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

I thank the member for Flynn for his question. The answer is that 20 of our most respected economists have had some very sensible things to say overnight about a resources super profits tax, and I will talk about that in a moment. But there has also been some more commentary today, particularly from the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition said today on Alan Jones’s program that miners were paying ‘more than their fair share’—more than their fair share. Now, we have been talking about this for about a month. There has been a vigorous debate about modernising our tax system when it comes to the mining industry. There is a vigorous debate about the tax, about its rate and about its design. But I think there is now one thing that almost everybody in the debate—except the Leader of the Opposition, Clive Palmer and one or two others—accepts, and that is that there is the capacity in the mining industry to pay more. It is universally recognised that the mining industry should be paying more because it has not been paying its fair share.

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