Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will take the interjection. They will make more sense out of my statements than your analysis of your own policy, which you cannot get right. You are so unprofessional that you cannot get your own policy right. Nonetheless, this will be an interesting debate as you define what you believe is luxury and what you believe is applicable—that is acceptable, that you can have. The $57,179 car is all right; you can have that. You can drive it around. But don’t you dare aspire to anything; don’t you dare try to do something that might take you away from the group. You have to stay with the mob; you have to stay with the pack. That is what is so peculiar about this tax. Australia really and truly believed that we had left this sort of debate behind.

Let us look at some of the other issues. Out in regional Australia it is a matter of course that if you want to drive long distances there are a couple of things that you need. You need a long-range fuel tank. You need the capacity to carry your luggage with you. You need such things as a bull bar, driving lights and airbags. You have to take into account that you might break down so you need the other attachments that go with the car. That is not luxury; that is actually what you need to get around. If I went out to Charleville, to St George where I live, or to other areas, and I looked at people and I said, ‘I see you are driving around in a new Nissan Patrol; that’s luxury. That Toyota LandCruiser, that’s luxury. You must be rich. We don’t like rich people. You must be rich because you have a car worth over $57,180. We do not like that. We don’t like rich people; we are going to tax rich people’—