Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak today on this matter of public importance about the adverse effects of the government's policies on the mining industry in Australia. Dare I say that we are here today because of what this government did under the leadership of the former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and the Treasurer, Wayne Swan. The history of this is that the Treasurer, over the Christmas break, read the Henry tax review and out of the dozens of recommendations he picked 2½ of them and one of them was this so-called mining tax. The Rudd government's first incarnation of this tax, which was called the resource super profits tax, was condemned across the world. This tax on the Australian mining sector was the brainchild of those geniuses the Treasurer and former Prime Minister Rudd. I thank them for that, because that certainly played out well in seats like mine in Western Australia. Keep it up, because it really goes down well in resource areas where they know what is happening. This resource super profits tax really damaged the Labor brand. It really damaged the former Prime Minister, to the extent that the factional bosses whipped out their knives and executed him in June last year. It was a political execution, dare I say.

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