Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Leader of the National Party for his question. As far as Mr De Lacy is concerned, my recollection is that he is Chairman of Macarthur Coal. I seem to recall that, when the Queensland government last increased coal royalties, the Chairman of Macarthur Coal objected to that as well. You would expect the chairman of any resource company like that to have a problem with an increase in tax because he would be out there arguing the interest of his particular view and people in industry are doing that at the moment.

The other part of the Leader of the National Party’s question goes to the overall incidence of taxation. I draw to his attention the contents of the Treasury minute to the Treasurer which notes that the average company tax rate in the mining sector was 17 per cent in the decade of 2004-05, comparing it to construction at 19 per cent, transport at 27 per cent and finance at 29 per cent. One of the reasons—I say this to the member of the National Party in particular—why he should be getting behind this proposal is that a tax on profits is in fact the right way to go. In fact, he could reflect on some of the observations of one of his illustrious predecessors, Tim Fischer, a former Leader of the National Party, in the debate on the resources rent tax back in the nineties. Tim Fischer announced that a coalition would not be opposing the RRT legislation. He went on to say:

The clear advantage of an RRT over the old excise and royalties system must be carefully weighed but it is nevertheless an advantage which allows investment decisions to be based more on the quality of the resource.

So said Tim Fischer about the RRT back then; so said Peter Costello about the PRRT back then. I say to the Leader of the National Party that when he embraces this position of opposition to an RSPT he is standing in the way of tax breaks for small business, he is standing in the way of better super for the working people in his electorate and he is standing in the way of funding infrastructure. I know how keen the Leader of the National Party is on infrastructure because the Minister for Education, the Deputy Prime Minister, has just given me some happy snaps of the Leader of the National Party—

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