Mr SOMLYAY (6:09 PM) —Queenslanders woke up to a shock yesterday morning when they picked up their Sunday Mail from the front lawn. The headline of one article was `Resign call on Budget blowout'. The alarm bells start ringing. I quote from the article:

I speak in this grievance debate because I grieve for the people of Queensland and their expectations under the Labor government led by Premier Peter Beattie. These expectations become bleaker every day. There is one indisputable fact of history in Australian political life, and that is that the Labor Party cannot handle money. There has never been a successful Labor government in terms of money or financial management. In my adult lifetime, the Whitlam government was my first experience of a Labor government. The financial damage to individuals, families, businesses and farmers will never be forgotten by those who were caught by Labor during those long three years. It is incredible how much damage was done. The accumulated wealth of generations was wiped out. There were record bankruptcies and record unemployment.

The 1980s saw the financial disasters of John Cain and Joan Kirner in Victoria. Between them, they bankrupted Victoria with their financial scandals, with Pyramid, the State Bank, et cetera. Brian Burke and Carmen Lawrence in Western Australia presided over the scandal of WA Inc.; again thousands lost their investments and savings after believing in Labor. In South Australia, John Bannon presided over another of Labor's financial disasters—the disaster of their state bank, which the people of South Australia are still paying off with a special tax. The Keating-Beazley financial disaster hurt so many people; $80 billion of debt accumulated in five years, from 1990 to 1995. And it always seems to be up to a coalition government to come in after a Labor disaster, pick up the pieces and sort the problem out. Queensland is no exception. Wayne Goss was no exception. When he became Premier of Queensland, he promised to do for Queensland what John Cain did for Victoria. That was a very prophetic prediction. In Queensland the Labor bells are warning again. As I said, yesterday's Sunday Mail—a newspaper which is not in the habit of being unkind to the Beattie Labor government—carried the familiar, ominous warning `Resign call on Budget blowout'. I will quote from it again:

I believe correctly—

This report in the Sunday Mail came on the immediate tail of the attempt by Mr Beattie to con the Queensland people over petrol prices. Queensland has always been a low tax state. Queensland never had many of the innovative taxes that the southern Labor states dreamt up. Because Queensland never had a petrol tax, it was cheaper to do business in Queensland than in other states. That was one of the main attractions of Queensland. In my electorate of Fairfax, 1,400 people a month are added to the electoral roll. A thousand people a week move to Queensland from the other states. Queensland never had a petrol tax—that is, until Mr Beattie came along. Peter Beattie tried the biggest con ever perpetrated on the people of Queensland. It was a very dishonest attempt to introduce a Queensland Labor petrol tax and, at the same time, blame the GST. Mr Beattie announced an 8c per litre price rise in petrol, together with a $150 reduction in motor vehicle registration in the south-east corner as an offset.

There were two things wrong with this stunt. What Mr Beattie did not declare was that he had raised motor vehicle registration $45 in the previous year. As well as that, when he was in opposition Mr Beattie claimed that an 8c per litre rise in petrol would cost Queenslanders almost $400 per year—a $250 per family rip-off. So when he was in opposition and the Borbidge-Sheldon government was dealing with the federal government, Mr Beattie said that the 8c per litre equated to $400 per year or $250 per family. Yet his offer of compensation to the people of Queensland for introducing that new tax was $150. According to his own figures, that is a rip-off of $250 per family. The other great disadvantage with what Mr Beattie proposed was that road funding in Queensland is funded by motor vehicle registration. If you reduce motor vehicle rego, you reduce road funding. That would affect every part of Queensland. Queensland is the most decentralised state in this country. No state depends on a roadworks system more than Queensland. If you reduce the take that the government gets from motor vehicle registration, you also reduce the amount of money that can be spent on roads. Remember that, as I said, the Queensland government—Mr Beattie's government—raised registration by $45 last year. So Queenslanders would have had higher fuel costs and worse roads—that is a very smart Labor recipe. After $400,000 of public money was spent on advertising the new Beattie fuel tax, Mr Beattie backflipped to abandon the scheme when there was an outcry across the state.

The warning in the Sunday Mail is ominous—Mr Beattie and his Treasurer are looking for revenue. They are again raiding the hollow logs. How long will it be before Liberal leader David Watson's prophetic words come true? He said:

The budgetary situation in Queensland is precarious. I want to raise two additional things that the Beattie government has done which I think are unfair and have outraged most Queenslanders. With the introduction of the GST on 1 July, less than a week away, the state government, on state government services and other services, is putting stamp duty on top of GST. That is a tax on a tax. That is profiteering at the expense of taxpayers. There is no reason why the state government should make stamp duty payable on the GST inclusive price whether it be a commodity, the transfer of a house or a service provided by the government.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Hollis)—Order! As the time for the grievance debate has expired, the debate is interrupted and I put the question:

Question resolved in the affirmative.