Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I will take your timely intervention as a suggestion that perhaps I have had my say. I know my colleagues Senator Boswell and Senator Nash want to have a few minutes in this debate. I would not want to deprive them of time to do so before 10 to seven, and I know Senator Sterle will want to enter the debate as well to oppose this horrendous legislation.

But I will conclude on the point on which I started. The Howard government will go down in history as a government that has produced the best economy this country has ever known. We have taken this country from a $96 billion deficit to a position where, in the last couple of budgets, we have actually locked money away for the future in surpluses. Well, we thought we had locked it away, but I understand the Labor Party are already attacking one of the funds we had set up to pay for the future—but you expect that from Labor.

We left this new government an economy which was the envy of the Western world. There were huge surpluses, low interest rates, low unemployment and low inflation—a dream economy—and already, in a few short months in power, the Labor Party are turning it round. In spite of the promises made by Mr Rudd to decrease grocery prices, to decrease interest rates and to decrease petrol prices, we find that not only are they not decreasing the things they said they would but they are actually, by this bill and by some other measures, increasing those taxes. The horror of again getting those automatic fuel excise indexations is too much to fathom. I certainly hope that the trucking industry and those of us who live remote from the capitals and rely on transport start to understand just what this automatic indexation does. I hope that Family First are listening to this as well because they seem to have a lot to say about fuel prices. I wonder if Family First have caught up with the fact that, from 1 January next year, this bill will reintroduce those automatic excise indexations. If the government were intending to honour its commitments to reduce fuel prices, what they should be doing is cutting the excise, not putting it onto the automatic indexation, as it used to be under the Keating regime. I conclude on that point.

As people who are listening to this broadcast drive home tonight, they should not be surprised when the grocery bill goes up in a few months time. The reason the grocery bill will go up in a few months time is that legislation like this, brought in by an inexperienced government, will add taxes to the transport industry and therefore add pressure to the costs of the weekly grocery bill and put real pressure on inflation. Those particular points, I hope, would be understood by those who might be listening to this broadcast.