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

I am pleased to speak on the adverse impact of government policies and the management of Australia's sovereign risk profile. I do so because it is very important to Australia and particularly to my electorate, with so many workers in Canning being employed in the fly-in fly-out side of the mining industry and the resources industry in general, where there are also drive-in drive-out workers. In this House my electorate is second to the member for Brand's in the number of metropolitan workers that fly-in fly-out or drive-in drive-out, so this is a very important issue.

What is sovereign risk? It is when people and companies see a country as a risky place to invest because the government is making the country less stable. We have become less stable for a number of reasons. The two main reasons are this government introducing a carbon tax and a mining tax. These taxes were introduced by the Gillard Labor government and, dare I say it, the former Labor government, the Rudd government. Prime Minister Gillard had an opportunity to do something about this and she did. Before the last election she said there would be no carbon tax under the government she led. Seven days before that the Treasurer, the deputy leader, said the same thing on The7.30 Report. Within days, when they were set to form a government, they told a total mistruth about this issue and worked towards a carbon tax. Those sorts of backflips do not engender any confidence in anybody wanting to invest in a country. These are the backflips you would expect from Third World countries, not a First World country.

It is ignorant to believe that there is no evidence for this. I say at the beginning, unlike those opposite who say, 'You're preaching doom and gloom,' I do not preach doom and gloom at all. This side of the House does not preach doom and gloom about the opportunities for this country. What we are saying is we could be doing so much better. We have the opportunity to be an outstanding economy and a destination for investment capital.

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