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

I am not sure that they are as good as they are made out to be. But if you add the extras together, a fairly ordinary four-wheel drive can become expensive. The mums who drive their kids the 40 or 50 kilometres to the nearest school need all those sorts of things. Up in the north-west it gets pretty hot around summertime, and air conditioning is not a luxury; it is an essentiality—it is a necessity. But under the Labor Party’s envy legislation all of those things are said to constitute a luxury car.

There are amendments flying around. I am not sure that I quite understand them. I am not sure whether they apply to the non-farm four-wheel drive that, as I said, I see a lot of mothers driving their children in—not just down to the train station or to the school half a kilometre away, as the lucky people in the cities do, but the 30, 40 or 50 kilometres a day to school and then picking them up in the afternoon and coming home at dusk when the kangaroos are particularly bad. They are the sorts of people that will be impacted by this legislation. There are also the vets; the mechanics, who may have to drive 100 kilometres to get out to a farm to fix a tractor; the farming contractors; the shearers; and the helicopter pilots, so essential in the grazing industry these days, who have to get to their place of work in a four-wheel vehicle—not a luxury vehicle but a four-wheel drive vehicle.

Up where I come from tourism is an enormously important industry. It is a bit difficult at the moment—there are real problems—but a lot of people in that industry make their living out of what, under this legislation, are luxury cars: the sorts of vehicles that international tourists expect will pick them up in Cairns and drive them the 80 kilometres up to Port Douglas. Those cars are also used by those who do adventure tourism, an essential part of the tourism experience in northern Australia. They are the sorts of people that will be attacked by this legislation of envy by the Labor Party.

It is all done, as I understand it, in order to keep the budget in balance. For goodness sake, the Howard-Costello government left the incoming government a surplus of $22 billion. While the coalition, when it came into power, found that it had a $96 billion deficit to deal with, this government has inherited a $22 billion surplus. This legislation is supposed to maintain the surplus, but the surplus was already there. It was given to them through sound, wise economic management by Peter Costello, John Howard and Nick Minchin in days gone by. So the idea that this legislation, amended as it will be, will make much difference at all to the budget, defies any logic. What it will do is put extra burdens onto those people who live in the areas remote from the capital cities. I know if you live in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or Adelaide you do not really see much of what happens outside. But when you get out into these areas, the four-wheel drive is an essential means of conveyance: it is essential for the safety of all people who live in remote areas of the bush.

In concluding, because I do not want to hold up this debate—it is a budget measure, and I do want us to move forward with it—I plead to all those senators sitting opposite and at the cross benches to spare a thought for people who live in remote Australia when dealing with legislation like this. This government—I do not think it is deliberate—does not have a lot of understanding or empathy with those who live in remote areas. I just ask all senators to consider that when thinking how they will vote on this legislation. I hope that, after considering those people, the impact on the industry and the little impact it will have on the overall budget surplus, others join with those on this side in voting this legislation down.