Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

This is the fear campaign in full swing. We have seen it on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, we have seen it on industrial relations and now we are seeing it on a tax which has been designed in consultation with industry. We have not seen the final output of all of that. We have put forward a framework for a 40 per cent resource rent tax—and what are they doing? They are running a fear campaign.

What we are doing is the responsible thing. We are sitting down and having a discussion with the mining industry. We have done modelling. The independent modelling has been published. The growth figures for that have been published. Yet somehow this man here expects that he can be credible by asking in here what the impact will be in two years time on fertiliser. I will be happy to answer all those questions when we have been through our consultation process, when we have finalised all of the detail with industry.

We are happy to debate this tax. I will tell you why: because everybody over there is happy to see the Australian people not get the full value for their mining resources. As the Prime Minister was saying before, at the beginning of this decade there was $1 in royalties for every $3 of mining profits. Now it is one in seven. That is an enormous loss to the Australian people. We are sitting down in good faith, putting forward a responsible proposal that will give the Australian people fair value that we can invest in superannuation, that we can use to cut the company tax.

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