Mr TUCKEY(8.49) —Tonight we are dealing with two sales tax amendment Bills-the Sales Tax Assessment (No. 1) Amendment Bill and the Sales Tax (Exemptions and Classifications) Amendment Bill [No. 2]. Both of these Bills contribute in the overall sense to additional revenue for the Government. It is quite interesting that they are the result of advice given to the Parliament in the May economic statement. That, of course, was one of the better exercises in creative accounting. We had a much trumpeted, much publicised tax cut for paper shufflers in big business. At the same time, we had a removal of the accelerated depreciation conditions applicable to manufacturers, farmers and all the producers in our community. When we look at year 3 when that all settles down we find the loss to Government revenue by way of the tax cuts is $1,700m. It is a gain to Government revenue from the removal of the accelerated depreciation provisions of $1,650m. In that case if he is lucky, the consumer-the Australian people-is $50m in front. That is some big saving. Of course, in terms of the sales tax measures it is no where near compensation.

The honourable member for Streeton (Mr Lamb) made a lot of the arguments for equity and rationalisation et cetera. I am a little fed up with his Government's arguments about equity. Every new tax we have introduced is for the purpose of equity, to overcome an anomaly, to close a loop hole and it frequently does those things. But, we never see the money going back to the people. The Government takes it in fringe benefits tax. It does not give it back in real tax cuts. The Government lowers some marginal rates after, of course, people have all stepped up into a new tax bracket and their personal tax rate does not alter.

I had this brought home to me in a very significant fashion the other day in a five-line letter to the editor. I had been on television and radio complaining bitterly on behalf of the one-time Labor constituency, those typical wage earners who earned gross about $300 a week. I want to know how those people managed because I know that I would have great difficulty at that level. A lady wrote to the West Australian asking, `When is Mr Tuckey going to wake up that it is not $300 a week; it is $300 a fortnight'. Of course, she is right. I have written back and apologised to her through the newspaper saying that I have chosen to talk gross. The person who has to use the spending powers is talking net, whether she be a welfare recipient or the wife of a husband earning money at about that level. Of course, people have this massive tax slug taken from them and to this we add all of these additional consumption taxes that we are debating tonight. She is right; she is lucky to have $150 a week to spend. The Government might wonder why it is those people are deserting it in droves. The Government is doing it to them. Of course, while the Government avoids the argument that it made originally it forgets that the tax on an item for consumption is an equal tax, numerically and nominally between the poorest consumer and the richest in most terms. I admit that the very rich will pay more consumption tax on a Rolls Royce than others on their Holden but on the basics that we consume each day it does not apply.

Let us look at what has happened to taxation in five years of a Labor Government. The last Fraser Budget collected some $44,000m in revenue. The Budget presented to this Parliament this year by the Treasurer (Mr Keating)-his latest economic miracle-raises $88,000m. That has doubled in five years. There is no evidence of the doubling of gross domestic product, the doubling of the population or the doubling of exports in that time. If we take the comparison of last year's Budget to this year's Budget, dividing the population of Australia, man, woman and child, into the gross revenue collections we find in the Government's own Budget Papers that this year the per capita taxation levied on Australians is $5,317. This is not wage earners, not profit makers. Every Australian man, woman and child is up this year for $5,317. It is up from last year's figure of $5,042, which is a jump of about $275 per capita-$1,100 per family of four. It is not a bad effort in one year.

As I have said to this Parliament before how good a Budget administrator has one got to be to balance the books or to go into surplus when one has control of the turnover and when one can just say, `Please sir, I want some more'? In the case of our arrogant Treasurer one should delete the word please. The point is that one of the great imposts of this Budget in terms of increased taxation is sales tax. The last time I looked at the monthly projections for income of the Minister for Finance (Senator Walsh) I recollect that sales tax collection last year were up over estimate about 20 per cent. The actual collections therefore that are recorded in this year's Budget Papers represent a substantial increase over what the Government expected to raise last year. It raised $7.576 billion in sales tax alone and it was not enough. The Government had to get more. So this year the Government is raising $8.651 billion.

Of course, when we work that out per capita-consumption taxes are only paid by people-we find that last year the Government took $462.10 from each and every Australian man, woman and child. That was nearly $1,800 per four-unit family. This year the Government proposes to pay $519.67. It is a huge burden; it is a burden the people cannot afford. But it is the only solution to this Government's sort of economic management. It is interesting because we are told that if we let up on the tax regime people will spend more. The Government's other great economic problem is the fact that Australia as a nation is overspending thousands of millions of dollars a month more than it sells to the rest of the world. This is not withstanding all of the lift in commodity prices last year. We remember the Government's tears of woe, how it blamed the rest of the world when all of its budgeting went astray because commodity prices fell. But now that commodity prices are up again has it affected Australia's overseas indebtedness or its trade deficit? No sir, it is still going up. It did not drop last year on predictions notwithstanding the huge increase in the income to this nation that we received.

As we say, `You cannot rewrite history in this place; it is all on the record'. The record says what the Government projected. It projected $11.5 billion at the beginning of the year. The Government did not take into account the increase in commodity prices. At the end of the year what was the Government's total trade deficit? It was $11.5 billion. It got extra money; it did the Government no good. The Government presumes, of course, that if it gives the people of Australia a bit of extra money through tax cuts that they will spend it on imported goods. It presupposed they may not save it for their old age and assist us with our foreign indebtedness. The Government does not know that but it is a pretty good excuse for not giving people the money.

A lot has been made in this debate about this brilliant and generous move to reduce the price of beer. If the Government were genuinely determined to help the people of Australia and if only the beer drinkers, I could support it in that. We all know what the Government is about. It is a cynical move to reduce the consumer price index (CPI) in almost an artificial way. But the Government cannot tell me why it picked on beer. I went and got the documentation to have a look at the consumer price index. In the broad categories it covers food, clothing, household equipment and operation, transportation, tobacco and alcohol, health and personal care, recreation and education. The thing that jumps out at me in all of this is transportation, personal and public. What do modes of transport consume in very larger quantities-they consume fuel. What does the Government get one of its biggest tax levies from? Fuel. Fifteen per cent of the total gross domestic product of this country-$1 in $7-is spent on transport. Why did the Government not cut the tax burden on fuel? Why did it not give everybody a go?

Let me tell honourable members opposite what is so cynical about the Government's dropping of the CPI. Hopefully, the Government can boast about it. The Treasurer can go off to another International Monetary Fund conference and boast. I suppose honourable members noticed when the television cameras zoomed around at the last conference that he was talking to about 20 people. He had as large an audience at that international conference as I have in this House. When he goes overseas he lectures Americans and others about the effects his policies have had on inflation. But if inflation drops, so does the amount of the increase in pensions because pensions are indexed to the CPI. It is too bad for the non-drinking pensioner who chooses to go out at weekends in his motor car to see his grandchildren; there is no help for him. He will get less money if the CPI is down as it will hold down his pension, but this Government does not give him any help with his fuel or with the sales tax on his tyres.

Mr Fife —It is deliberately dropping the standard of living.

Mr TUCKEY —This Government will bring down the standard of living of pensioners by this deliberate move. Unless the pensioner is a person who spends his whole pension on beer, he will be behind on the arrangement. It has to be understood that that is the decision of this Government. It is not much help to the people. I guess that the Government will keep blaming small business because things have not worked out. The Government will keep blaming small business for inflation. It will have its price watch committees. The Government will pay people, as does the Government in Western Australia, $40,000 or $50,000 a year to run this price watch farce. If the Government wants to know how much small businesses, grocers and others, are making it should go and look in their garages. It should count the Rolls Royces and the Jaguars. It will find that they are not there. Those people are not profiteering on the community; the Government is profiteering on the community. The only price watch we need in this place is on this Government and the massive tax burden that it is imposing on the people.

I wish to raise some other matters relating to my electorate, including the huge confusion that exists in the present requirements relating to tax exempt status for rural producers. To be quite honest, the situation has become a farce and it has become quite difficult. The problems are legion and nobody knows where to turn. Little by little suppliers have discovered, as the law has always provided, that they are the taxpayers. The Australian Taxation Office is not interested in pursuing the purchaser; it is too difficult to find him. The law says that the wholesaler is the taxpayer. It is his obligation to collect the tax and it is too bad for him if he makes a mistake. It is too bad for him if he gets a document or a certificate signed and it is wrong. We have a law that states that a person making a false declaration can be prosecuted. It just never happens. People have been sent broke by trusting bad advice. Furthermore, the opportunity for a simple appeal to, say, a board of review on a determination is non-existent. A person can go to a board of review on the rate of tax paid but that person cannot go and debate at that simple level whether an item should be exempt. All these ridiculous things are occurring.

Recently the National Farmers Federation put out a booklet which is excellent and helpful. In embarrassment, the Tax Office thought that it should also put one out but, of course, it is misleading mainly by omission. One of the more obvious examples happens to occur on page 13 of that document, which states:

There is no exemption for oils, greases and other lubricants purchased for use in agricultural industry.

But we find that there are exceptions. People can still buy certain tax exempt oils under the law. I would have thought that it would have been reasonable for the Commissioner of Taxation to have advised farmers when that booklet was eventually put out.

But that is not all. Let us look at some of the suggestions the Tax Office has made. A farmer might wish to buy a chainsaw and he writes in for tax exemption because he is going to use it in agriculture. What do we find the Tax Office saying? It states:

There are only two very rare occasions when chainsaws are exempt from sales tax. The first is when they are used exclusively or principally for the manufacture of goods which are exempt from sales tax, for example if they are used exclusively or principally to produce fence posts for sale or personal use. The other occasion is when they are used to a substantial extent to clear land.

These experts, sitting in their ivory towers in the city, go on to state:

It is very unlikely that the major use for chainsaws would be for these purposes as most chainsaws are put to a variety of uses like cutting firewood for domestic use or lopping and pruning trees.

The only time a person lops or prunes a tree on a farm is when he cuts it off a fence after the wind has blown it there, and that is an agricultural pursuit. The people in this place who represent rural electorates would know the extent to which farmers today cut down their trees for firewood. They have gas stoves and generally some of those benefits of life.

When a farmer wants a chainsaw he needs it for agricultural purposes and he should be entitled to the exemption provided by the law. But the reality is that we have these tax rulings. We have given so much discretion to the Tax Commissioner that he does not worry too much about the law; he just worries about how he feels each day of the week. In some of the documentation that I have is a letter which makes me shudder every time I read it. The letter has the beaut new logo of the Tax Office on it. What makes me shudder is that written across the bottom in quarter-inch letters are the words `Taxes-Building a better Australia'. Does anyone in this place believe that? Do they believe that the way to make the nation grow is by taking a bigger and bigger percentage from the people of Australia-those who might invest money in such a way as to enable us to overcome our international indebtedness? `Taxes-Building a better Australia'! This is the ethos that has been built by this Treasurer, who has handed over all power to the bureaucracy. I have always argued that the role of a politician is to be the insulation between the people and the bureaucracy. This Government has handed the Australian people to the bureaucrats and the Tax Office now has the courage to put things like that on its correspondence. It is printed on every letter that one gets from the Tax Office today.

Let me give a few more examples. People in my State are unfortunate in that when they want a truck they have to bring it all the way from the eastern States and it is not tax exempt unless it is kept on a farm, which is most unusual. It is usual for those trucks to be delivered by the manufacturer. They arrive in Western Australia with a freight component of thousands of dollars and it, too, is liable for sales tax. That is a distinct disadvantage for the people living in my State. It is wrong. It should not happen in those circumstances. If wholesale tax is involved the freight should not be included from that point.

Recently Mr Ivan Gale contacted me and said that he wanted to improve his productivity by weighing his fleeces and linking that weighing process to a computer. The weighing device would be free of sales tax but the computer that will be linked to it would not. But if he were a dairy farmer it would be. What is the sense in all of that? Mr Stan Lewis, another farmer in Western Australia, is fighting a very good fight through the Western Australian Farmers Federation to try to run down some of these things. We still have things for which we have to fill in forms.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Mildren) -Order! The honourable member's time has expired.