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9 August 2004
Hon. John Howard
Prime Minister of Australia
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600
Dear Prime Minister,
On behalf of the Tasmanian seafood industry we welcome the Federal Governments recent policy announcement to provide business credits for petrol used for off-road purposes.
The announcement is recognition of our commercial fishing industry long held view that as excise is essentially a tax to fund road infrastructure the excise should not be payable by fishermen for fuel used off-road in commercial fishing activities.
However whilst the policy is a step in the right direction we believe the timetable to allow the excise credit should be accelerated.
This is an important issue for our industry with hundreds of Tasmanian commercial fishing families and thousands across Australia in mainly coastal areas that would benefit with the removal of excise from petrol used off-road.
In light of this we seek your support for an investigation into whether the timeframe for the fuel rebate system could be brought forward such that a 50% rebate could be applied no later than 1 July 2006 with a 100% rebate no later than 1 July 2010.
We believe an acceleration of the timetable to these dates would achieve two important outcomes. Firstly it would accelerate the removal of an unjust tax providing more immediate benefits to thousands of commercial fishing families in regional Australia. Secondly it would dispel the cynicism surrounding the current announcement by removing the "vote for me twice" argument and instead providing more immediate benefits in the upcoming term of government.
We note also that an accelerated removal of the excise burden would be particularly timely with many fishing businesses, both small and large, struggling with the increased costs associated with meeting the stringent environmental requirements made compulsory by the Commonwealth under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and suffering increased competition from low priced imports in the face of a strong Australian dollar.
We believe there are good reasons to accelerate the removal of excise from petrol used in off-road purposes and as an initial step support an investigation looking into how this could best be achieved which would be warmly welcomed by the commercial fishing industry throughout coastal Tasmania.
We look forward to your earliest possible advice and would welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue with any of your relevant officers.
Yours sincerely
R.K. LISTER
Chief Executive
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