Lindsay Tanner (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Kingston for her question. It is very important to counter misrepresentations regarding the government’s tax reform package, and there are an awful lot of misrepresentations going around, both from the opposition and from sections of the mining industry. I mentioned a couple yesterday and I have a few more to mention today. The Minerals Council have had ads on radio recently, and they feature a self-funded retiree saying that the government’s tax plan:

… may be good for paying off the Government’s debt, but it’s not good for me.

Well, there is one problem with this assertion, one big problem: the proceeds from the resource super profits tax are being dedicated to cut company tax, to cut taxes on small business, to cut taxes on superannuation, to invest in infrastructure and to ensure that people who have deductions of up to $1,000 do not have to put tax returns in.

If you want some evidence of this, I have a very reliable source to support the government’s assertion, and that is in fact the opposition. When the opposition announced its purported savings package a week or two ago it put out a table headed ‘Coalition savings’. This is a double-sided table, and it has a list of savings that are specified as being linked to the RSPT. Guess what they are:

Early start to company tax rate cut for small business

Lowering the company tax rate

Small business instant asset write-off …

Resource exploration refundable tax offset

State Infrastructure Fund—

et cetera. There is a total of the savings that are involved in not proceeding with these tax reform proposals, and guess what that adds up to. It adds up to almost $12 billion—the amount the resource super profits tax is proposed to raise over that time. So the opposition nail their own misrepresentation in their own savings announcement.

The second example is a statement made by the head of the Minerals Council, Mr Mitch Hooke, last week, with respect to resources that are in the ground, minerals and resources that are owned by the Australian people. He said that they are ‘only dirt’ when they are in the ground. I have to say, it is great to see the noble and ancient art of alchemy making a comeback—because, according to the head of the Minerals Council, the process of digging this ‘dirt’ out of the ground magically transforms it into gold, or nickel or some other precious metal, but with a twist, because traditionally alchemy was about transforming base metals into gold but, according to the head of the Minerals Council, he can transform dirt into gold. That is some misrepresentation.

Finally, we have the ever-present fifth shadow minister for finance in this parliamentary term, the member for Goldstein. On Sky News yesterday he claimed ‘there are people already losing jobs because of the RSPT’. He was then asked to provide examples. He said:

Ah, yes, there is people, um, I can’t cite them here but they’ve been told to me.

What that does indicate is that there is a giant misrepresentation campaign going on here, both by sections of the mining industry and by the opposition.

The government is concerned to ensure that there is a balanced debate about these very important tax reform proposals and there are constructive negotiations with the mining industry about the details of the proposals, because at the bottom of all this is a simple proposition: to ensure that the Australian community gets full value for its resources that are dug up and sold by the mining industry for prices that are way higher than they have traditionally been, and that that value can be transformed into value for Australian businesses that create jobs and generate wealth all around the country across all sectors. That is what this tax reform proposal is about. That is what the government is committed to doing. And that is what the opposition is committed to tearing down.

See this speech in context