Excise Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025, Customs Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025
Mr LAXALE (Bennelong) (19:10): I rise in strong support of these bills, the Excise Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (Draught Beer) Bill 2025. For so many Australians, including my community of Bennelong, the local pub or club isn't just a business. It's a place where people gather after work.
It's where communities come together. It's where members of parliament like me hold our events. It's where families meet.
It's where sporting teams celebrate or commiserate. It's where local musicians get their start. In many suburban pockets across the country and in regional towns as well, the pub is the social anchor for communities right across Australia.
It keeps people connected, provides jobs for local hospo workers, supports local charities and sponsors local sporting clubs. And when local venues are under pressure, as they have been for a while now, the community feels it. That's why this legislation matters.
It's not just economic policy; it's community policy. Our hospitality sector has been riding wave after wave of pressure and a pandemic that hit venues harder than almost any other industry. They had supply chain shocks.
They had rising input costs, from energy to transport to ingredients to labour, during the pandemic. Today, an automatic excise indexation that exists in high-inflation years hits small businesses right in the margins. For a small pub or club, another automatic jump in the excise, that little bit of extra margin, can mean the difference between hiring another worker or cutting back their hours and between keeping the price of a pint stable or having to raise prices again on customers who are already feeling it.
These aren't abstract pressures; these are day-to-day realities for thousands of family owned venues across the country. We heard this. We listened and we acted.
Publicans, brewers and small businesses that operate at these venues asked for relief, and this is precisely what these bills deliver. The bills will pause the automatic increase in excise on draught beer for two years, starting 1 August 2025. It will apply to kegs and containers used in pubs and clubs that are between eight and 48 litres.
This is targeted and is designed to support venues where people go out and recreate, venues that support draught beer, helping to manage their costs and facilitate jobs in our local communities, all while keeping prices steady. It's a practical step to help local venues stay successful and continue to be the place where communities come together. There are around 10,000 hospitality venues that stand to benefit from this two-year pause.
About 75 per cent of those hotels and clubs are small family-run businesses. As someone who comes from a small-business background—not in the pub or club sector—I'm proud that this government is making this part of our policy offering to them. It is support for small businesses right across the country.
Small businesses employ local people. They support local footy clubs, they host charity days and they give young people their first job. In total, 160,000 Australians work in hospo and brewing sectors, and that is all connected to beer.
This measure gives those small venues a bit of breathing space to stabilise, to plan, to reinvest and to keep their staff on. In Bennelong, where many hospitality businesses operate on tight margins, certainty matters. It matters to the workers behind the bar, to the chefs in the kitchen and to the restaurants that are also businesses within businesses that operate out of these clubs.
The more people come to these pubs and clubs, the better it is for them. Just to show how connected to our community these pubs and clubs are, I'd like to give a shout-out to some of the amazing venues in Bennelong: the Eastwood Hotel, who have recently signed up to sponsor the Eastwood Rugby Club down the road; the Bizzo, which hosts the Eastwood Chamber of Commerce; and Moko Eastwood, which runs a great trivia night.
Mr Thompson: And an election party! Mr LAXALE: And, yes, I have had an election party there, too! I'll take that interjection.
We've got Ryedales Tavern in West Ryde, right opposite the station, where I know people drop in to have a beer after work and meet with their mates. We've got West Ryde Hotel. It used to be called Mary's.
They do a great job. They've got a great venue out the back that community groups can hire for free at their local pub. We've got the Royal Hotel in Ryde, right in the centre near the bus stop.
I know that a lot of tradies go there after work to catch up with their mates and have a cold beer. We've got the Ubar at the university. I'm way too old to go to the Ubar now.
That's one that I absolutely avoid, but I'm sure they do a great business. We've got the people at the Ranch, who do a great job supporting local sporting clubs. They've hosted a function or two of mine, bringing our community together.
They do a fantastic job. The Governor Hotel recently hosted a great forum for Labor for Housing, as well as one of the candidate forums run by the local business chamber. They provide a community service as well.
North Ryde RSL do great things. They host sporting clubs up there—a lot of sporting clubs are run under the North Ryde RSL banner. You've got the Sawdust Hotel in Gladesville.
The Hunters Hill Hotel is a real meeting point for the local community, and it was only a few days ago that the local community from Hunters Hill and nearby St Joseph's College met there after a really tragic event. They went to the Hunters Hill Hotel to celebrate the life of a young man who lost his life too soon. They were able to gather there and commemorate together.
There is the Bayview in Gladesville. I was there the other week playing trivia and came third. It's a great local venue to connect with local communities.
We've got the Woolwich Pier Hotel—a great place to have a lunch and meet with mates. I'm going to go through each one here, so I have a few minutes left. I'm going to go through each one, and I have a few more minutes to go before the member for Hunter.
We've got the Longueville Hotel, a really great establishment in the middle of Lane Cove. The Diddy hosts great trivia as well—a shout-out to Thomas Shanahan who used to run the trivia up there—and you can get a good meal. I know a lot of locals from Longueville who go up there and have a great time.
Gladesville RSL have just done a big renovation and support the local gymnastics club over there. We've got the Alcott and the Deckhouse down on Woolwich Pier. These are businesses connected to our community, and this bill is about supporting them.
It is helping our local pubs and clubs. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): Point of order? Mr Hill: No, I'm seeking to make an intervention.
Under standing order 66A, I was wondering if I could make a brief intervention and ask the member for Bennelong just to repeat the list of local venues so we've got them clearly fixed in our heads. Mr LAXALE: I am happy to. We've got the Eastwood Hotel, the Bizzo, Moko, Ryedales Tavern, West Ryde Hotel and the Royal Hotel in Ryde.
We've got Club Ryde, the Ubar, the Ranch, the Governor, North Ryde RSL, the Sawdust Hotel, Hunters Hill Hotel, Bayview Gladesville, the Woolwich Pier Hotel, the Longueville Hotel, the Diddy, Gladesville RSL, the Lane Cove Bowling and Recreational Club—I missed that one, but it's just in the list there for you, Assistant Minister—the Alcott and the Deckhouse.
This is good policy for good local businesses. I'd encourage all in this House to support this bill. Then, once that excise freeze comes through, from 1 August 2025, go and celebrate with your community down at your local pub or club.