Mr Speaker, the cost-of-living is hurting people across my electorate and the entire country. 

So, wouldn’t many of these hardworking Australians be outraged to learn that last year, while they were struggling to get by, the government was handing out billions upon billions of dollars in fossil fuel subsidies.   

In the last financial year, the government dealt out almost $11b dollars under the Fuel Tax Credit Scheme, which is Australia’s largest fossil fuel subsidy.  

And this ridiculous, outdated subsidy is predicted to get bigger – reaching $13b by the end of the decade. 

Who’s paying for these enormous tax breaks? You are – the taxpayer. 

This Scheme is aimed at helping relieve the cost of businesses using petrol and diesel in certain applications in the economy  

– miners use a lot of diesel on mine sites in machinery,  

and moving materials between mine and port.  

And transport companies running heavy vehicles (over 4.5 GVM) are also potentially eligible for the hand out.  

Now before I go on, I want to make something very clear. 

I am by no means proposing we take away that support – especially now, with fuel prices skyrocketing.  

What I’m proposing instead – and I’ll explain the details shortly  

– is that we stop giving mining companies, including polluting coal and gas companies,  

tax breaks that do nothing but sustain their risky reliance on imported liquid fuels. 

The mining industry receives the lion’s share of these fuel tax credits. 

In the 2024 financial year alone, it received almost $5 billion under the Scheme. 

And the total amount received by the mining industry since the Scheme began in 2007  

is an almost unimaginably large $57.5 billion. 

Subsidising mining companies like this doesn’t make sense from any angle.  

First of all, and most obviously, these companies just do not need our help. They're some of the most profitable companies in the world, and it makes no sense to artificially widen their margins at the expense of other high value public investments such as healthcare and education. 

On top of subsidising these companies, we don’t tax them heavily, especially our gas industry.  

So that’s a double whammy – handouts in the form of subsidies which keep them addicted to dirty fossil fuels, and low tax rates charged.  

Second, by incentivising diesel use, the Scheme locks us into continued dependence on imported fuel.  

The more we need diesel, the more vulnerable we become to global price shocks – and the last few weeks are showing us how painful those shocks can be.  

Third, all that money could be better spent.  

Think about all the things the government tells us are too hard, too expensive, too impractical.  

• Think about cheaper healthcare 

• More and better paid teachers and nurses.  

• Free university degrees.  

• Better funding of public schools 

• More energy bill relief, especially for those who don’t yet have access to cheap, stable solar.  

• More funds for Australia’s creatives – musicians, actors, writers. 

The options are practically endless – and while we can’t pay for them all, we could certainly afford more if we spent less on fossil fuel subsidies.  

So how do we do it without hurting farmers and small businesses? 

Well, our friends at Climate Energy Finance have come up with an excellent proposal for phasing out fuel tax credits.  

And that is to cap the Scheme at $50m per business.  

Most farmers would stay well below that cap – while the only ones affected would be the small number of large mining companies currently benefitting from the Scheme.  

These include coal companies like BHP, Glencore and Yancoal. 

In the 2024 financial year, BHP received over $600m dollars in fuel tax credits and made a profit of over $10b dollars 

The motion I’ve put forward today calls on the government to implement this simple but powerful reform.  

And to make the proposal even more palatable, 

 companies would be allowed to keep receiving credits above $50 million 

 – but only if they use that extra money for investing in assets and systems that deliver the shift for businesses and their supply chains powered by electricity and contributing to decarbonisation. 

These are things like electric trucks, electric machinery, and renewable energy infrastructure – great ideas for future-proofing their business, insulating against fuel shocks and addressing climate change.  

So to be clear, no-one is worse off from this initiative.  

This is sensible, smart reform. Smart for the budget, for reducing cost of living, for improving energy security, and for cutting emissions.  

The Fuel Tax Credit Scheme must be reformed.  

Every day the government continues to hand out these tax breaks is irresponsible, and quite frankly, disrespectful. 

 Disrespectful to all those Australians struggling each and every day – struggling at the checkout counter, struggling at the bowser, struggling with their rent and mortgage payments.  

While life’s getting harder for all those Australians, it’s outrageous for the government to be making life easier for some of country's richest companies.  

I call on the Government to implement this reform, and I commend the motion to the House.