Topics: Major fuel price relief for Australians under a Coalition Government

 

E&OE  

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, tonight, Peter Dutton will announce a major initiative to relieve cost of living pressures for some of the hardest working Australians across our country. He will announce a halving of the fuel excise, and this will deliver to families who are really struggling in our suburbs and regions, who travel long distances for work, to get to work or for work, to drop off the kids at school and sport and so on. It will provide genuine relief for these families. $1,500 a year for families who fill up their car twice a week, $750 if they fill their car up once, that's $28 a week, or $14 a week for a single tank family. This is very significant but very targeted relief.

 

Now, as I get around the country, what I see consistently is that some of the Australians who are suffering the most, the very most, are those in our suburbs and regions with a mortgage, traveling long distances to and for work, traveling long distances with the kids, taking them to sport and other events around their region and that mortgage pressure they've seen is meaning that they are really struggling to make ends meet. I see them at food banks. These are people with mortgages, with jobs, who simply can't pay their bills. So, this is highly targeted relief. It's temporary, but it's also immediate. Labor, on the other hand, have decided that the way to deal with cost of living is to wait for a year and make it permanent and this can only mean that Labor thinks that their cost of living crisis, Labor's cost of living crisis will go on forever and frankly, that is something that is completely unacceptable to the Australian people.

 

Now when we look at the budget, we can understand why they might think that. This is a budget that has been driven off the cliff by this Treasurer, reading as far as the eye can see, $170 billion of deficits over the forwards and for many years beyond that. That’s $6,000 on the credit card of every Australian as a result of him failing to manage his budget, failing to manage his colleagues, failing to actually put or have the disciplines in place that have been in place for so many decades before he came into the role. He is not up to the job. He is simply not up to the job, and we see this in the contrast between his approach and ours.

 

Now we'll see more of that contrast tonight. Peter Dutton will talk about the importance of getting our country back on track. Of delivering affordable, reliable energy to address the cost of living crisis that we have under Labor, both short term and longer term initiatives to make sure that we've got the affordable, reliable energy that we need as a country.

He'll talk about the need to fix the housing crisis created by Labor. Their housing crisis as they promised, 1.2 million homes haven't delivered a home under their programs, and will be lucky in total to see in the marketplace, 800,000 homes built and frankly, that means in an Australia that has been growing too fast for our housing supply. There is a desperate shortage of housing in this country.

 

The imbalance between immigration and housing was plain to see in the budget, plain to see in the budget, as they up their immigration numbers yet again, the forecasts have gone up yet again, 1.8 million and rising, moving towards 2 million over five years. In just two years, we saw one million and yet the housing supply is completely incapable, completely incapable of keeping up with that growth under Labor.

 

So, you'll see a focus on the need to fix our housing supply, and you'll see a focus on needing to keep Australians safe and this is something Peter Dutton, with a long and deep experience of national security, of law enforcement. He understands better than almost anyone the importance, the importance of keeping Australians safe in an increasingly uncertain world where not only are we seeing geopolitics like we haven't seen since the Second World War, but we're also seeing real law enforcement challenges closer to home, and you'll see a strong focus, as you always do, from Peter Dutton on these important issues.

 

Happy to take questions.

 

JOURNALIST:

Isn't it misleading to refer to the savings of this fuel excise measure in a per year figure when it is only for one year?

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Well, it's a year so Australians…Well, there's nothing misleading. There's nothing misleading about saying that an Australian family fills up twice a week and there's a lot of those particularly in my neck of the woods in the outer suburbs, the regions, fill up twice a week. They will see a saving of $1,500 over the course of the year. That is substantial. That is a substantial number, $28, a week and that is a very real, that is a very real impact for a group of people who are really struggling. I mean, you know, it was beyond my comprehension three years ago that we could see families with mortgages and jobs going to food banks, embarrassed that they have to do it because they can't put food on the table. These families are who we are targeting here. They are amongst the hardest working, and they're losing hope. Let's be honest, under this Labor government, we have seen the biggest collapse in our standard of living in our history, we’ve never seen it before.

 

JOURNALIST:

Why choose to make it temporary, for one year.

 

ANGUS TAYLOR:

Because the cost of living crisis will be temporary if we're in government, whereas if Labor's in government, it seems that it's going to be permanent. You know, Labor loves dependency. That's what they believe in. Well, we as Liberals believe in personal responsibility. We want an economy where hard working Australians can get ahead and I'll tell you what that means. You've got to get past this cost of living crisis, fast, beat inflation, boost growth, back small business, fix the housing supply and make sure we've got affordable, reliable energy, balance housing with immigration. That's the way you do it. And I'll tell you what that’s what will happen under a Dutton government.

 

Thank you.

 

 

ENDS.