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

I refer to the famous pie charts in the Treasurer’s Economic Note of 9 May. In response to a question on notice in Senate estimates, Treasury provided aggregate data underlying the pie charts, and there are some unusual aspects to the data. Comparisons with ABS data show the Treasury estimates of resource rents were lower than the ABS measure of EBITDA—earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization—for the years 2001-05 through to 2007-08. Now, that is what you would expect: resource rents would be only a portion of earnings. But interestingly, in the information released by Treasury in 2008-09, Treasury’s estimate of resource rents—$91.2 billion—actually exceeds the ABS measure of earnings, which was $74.1 billion.

So Treasury’s estimate of resource rents more than doubles in 2008-09 to $91 billion from $40 billion—a massive jump. And yet the company tax only increases by 46 per cent, to $11.9 billion from $8.1 billion. My question is: why did company tax not keep pace with the increase in resource rents?

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