Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

This mining tax is another example of this government's policy failure—another disaster, another mess. But it is also a tax that will have particular disadvantages for people who live in regional Australia. It puts their businesses, families and entire communities in a no-win situation. If the tax becomes law, regional communities will the lose the jobs and economic prosperity created by mining development and mineral processing. Most of this industry that is about to be subjected to a new supertax is located in regional communities. The processing sector is also generally in regional communities. In many places, this is the major part of a regional economy. So this is a tax that is going to be particularly focused on regional Australia.

The government has said that any new investment in services in regional areas is dependent on introducing this great big new tax. So, if it does not pass, vital regional development projects will simply not be funded. This is really a shabby sleight of hand from a government promising goodies that it cannot afford, based on a tax that has not passed the parliament and that, if it does, will hurt regional Australia hard. It is lose-lose: either we lose jobs or we lose the promised regional funding activities. In fact, as things currently stand, Labor has already committed $916 million from its Regional Infrastructure Fund—to be funded out of the mining tax—but there is only $400 million in the kitty. The government is calling now for applications for new projects, but there is no money there to actually fund the successful applicants. This is already showing some of the same symptoms of the fraud in the last round of the regional development grants. It was simply a fraud, with most applications being refused altogether and, for states like Queensland, not a single project having been approved west of the Great Dividing Range. In other states, of course, nearly all of the money went to Labor electorates, even though Labor represents only a very small proportion of regional Australia. That means that a lot of communities stand to be dudded.

What we see with the mining tax is a shameless cash-grab from a desperate and financially incompetent government. Mining companies already pay royalties to state governments, a system that has been in place for 100 years. The mining industry and its growth are vitally important to this country. It provides work for over 780,000 Australians—187,000 people directly and a further 600,000 in support industries. The minerals resource industry accounts for more than seven per cent of Australia's economy and has invested more than $125 billion in Australia in the last 10 years.

The mining industry's contribution to the Australian economy is now $121 billion a year. It generates $138 billion a year in export income. That is over half our total goods and services exports. The industry spends $35.2 billion on new capital investment, $5.7 billion on exploration and $4.2 billion on research and development. Combining company taxes and royalties at $23.4 billion, the carbon tax at $3 billion and now the mining resource rent tax, the mining industry will be footing a massive $30 billion tax bill. But this is not the first tax this industry pays. It is on top of taxes like company tax, fringe benefits tax, goods and services tax in the form of net refunds, excise duty, petroleum resource rent tax, capital gains tax, luxury car tax and all the other taxes that are imposed on Australian business. At the state level there are royalties, payroll tax, land tax, motor vehicle registration, insurance duty, other transaction costs and the list goes on.

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