Page 3610 - Week 12 - Thursday, 13 October 1994
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MR HUMPHRIES: You have only to test us, Mr Connolly. Put us in office and find out. Madam Speaker, Canberra motorists now pay 60 per cent of the petrol price in the form of taxes to the Federal and ACT Labor governments. No-one denies the need for an appropriate mix of taxation revenue from petroleum products; but, on our side of politics, we oppose such high levels of taxation when they are brought about by a government which trades on being a friend of the motorist. I have only to quote what the then shadow Minister for Minerals and Energy - one Paul Keating - said in 1980. He said:
It's a shocking thing that every petrol pump has become an office of the Tax Department - a shocking thing!
Mr De Domenico: He would have repeated it.
MR HUMPHRIES: He would have repeated it, no doubt. "A shocking thing", he would have said. Madam Speaker, curse my tongue, but I happen to agree with him on this occasion. Maybe those opposite will not jump up, in the style of Mr Hawke, and call Mr Keating a crazed liar. I do not think that they are going to do that. But the fact is that on that occasion he told the truth and nothing but the truth. His words are as true today as, if not truer than, they were in 1980. (Extension of time granted) For every $20 of petrol a motorist puts into his or her car, the first $12 is going in government taxation. Given Mr Connolly's policy on petrol pricing, some retailers are pocketing as little as 8c from that $20. I would be ashamed if I were in government and that were the result of my policy. But I suspect that no-one in this Government has a skin thin enough to let that happen. Once motorists used to fill their tanks, get a lot of petrol and pay a little bit of tax. These days, it is very much the reverse. I think that we owe it to retailers in this Territory to start, once and for all, to adopt a fair and equitable policy towards a goal that we all share, and that is the goal of bringing down the price of petrol in this city.
Finally, Madam Speaker, let me say that, last year when I moved a motion concerning the reduction in the Government's petrol tax, there were hysterical press releases about the fact that the Opposition tried to cut $26m from the Government's coffers. Let me put that to rest, both in respect of that occasion and in respect of this motion. I want to quote section 6 of the Subordinate Laws Act, particularly subsection (9). I ask members to listen very carefully. It states:
Where -
(a) a subordinate law or a provision of a subordinate law...ceases to have effect under this section; -
that is, it is disallowed -
and
(b) the relevant law repealed, in whole or in part, a previous law that was in force immediately before the relevant law commenced -
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