Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Fuel Excise Relief) Bill 2026. Last Friday, I joined the Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the National Party to call on the government to provide fuel excise relief for Australian businesses, families and truckies, who have been slugged at the bowsers by skyrocketing fuel prices for almost five weeks. We presented the government with an economically responsible proposal to temporarily halve the fuel excise for three months and provide a corresponding reduction in the heavy vehicle road user charge that's paid by our truckies and our bus drivers. This was to ensure that there weren't inflationary pressures from giving that relief at the bowsers. We actually proposed savings measures to ensure that expenditure was going to be offset.

The government spent the weekend trying to hide from this policy suggestion, only to capitulate yesterday and announce the opposition's policy as its own. In those three days that they ran away and hid from the announcement that we made of our desire to work in a bipartisan way with the government during this crisis, the Labor government was able to pocket $50 million in fuel excise revenue from Australian drivers and truckies. But, in the announcement of the cut to fuel excise, has the government offered up any savings? Has the government sought to offset this $2.5 billion slug to the federal budget with commensurate savings so that it doesn't put inflationary pressure on an economy that's already stressed? No.

As the Australian said today:

Here we go again … Labor spends its way out of Iran War fuel crisis.

With the Prime Minister's addiction to spending taxpayers' funds, they've turned what would have been an inflation-reducing measure into another reason to dip further into debt and fuel the government's homegrown inflation crisis.

The government is seeking to rush this bill through parliament in a single day, again without adequate security. Buried in the small print of this bill, the Treasurer has a blank cheque to make further changes to the fuel excise rate over the next three months without coming back to parliament. This underlines the fact that the government still, as we head into the fifth week of this crisis, has no plan to deal with the escalating and compounding impacts of the crisis in the Middle East.

Despite Labor's senators lining up yesterday claiming they support struggling truckies as we debated the Fair Work amendment bill, ALP members do not seem to support the fuel price relief truckies were actually crying for. The real view of Labor MPs was expressed this morning in the morning papers. They were 'surprised'. They were 'perplexed by the Prime Minister's decision'. They were 'surprised that the government had adopted the opposition's policy'. Many of them were against it, and this was apparently an admission that the PM had no plan. This isn't the opposition saying this, and it's not the Greens. It is backbench Labor MPs in the other place. These same MPs warned that the measure would set 'a dangerous precedent'. To say most Labor backbenchers are perplexed would be an understatement.

So, when the Treasurer says the fuel excise relief in this bill is temporary, timely and responsible, he's only right in one of those three claims. It's not timely, because it's too late, too little, according to our truckies; it's not responsible, because the government has not matched this spend with a commensurate save in the federal budget; but it's definitely temporary. This is exactly why we need a select Senate committee to the government's response to the crisis in the Middle East. The compounding influence and impact of the government's failure in this regard; the ad hoc way they are adopting measures instead of a planned, proportionate response; the flat-footedness, particularly in the first four weeks; the flow-on impact that that will have right across our economy. Economists are saying that will have impacts over years, not just the weeks to come. I would encourage the Senate to think about a select committee, as we did for COVID. But we will be supporting this excise cut.