Passenger Movement Charge Amendment Bill 2026

Mr LITTLEPROUD (Maranoa) (10:54): This is a tax on tourism—an $82 billion industry that isn't a 'nice to have'; it's a 'must have' for our country. This government has become so desperate, in their quest to continue to raise revenue in any way they possibly can, they are now turning again to the passenger movement charge. We have seen a 33 per cent increase in this charge in less than three years, raising $700 million in the course of undertaking this.

The fact that they have done this increase—even Treasury's own aviation elasticity analysis says that a one per cent increase in airfares translates into a 0.5 per cent reduction in passenger movement into our country in the short term and 2.5 per cent in the medium term. That translates to 38,000 fewer passengers coming into Australia in the short term and 190,000 fewer visitors coming into this country in the medium term.

That is people that are not coming to this country because we have become uncompetitive. The reality is, this is just another tax. They believe that they can get away with it because Australians aren't effectively going to get caught up in this, but they think that, now, they'll be able to tax tourists coming into this country even further.

But that has a flow-on effect through the economy and the $82 billion industry that is tourism in this country. That is the short-sightedness of this tax on tourism. We've got to get back to first principles about why the passenger movement charge was actually put in place.

It was put in place, originally, for the processing of passengers for biosecurity and Border Force enforcement on those borders. And I, as a former agriculture minister, am very sceptical about—between Border Force and biosecurity—processing a passenger costing us $80 a head to get through the Border Force and aqueous arrangements in any port in this country.

So this is, in many respects, just a tax grab. It's not about a cost recovery model for the extra cost burden of actually bringing passengers and the screening of those passengers through our ports across this country. The reality is, the government has finally undertaken the electronic movement of being able to have a declaration card, one which Peter Dutton, the former home affairs minister, and me, as agriculture minister, started back in 2020 and were nearly on the verge of introducing before the 2022 federal election.

And this government has only got to a point of actually being able to introduce it now and start it now, which would actually streamline the ability of our Border Force and biosecurity to have better intelligence around their profiling of who comes into this country and where to put their resources when people come into our borders. That means that we get a more efficient border.

That means we get better recovery of the costs. How they are justifying any increase in this charge when we have already made those investments around electronic declarations, and in fact, for the biosecurity piece, we're investing in 3D X-ray machines in New Zealand to undertake a trial where your bags would be given through an X-ray scan, in 3D, that have artificial intelligence that could pick up plant matter or bio matter that would then marry up with electronic declaration cards, meaning that we are going to save millions of dollars at the border in directing resources where we needed to—where the threat actually was posed by those that come into this country and feed into the intelligence that we gather in profiling people coming into this country.

So we have got efficiencies already being built into our border systems, and yet this government continues to go down a track of charging and taxing tourists coming into this country—the $82 billion industry that isn't a 'nice to have'. It's a 'must have'. When you look at this budget that they've just handed down, this government, they've stripped out $50 million to Tourism Australia, a body that is passionately advocating for international tourists to come to this country to bring in new money into our economy every year.

To rip $50 million out of it and then tax international tourists extra to come into this country—you just have to wonder what the logic is behind this. There is just a desperate bid by this government to fill its coffers, because they are effectively sending us broke, and no-one is off limits in their taxation—how they are going to try and recover more money to spend more of your money.

They're now going after international tourists. It's important to understand the reasoning behind this, but there is none given. That is why industry groups are bewildered by this.

It is important that we understand this will have a flow-on effect. If you take 38,000 overseas tourists coming into this country out of the economy then that has a flow-on effect. If you take 190,000 out, over the medium term, that has a significant impact on the Australian economy.

That $82 billion pie gets smaller, and that is what the Australian economy cannot afford. There's a human toll to this. There's a human toll for tourist operators, cafe owners, motel owners who will be impacted by this.

There is a toll on their ability to pay their bills because we have a government that is trying to reduce the number of people coming into this country on a tourist visa. They're going to go home and not impact our NOM number at all. There should be no worries about how a tourist on a visa comes into this country.

They have all come for the right reasons and they all spend their money here. And so for the government to do this, it will have a significant impact on our economy in capital cities, and in regional Australia in particular. So when you see this money being stripped out of the economy, and then adding a tax to it, you wonder what is the government's thinking and its belief in the importance of tourism in this country.

This government needs to understand what it has done. And it hasn't even done a regulatory impact statement. Any good government that would impose this sort of tax on an industry as significant as tourism would have done a regulatory impact statement.

It would have understood, as the Treasury modelling for aviation elasticity showed, that a one per cent increase in an airfare cost translates into a half-a-per-cent reduction of tourists coming to Australia in the short term and 2½ per cent in the medium term. I would have thought this government, before imposing this, would have actually done a regulatory impact statement.

That would have been the responsible thing to do, to engage with industry and to understand the secondary effects of putting an extra tax on international tourists coming into this country. That is what a responsible government would have done. Instead, we have a desperate government that is looking to raise any dollar it possibly can.

When you think about what $700 million could do in this country, I think most Australians would say, 'Look, it could go towards protecting our borders or, lo and behold, making sure there isn't a $5,000 cap on our veterans,' and you'd probably say that's all well and good. But there isn't any reasoning for this. This is a desperate tax grab—and you don't even have a regulatory impact statement!

In June alone, we saw a nine per cent reduction in international tourists, particularly from our hotspot markets like New Zealand and Japan. We are pitting ourselves against international competitors that we are not going to be able to compete with. That is because of the fuel costs and the increased costs to airlines, so then throwing this on top, without the proper regulatory basis around it, is just so short-sighted.

They need to do that regulatory impact statement to make sure the secondary effects are understood by the government. When Treasury alone are giving those warning signs, and the government to ignore that, it speaks volumes about the intent of this bill. This bill is about a desperate tax grab.

Unfortunately, I can see it in my own electorate. We don't have, even in western Queensland, a high number of international tourists. But the small number that does come here is important.

And when you think about the damage that this government has done to the drive market over the last 12 months—it spent $20 million advertising against the drive market. It put ads out telling us to pump up our tyres and take off our roof racks and created fuel anxiety right across this country. It's surprising we didn't have a roof buyback model from this government, that's how desperate it was in scaring Australians about how desperate it was.

The only problem was that the minister for energy didn't have an understanding of his own powers. Yes, there were some communities that were going without fuel because it all sat in the cities. He didn't realise he even had the power to get that fuel out and force the fuel companies to send it out into regional areas.

We are seeing the impacts of that in the tourism industry, and not just in western Queensland. We're not seeing those small amounts of international tourists come in because, firstly, they didn't think we had fuel and then, secondly, they thought the price was too high. I've seen the human toll of that.

I was in Charleville in May, and one of the motel owners there had already sacked three people because no-one was coming. I was in Birdsville on the weekend at the races. The numbers are down because there's no-one travelling out there, because they're scared.

This government scared them, and now it's taxing them, and that is a government that doesn't understand the importance of tourism. So we've got to get back to the first principle of exactly what this passenger movement charge was all about. It was about the processing of international tourists and Australians as they come back into our country, to make sure that we are protecting us from biosecurity risks and from contraband.

The fact is that we are moving away from that, because there is no way in the world that it is costing us $80 a head to process those people through our borders. There is no way in the world that it is costing us that, with what we have done with technology in biosecurity and Border Force. We have the profiling and intelligence that can bring those costs down and make sure that they are well directed.

But this is not about that at all. If it were, and if it were properly about the original intent of a passenger movement charge, it would be a further investment in biosecurity. It would be a further investment in Border Force and making sure they have the ability to keep our borders safe.

If that involved tackling the illicit drugs and nicotine that are coming into this country, we would have said, 'Well, at least they're putting it into something that's going towards making our borders stronger.' But it's not; this is just a tax grab. It's moving away from the original intent of what this whole passenger movement charge was about. And that's the disappointing thing.

It's a disappointing thing for an industry that's already on its knees, that has already seen a nine per cent reduction in June alone of international tourists. When Treasury modelling said this was going to have a significant impact on people coming in, why wasn't a regulatory impact statement done? Why wasn't it?

Because they knew what the outcome would be, that there would be a human toll to this, that we would see less people in this country and that we would see motels, cafes, pubs and clubs take the brunt of it. This government was all about style, not about substance. And that is what we are going to see from this—the unintended consequence.

So this government should actually have the courage to look the tourism industry in the eye and explain the why, because there is no why in this. There is no why that they can demonstrate, as to why they have lifted the passenger movement charge by 33 per cent in three years. That is a tax grab.

I would just say to this government: the men and women of this country that have had the courage of their own sweat and their own wallet to go and build tourist businesses and have motels and cafes out here are the human toll of this. They're the ones that will see 38,000 less people crossing our borders in the short term, and 190,000 in the medium term. They are the people that will pay the price of this, all because the government have become desperate, having been not only unable to manage our borders but also unable to manage our economy.