Mr BEAZLEY (Leader of the Opposition) (1:15 PM) —In about 15 minutes time—and the speech will be split into two halves therefore—I will be presenting the accompanying legislation, the Customs Tariff Amendment (Petrol Tax Cut) Bill 2001. This bill is called the Excise Tariff Amendment (Petrol Tax Cut) Bill 2001. It is a bill for an act to amend the Excise Tariff Act 1921 to provide relief from the 1 February 2001 indexation of rates of excise duty applying to petroleum.

Standing orders do not allow bills altering taxation rates to be moved by anyone other than a minister. Therefore, this bill seeks to empower the House to pass a resolution to cut the rate of excise on domestic fuel by the amount of the February adjustment—that is, 1.525 cents per litre.

Questions may be asked why we are proceeding with these bills, given the Prime Minister's Anthony Mundine act last week. It must be said that the Anthony Mundine act is normally performed—or was—in the days he played league in a state of high exuberance over a triumphal act. In this case, the backflip is performed without a smile on the face, with absolute misery and with the sense of necessity that comes with something having been done, effectively, at political gunpoint.

The Treasurer introduced tariff proposals last Thursday, which reduced the tax effective from Friday. However, these measures only last for one year. The tax cut has not been made permanent; legislation is needed to do that. This is important, because the Prime Minister was asked by Glenn Milne on Sunday to rule out further discretionary increases in fuel excise, and he refused to do so. Not legislating last week's tariff proposals would effectively amount to a discretionary excise increase. This bill gives a legislative safeguard to prevent that happening. This is about keeping up the pressure.

These bills I introduce today are important because—in the best traditions of good, solid, accountability-keeping opposition—we have held the government to account and forced a change in public policy. Make no mistake: these bills have played the major part in this government's petrol tax conversion last week—that and a certain matter of a by-election in Ryan—and I will have more to say about that later. The Prime Minister was out there, eating crow but saying, `No, this isn't a backflip related to the election in Ryan or anything else; this is sound public policy by the government. We've discovered the need for a fiscal stimulus and this has obliged us to make the changes that we have.' What nonsense. This was not an act on the Prime Minister's part about saving the economy; it was an act on the Prime Minister's part about saving his political skin. That is why it has gone over so badly with the Australian electorate—why they have viewed it with such suspicion and why they have not given him credit, certainly not the credit that he would have desired. In the ninemsn poll—in which people email those conducting the poll to give them an indication of how they feel about a proposition that has come forward or any particular question that is asked of them—some 4,000 people felt that this would make a bit of a difference to their vote and held the view that they would put the government, their having made this statement, in a somewhat higher regard. But something like 13,000 people said the opposite.

The people of this country are on to this government, they are on to its credibility, and they understand why it acts the way it does. It does not act in these matters out of conviction. It acts under pressure—in this case, the pressure of a by-election. One of the things that you can say to the electors of Ryan on this and so many others matters is that you cannot change the government with the vote two weeks from now but you can sure as heck change its mind. Just as it has been important to change its mind on petrol, just as it was important to change its mind on providing some relief for businesses confronting appalling compliance requirements associated with the GST, so it is important to change its mind on its meanness of spirit associated with what has happened to compensation arrangements for pensions with regard to the impact of the goods and services tax.

There are plenty more things for which it is worth while placing pressure on this government, particularly when you know that your pressure is most likely to succeed. As the Prime Minister said to his party room, he is no longer about governing the country for the sake of the good of the country; he is about governing it to win the next election. That is his overriding motive. It has to be said that he is not necessarily the best judge of what will win in that election, but it opens an opportunity for pressure to resolve the injustices that he has inflicted on this country over the last few years.

But it is not just Ryan which has caused the Anthony Mundine act by the Prime Minister. I am willing to lay a bet that the further reason the Prime Minister was forced to move last week was that he had been threatened by enough members of his backbench that they would cross the floor and vote for this bill or else abstain. He knew these bills were to be introduced today. He knew that there were at least 10 backbenchers Labor had put pressure on to stop being cowards in Canberra while lions at home. He knew there were enough people in this situation to oblige a change in legislation. He knew the Labor Party was burning those backbenchers alive in their electorates. And he had been threatened. If the backflip hadn't occurred last Thursday—make no mistake—the government would have been backflipped by these bills today. So I hope people will forgive me if I give them a decent send-off today.

We will be reminding motorists that, had the government followed Labor's advice and frozen the February excise increase, motorists would have saved the $43 million which the Howard government ripped off them before the backflip last week. Every day this backflip was delayed, every day that the government acted on the Prime Minister's spurious justification related to the budget as he was repeatedly called on to answer questions about the matter, cost Australian motorists more than $1 million. That is $43 million that they will not see again; $43 million which could have gone into dealing with the problems that the average household confronts day to day; $43 million which could have gone to those folk in our community who feel under pressure, who have to spend every element of their income as they have no discretionary income; $43 million from pensioners in this community. You can bet your bottom dollar that pensioners would have paid at least $10 million of that $43 million. These are the people whom this government turned its back on when it introduced the goods and services tax.

It is important to make this point also. I noticed on Thursday—I had to miss part of question time—that, on the questions of further increases in the excise and the removal of indexation, the Treasurer was up there on his scrapers arguing that he was removing the `Labor Party's indexation'. Forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker Nehl, but I have this memory of the advertising associated with the GST package—`Not a New Tax, A New Tax System'. There were changes in areas other than the goods and services tax. There were changes in the income tax area. There were changes in the company tax area. There were changes in relation to financial institutions duty and the like. A whole range of changes were made—all of which, I might say, we supported. There were those changes there.

What was also there was the full-blown indexation of petrol taxes—every red cent. From the day the new tax package came down, the Liberal government firmly took over the ownership of every key element of it. They took over ownership of the indexation of petrol taxes—100 per cent ownership. They had the opportunity. They moved around billions of dollars in the taxation system. They had the chance, if they objected to the fact that this was an indexed arrangement, to deal with it. They chose not to. So they now have the full ownership of it, and the full ownership of the backflip.

There are a few things this sorry episode has established without question. I want to take some time here today to outline them to the House. First, this is a backflip prompted by fear and without a shred of conviction in it. Secondly, this is not the end of the matter with regard to fuel taxation. Thirdly, whatever reputation this government had as an economic manager now lies in a smoking ruin. Fourthly, this episode has laid bare the mounting struggle over the Liberal leadership.

Let me deal with each of these in turn, both in my remaining remarks in the five minutes I have on this bill and then in my remarks in support of the next bill. Firstly, let me deal with the question of conviction. This has been a backflip prompted by electoral fear and, like most things, will not last. In the beginning there was the untruth, `The goods and services tax will not increase the price of petrol for the ordinary motorist'—John Howard, Address to the Nation, 13 August, 1998. Secondly, John Howard, 18 August, 1998 on Radio 4T0:

This is on 24 September 1998—

That is what our motorists were told. This was not even one of those little sleights of hand that we have seen in relation to the compensation arrangements for the pensioners, for example. `They will get four per cent compensation'—and then, in tiny little letters and not at all in the tax package—`and of course, we will claw back half of it.' None of that was in it. There was nothing of that hidden light under a bushel as far as these undertakings were concerned—they were clear, they were up front, they were oft repeated and they were simply untruths. Then, when he was comprehensively caught out on that issue, he went into an `I would love to keep my promise but it is impossible' defence. He said this to Alan Jones on 30 January, at the beginning of this year:

That was not the first time of asking. We could go to 6 February, in question time:

Oh, good. On 22 January he said:

As Prime reported on 29 January, the government would have to spend around $600 million to cut prices by less than 2c a litre. The Prime Minister went on:

This is extraordinary. It is not as though the Prime Minister defended this position of his with euphemisms or half-hearted sleights of hand. He was absolutely up front: `We have done it on roads; we will not do it on anything else; to do it on anything else would threaten interest rates and threaten the budget surplus.' As `great economic managers' he would say, the government could not possibly contemplate that. Well, the new contrite version of the Prime Minister lasted about 3½ seconds. He said:

This policy was so well thought out that there was no press release, no documentation—

Mr Crean —No costings.

Mr BEAZLEY —no out year costings. This was policy on the run so fast that there was not even time to put letterhead in the printer! And finally, over the weekend, we had the newest, latest version. Remember that cunning plan I spoke about last week? Finally, the Prime Minister has been reading his Black Adder, because he thought he could fit his backflip up with a pair of ears and a tail and, hey-presto, it is a weasel! The backflip is now apparently a secret plan to rescue the economy—a secret, cunning plan to rescue the economy. Because, as he said on Sunday Sunrise:

This government is now administering—(Time expired)

Bill read a first time.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Nehl)—In accordance with sessional order 104A the second reading will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.