Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Finance Minister on Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

Does the opposition know there are big oil and gas fields there? You should go there. They produce a lot of oil and a lot gas. Under what? The PRRT, which applies to Bass Strait. And there are projects elsewhere in Victoria and off Western Australia that are producing under the PRRT. I can claim this, that the majority of the following projects are PRRT producing projects—that is, they are operating under that regime: Laminaria, Thylacine, Basker-Manta-Gummy in Bass Strait—a big place—Minerva, Patricia Baleen, Taroom, Yolla, Athena, Cliff Head, Einfield, Vincent, Griffin, John Brookes, Mutineer-Exeter, Reindeer, Stag, Wandoo and Woollybutt. There are more, but a majority of those at least are producing under the PRRT regime. And what did we get 25 years ago? The same mantra, the same scare campaign: it is going to drive exploration out; it is going to be bad for our small businesses that work with and service the major petroleum companies in this country; it is going to be bad for anyone who is servicing a small business, servicing BHP, servicing Esso; it is going to be the end of exploration in this country.

So we have heard it all before. And then the opposition comes into this parliament to create the impression that there are no currently producing projects under the PRRT regime. That is completely false. Have they ever heard of the Gorgon gas project? It was given the go-ahead under the PRRT regime. Yet this opposition says that a profits based tax will smash the mining industry. Well, why didn’t the profits based tax smash Gorgon? Why didn’t the profits based tax smash the Pluto project? Why didn’t that happen? They said 25 years ago that that was what would happen.

The member for Tangney when he was on the doors said he was misquoted, but what he actually said was that he did not accept that the Australian people own the minerals of this country. He said the state governments own them, not the Australian people. This is the sort of philosophical divide with which we must deal. Members of the coalition do not even accept the proposition that the Australian people own the minerals. They say, ‘It’s the states and the mining companies who own the minerals and there is no right for the Commonwealth to tax them at all.’

The opposition are a shambles, with a shambolic, chaotic scare campaign because they have three different views on three different days. The first view was expressed by someone who is very famous now, and has become even more famous in the last day and a half, and that is the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. When she was asked two days ago about whether mining companies are paying their fair share of tax she said, ‘I believe that they are paying a fair amount of tax.’ The next day Senator Barnaby Joyce was asked specifically about the deputy opposition leader’s comment that they are paying a fair share of tax and he said:

No, not at all—we can have a sensible negotiation … To say there is not the capacity to change the tax is not right.

Boom! There goes the case. There goes the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, blown up again by Senator Barnaby Joyce. He went on to say:

I’m prepared for people to look at the mining sector to pay more tax.

Boom! There we go again. Then he says:

Let’s go through the proper negotiation.

Boom! Another one. The old depth charges are coming in left, right and centre, blowing the deputy opposition leader out of the water. We know why, of course—because he had a very stinky nasty blue with the member for Goldstein, who had said of one of our ministers that he had ‘done a Barnaby’. Barnaby Joyce had a lot to say about that. He made rather derogatory comments of the member for Goldstein and finished by saying, ‘Bugger him!’ So unity is a myth on the coalition side.

Today, to cap it all off, we got the final word, because the opposition leader wanted to clarify the chaotic, confused scare campaign as to whether the mining industry pays a fair amount of tax or whether the mining industry could pay more tax. Do you know what he said? He said:

Any fair-minded analysis of the evidence would suggest that mining companies … are paying more than their fare share of tax.

So what is the offer? It is a tax cut to the mining industry from the opposition leader. He is saying now that they are paying more than their fair share of tax.

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