belonging. I know that is the case in many of the pubs in my electorate. From time to time, there's a particular seat at the Courthouse Hotel at Newtown, at many of the pubs around the Vic on the Park or the Henson Park, that you know not to sit on because that's Daryl's seat or that's Ben's seat. That's the way it's always been, and that is the case right around Australia. I remember being on a visit with the member for Kennedy up at Hughenden and I made what he told me was almost a fatal error of sitting in the wrong seat at a pub. The seven-foot giant who walked in and declared that it was indeed his seat meant that it had been good advice on that occasion from the member for Kennedy.

This is a place that is so important and that's why these measures, which are small measures, are important. They are about respect for the work that our publicans and our club executives do on a day-to-day basis. Quite often, when you're there, particularly on a Friday afternoon or over a weekend, they're running raffles to raise money for surf lifesaving or running raffles for the people who are suffering. During hard times or natural disasters, for example, they are the places that really kick in. I'm reminded by the presence in the chamber of the Minister for Emergency Management. Before she was in this place she was a local mayor during those extraordinary disasters that happened throughout Australia, but particularly on the South Coast of New South Wales in her electorate of Eden-Monaro. I well remember going to clubs there where people were staying, literally, in emergency accommodation on the floor. These social organisations were looking after people in times of need and that's why they are deserving of support, because we rely upon them at times of need. And they don't have to be asked to do it; it's just what they do. Overwhelmingly, they're family businesses. They're run by people putting in long hours every day. They also employ locals. For so many people, whether they be full-time or, importantly, part-time workers, it's a way for people to get through their university days or to just work part-time when they're raising a family.

This is an important measure. It is good for our economy, good for our jobs, good for our local communities as well, and that's why, from the front bar to the beer garden, when you raise a glass, you can do so knowing that our government won't be raising the price for over two years. As I said, when we looked at the pressures that people are under, we understood. Whether it was the commitment to raising wages or cutting taxes or cheaper child care or cheaper medicines or Urgent Care Clinics or the energy bill relief or the home batteries to reduce permanently people's bills or cutting student debt, my government has focused each and every day on the big measures down to the small ones such as this one, but they all make a difference, because they also make it clear that my government will be continuing to be focused on cost-of-living measures as our first, second and third priorities as we go forward, as we have done given the bin fire that we inherited in 2022, when inflation had a six in front of it and the deficits were huge. We have turned that around. We know that there's more work to do, and we'll continue to work each and every day. But this legislation, implemented by Labor—nothing done over the previous 40 years—is an important step forward, and I commend the bill to the House.

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do note the Prime Minister's comments that, as people around Australia raise a glass in a pub, the price won't go up for the next two years. If it were only dependent on this excise freezing, that would be one thing, but we know that wages have gone up. We know that electricity has gone up. We know that the cost of living continues to rise under this government, so beer will go up. It's just the excise that will be frozen for the next two years. We commend this bill. We support this bill, but we think it should go further. We think it should actually include—and I endorse the member for Cowper's amendments that will be asking for or recommending that we also freeze the excise on spirits in pubs, hotels and clubs.

Our pubs and our clubs do incredible work in our community. They really become the beehive, if you like, of social connection for so many people. Whether it's sporting clubs or whether it's families wanting to go out for a cheap meal, it's no longer cheap. I'm just stating the facts. When I take my family out, I can assure you, it costs me well over a hundred and something dollars—sometimes $200—just to go to a pub meal. To pretend that this excise freeze for the next two years is going to solve all the problems is complete and utter rubbish, and every Australian knows it. I think about the cost of coffee. When Labor came to government in 2022, the cost of a cup of coffee or a latte at your favourite cafe, which we all enjoy, was around $4. Now, we're paying $6 for a cup of coffee. 'Nothing to see here,' says the Labor government. 'Nothing to see here,' says the Prime Minister.

Let's just talk about freezing the excise on pouring beer in pubs. Don't get me wrong, I support absolutely that our pubs and clubs need this support. They need more support than that though, and this government is absolutely not supplying it. I don't want to talk about every pub in my electorate, because, believe you me, there are far too many. I'm bound to leave out about, I don't know, 250 or 300, so I'm not going to name any, but I certainly have my and my family's favourite places to go. They are very, very valuable small businesses. Largely, they are small businesses, who are doing it so tough. Whether it's red tape, whether it is the cost of producing anything thanks to energy price rises or whether it's wage increases or regulation more generally, it is tougher to run a small business now. Who do we thank for that? The government of the day. I support this bill and I support the amendments that the member for Cowper is going to make, and I'm going to leave it there.

Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise enthusiastically, following our prime minister, to speak in strong support of the Excise Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025. As the Prime Minister said, pubs pouring draught beer are made up of communities—communities of people where everyone has a seat. My local, the Buff Club in Stuart Park, is a good example, and I pay tribute to a member of our community there that we lost recently, Harry. I've spoken about Harry in this place in the past, but he passed the week before last, and we raised a glass of draught beer to him. The railway club is another one close to home and has long been a place for true believers to get together and to have a schooner of draught beer. There are many other great establishments and breweries that I'll mention in my electorate, but it is true that for Northern Territorians—and across northern Australia, I would say—this is a welcome measure and a great measure.

This measure applies to great brewers such as Darwin's One Mile Brewing Co. and their 4:21 Kolsch and RDO bright ale, as well as Beaver Brewery's Boofhead Lager, which reminds me of a humorous exchange across the dispatch boxes here in the past. I highly recommend all the One Mile beers and the Beaver beers. Visitors to Darwin can also head down to Mitchell Street, where Darwin's Six Tanks Brew Pub makes a fantastic range of beers, draught beers, and you can have a paddle of those craft beers. They'll also apply when you're enjoying multicultural events, such as the fantastic Territory Oktoberfest that was held by Beaver Brewery last year. The Purple Mango brewery at Marrakai in your electorate, Deputy Speaker Scrymgour, is fantastic, as is the Alice Springs Brewing Co., smack bang in Central Australia, where responsible drinking is the order of the day and delicious draught beers are plenty.

With my special-envoy-for-the-north hat on, it behoves me to mention the Spinifex brewery in Broome, Western Australia, and in particular their F88 premium lager, which is named after the Australian Army's service rifle. It's another veteran owned business. That label and that draught beer honours military personnel and first responders and is aligned with the sponsorship agreement with Soldiers and Sirens, which supports those personnel. In Far North Queensland, this excise freeze will also benefit you as you're having a draught beer at Hemingway's Brewery in Cairns, enjoying some of those big, bold flavours of their draught beers, such as the grapefruit, citrus and pine of the Wharf St IPA, which incidentally won a gold medal at the 2025 Melbourne Royal Australian International Beer Awards. I congratulate Hemingway's on that win.

My point is that, like all points of our great southern land, northern Australia and Territorians love a beer, and it's great to enjoy it in a pub and, as the Prime Minister said, contribute to that social cohesion and promote responsible drinking. In the Northern Territory, beer contributes about $167 million to gross Territory product and 1,273 full-time equivalent jobs. Nationwide, Australia's beer industry, from growing the barley to pouring pints in venues like those I've mentioned, generates around $16 billion a year. According to the Brewers Association of Australia, on average, every Australian made beer contributes $4.36 to Australia's economy, and it's a very decent return on investment. A 2018 study also indicated that local craft breweries play positive roles in engendering social, symbolic and financial capital in their home towns and regions.

This bill is good for the Australian economy, including the north, but also our regions, as I'm sure there is agreement across this place. This is a practical, targeted and responsible measure that supports small businesses, protects jobs and keeps the price of a pint stable for everyday Australians. According to the Independent Brewers Association report from February 2025, independent brewers, most of which are small businesses, contribute $3.53 billion to the Australian economy, 56 per cent of them are located in regional and rural Australia, and 48 per cent of the industry reports being unprofitable or just breaking even. So this bill is an assistance to this sector being sustainable and having those conditions for competition over time. The small independent brewers describe how they are forced to absorb the increases from the excise being indexed to CPI and increasing twice per year. They write that polling indicated that Australians wanted government to stop increasing the excise tax, and that is exactly what this bill does. This is what small businesses asked for, and it's very good for independent brewers.

As I used to say when I was in the Army, dehydration is a soldier's worst enemy. The Labor government is taking the fight to that fiercest, most unrelenting of foes. So, with this bill, there'll be less of Slim Dusty's pub with no beer and more pubs from Men at Work's land down under, where the beer does flow—with, hopefully, less of the rest of that song! The bill is good for small business pubs and clubs and brewers. It is good for the hip pocket of Australians who do like to have a pint, a schooie, or one of those smaller versions—I think it's called a pot. It's good for northern Australia and the regions.

For all of those reasons, I commend this bill to the House.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Skills and Training) Share this | Link to 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.

Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I would like to thank those members who have contributed to this debate. Together, the Excise Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025 will pause biannual indexation applying to excise and excise-equivalent customs duty rates on draught beer for two years, starting from 1 August 2025. These changes deliver on the government's commitment to taking pressure off the price of beer poured in pubs, clubs and other venues, supporting businesses, regional tourism and customers across Australia.

I want to acknowledge the amendments from the members for Warringah, New England, Cowper, Kooyong and Bradfield. While these amendments are well intentioned, they would significantly broaden the measure beyond its intended scope. They're uncosted and would create substantial fiscal impacts. As Assistant Treasurer, I know too well the importance of responsible government spending.

When we came to government, inflation had a six in front of it. Today it has a three in front of it. That is not an accident; it is a result of the disciplined economic management of the government. We've delivered two surpluses, spending restraint and savings that our predecessors could not deliver. Our cost-of-living measures have been responsible and targeted, just like this one.

What we're proposing here is a round of beers for our pubs and clubs on the government. It's a gesture of goodwill to acknowledge the hard work of our hospitality industry—but it's a measure within our means. Some members are asking us to reach instead to the top shelf for that round, and some are going further and asking us to put our card behind the bar indefinitely. We all love a celebration, but we're a responsible government, focused on the cost of living in a targeted and responsible way. The bill as drafted strikes the right balance between supporting our pubs and clubs and maintaining budget sustainability.

The members may, however, be interested to know that the government has announced separate support for all beer brewers and spirits manufacturers in the 2025-26 budget, and I trust they will bring this to their constituents' attention. From 1 July 2026, the excise remission scheme cap will increase from $350,000 to $400,000 per year. These changes provide the greatest benefit to small craft brewers and distillers. Lastly, in response to the member for Cowper's proposal to review the alcohol excise and customs tariff system, the government continues to closely monitor and assess the effectiveness of the tax system.

For these reasons, we will not be supporting the amendments. This bill delivers targeted, responsible relief while complementing broader support for the economy. I commend these bills to the House.

Marion Scrymgour (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that the bill be now read a second time, to which the honourable member for Warringah moved, as an amendment, that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The honourable member for New England has moved, as an amendment to the amendment, that all words after 'House' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the amendment moved by the honourable member for New England be agreed to.

Question negatived.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question now before the House is that the amendment moved by the honourable member for Warringah be agreed to.