Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. This comes down to trust. This comes down to the ability of the Australian people to trust their Prime Minister and it comes down to raw numbers. Numbers in the Corporations Act and the ASX Listing Rules require people to tell the truth to the Stock Exchange and investors. So, when the head of Rio and the head of BHP and the head of so many mining companies come out and say, ‘These are the real numbers, this is the impact on our balance sheet, this is the impact on our profit and loss,’ they have an obligation to tell the truth. It is only a shame that the government and the Prime Minister do not have the same legal obligation. Why? It is because the government has sought, at every point in this debate, to deliberately mislead the Australian people. It has misled the Australian people about the true impact and shape of the tax. It has misled the Australian people about the numbers behind old Swannie’s notes. It has misled the Australian people in the ads by deliberately excluding company tax, which has increased dramatically over the last few years. Even in question time today, the Prime Minister sought to deliberately mislead the Australian people when he said, ‘Whichever way you cut the cake—whether it is on royalties, whether it is on company tax and against all ranges of measures—the bottom line is that because of the current structure of the taxation regime the return to the Australian people via the taxation system is infinitely less than it was a decade ago.’

The facts are that royalties a decade ago were $1.2 billion. Last year they were $7.5 billion. A decade ago company tax was $1.4 billion. Last year, it was an estimated $14 billion. That is a total increase of tenfold in the contribution of the mining sector, which makes a lie of the Prime Minister in question time today. But we should not be surprised. This is a Prime Minister that had all sorts of moral courage before the last election—moral courage when he was challenged by the Australian people to reveal his innermost character. He was asked to be honest, to be fair dinkum, to be real with the Australian people and the Australian people took him at his word. They took him at his word when he said that advertising prior to an election was a cancer on democracy. I know this man understands the real impact of cancer, as so many of us do. To use that word flippantly in relation to democracy is a significant issue, because it clearly illustrates the fact that the Prime Minister will use whatever words are available at the time to emphasise his real commitment. The problem is that we do not know what his real commitment is. Does he believe in climate change? Is it truly the greatest moral, social and economic challenge of our lifetime? Are you truly a political coward if you do not act immediately to support an ETS? And are you truly engaging in supporting a cancer on democracy if you advertise just before an election?

What has happened now is that the government has been caught out. Last week we saw this policy was framed by Google. The government went to North America and got a working paper from academics. It went to Treasury and got a draft note handed around, all to justify the mining tax, and now it is seeking, through advertising—through taxpayers’ money—to deliberately mislead the Australian people about the true impact of this tax. It says a lot about the character of the Prime Minister. Anything we say on this side of the House will never have the impact of the words of our own Prime Minister being brought back to him. All the commentary, anything said by a critic, means nothing compared to the raw information that has come from the Prime Minister’s mouth at one time and now completely denied by him. He blames us for his hypocrisy. He blames us for his misleading the Australian people. He blames us for everything that has gone wrong in his life. I say to you, Prime Minister: you stand condemned not by us and not by the commentators; you stand condemned by the Australian people and, even more importantly than that, you stand condemned by your own words.

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