Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw. Those members opposite from South Australia ought to have been ashamed at standing up behind the Leader of the Opposition when he was doing his press conference yesterday and making patently false claims about the reason for the Olympic Dam expansion being shelved. You might say this is a bad MPI based on an untruth. I want to thank the member for North Sydney, who has now scurried out of the chamber, for the opportunity to have this debate, because it is a debate that is much needed. At the heart of this are some bizarre and discredited claims that those opposite have been making for many months about the mining tax and that those opposite have been making for many months about the carbon price—that these measures are somehow reducing investment.

Let us just have a look at the impact of the mining tax. The Australian quoted Gloucester Coal chairman, James MacKenzie—an eminent figure in the mining industry—as saying:

In the last 12 months I've done two overseas roadshows with investors for Gloucester Coal and I haven't heard a grizzle about the MRRT and carbon tax.

You can see from the pipeline of investment into the mining industry in our country the nonsense of these discredited claims those opposite have been making about the impact of the mining tax or the carbon price. Just go back to 10 July last year, when we announced the framework for the carbon price which we have now legislated and which, I am happy to say, came into force on 1 July this year. On 10 July the Leader of the Opposition made the same sorts of claims he has been making about the coal industry for a long time, saying that the carbon price is going to kill the coal industry. The very next day, Peabody made what was the largest ever bid for an Australian coalmining operation when it bid over $5 billion for MacArthur Coal. That is what gives the lie to the nonsense that those opposite have been going on with about the effects of the mining tax and the carbon price.

Let us just go to the other outrageous claims behind the stunt of this particular MPI that we see today. It is a desperate attempt to justify the crazy claims that were made yesterday by the Leader of the Opposition about BHP Billiton's decision to shelve the Olympic Dam expansion. It is a crazy claim to suggest that somehow—and this is the direct claim made by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday—it was a result of the mining tax or the carbon price. BHP Billiton made a statement to the exchange.

Opposition members interjecting—

I know those opposite are not particularly familiar with what the requirements are for the stock exchange or what listed companies like BHP are required by law to do. They are required by law to accurately and truthfully inform the exchange so as to inform the investment community of Australia and the world of the factors underlying their decisions. That is why, when they made their statement to the exchange and when the CEO of BHP Billiton yesterday held a press conference, BHP Billiton said absolutely clearly that the reasons for the decision were softer commodity prices and higher capital costs. The company's statement to the exchange did not mention the carbon price, and the CEO, Marius Kloppers, did not attribute the decision to the carbon price in his teleconference. In fact, what he said yesterday was:

The decision is almost wholly associated with in the first instance capital costs.

Then he said:

As you know the tax environment for this particular project has not changed at all since we started working on it six or seven years ago.

Then we read today other quotes from the CEO of BHP Billiton, Marius Kloppers, in the West Australian, which reported: 'But Mr Kloppers denied that the taxes had anything to do with the Olympic Dam decision.' There is not too much to not understand about that. I will quote directly from what he said:

The MRRT only covers coal and iron ore—not copper, not gold and not uranium—so the tax situation for this project has not changed.

And I quote again:

What has changed is the capital cost of construction. What has changed also is that post-Fukushima there is a different and still developing outlook on uranium.

So those opposite are so desperate to make false claims about the effect of the mining tax, so desperate to make false claims about the effect of the carbon price, that the Leader of the Opposition thinks he can blame any bad news—anything adverse that happens in an economic sense in Australia—on the mining tax or the carbon price. There is nothing in that statement by the CEO of BHP Billiton that leaves any room for doubt. After the Leader of the Opposition stood up and made his false claims about the real reason for the shelving of the Olympic Dam expansion, CEO Marius Kloppers has stood up and made it absolutely clear that it is not the mining tax and it is not the carbon price. But we should not be surprised by this Leader of the Opposition.

This is a Leader of the Opposition who will say and do anything to further his interests. He cannot be trusted—and we know that to be a fact. We need only recall the comments made by the member for New England in this chamber last week. The member for New England confirmed that the Leader of the Opposition 'begged' him to support the coalition to form a government after the last election. And, as the member for New England said, this Leader of the Opposition was prepared to do 'anything'—and we know that includes putting a price on carbon, including introducing a carbon tax if it came to that, or introducing an emissions trading scheme.

And why wouldn't he? This Leader of the Opposition, along with every living Liberal leader, has supported putting a price on carbon and has supported an emissions trading scheme—and, of course, that was the policy he supported when he was a member of cabinet in 2007 and that is the policy that the Liberal Party took to the 2007 election.

Another one of the Leader of the Opposition's bizarre, false claims is that the carbon price would be a wrecking ball across the economy. He is the wrecking ball, and he and his party are the source of the uncertainty in the economy that he so deplores. It is available to him to give certainty, to get back to the program, to get back to the policy that the Liberal Party supported in 2007 and indeed supported right through to almost the end of 2009—which was, of course, to introduce an emissions trading scheme in Australia.

You have to ask the Leader of the Opposition whether this statement that he has been making about the carbon price is one of his so-called core promises—is it 'the gospel truth', is it 'written in blood'? Whatever you call it, these are false statements. We have seen again that this is a Leader of the Opposition who cracks under the pressure of a serious interview—it is no wonder he avoids them like the plague. I will quote something that the Leader of the Opposition said:

I know politicians are going to be judged on everything they say but sometimes in the heat of discussion you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark, which is one of the reasons why the statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth are those carefully prepared, scripted remarks.

So who would know when this Leader of the Opposition was telling the truth? Who would know whether it was true or not when he admitted to Leigh Sales that he had not read the statement by BHP Billiton before he went out and held a press conference about the reasons for the shelving of Olympic Dam? Who would know whether what he is saying is true—because he himself is all over the place, he barely knows what he was saying and he is someone who is prepared to talk down the economy. I say again that he delights in job losses, in any closure and in any setback that business experiences—because he believes it suits his political interests.

We are not, as the member for North Sydney suggested, totally indifferent to the Olympic Dam mine expansion being shelved—far from it. We are working with BHP Billiton, just as the South Australian government is working with BHP Billiton, to see whether or not the expansion of the Olympic Dam mine can take place in some other way—because, of course, that was the starting point of the BHP Billiton announcement yesterday.

In the time that remains to me I want to talk about something other than the direct effect of the mining tax or the carbon price, and that is the state of our economy. You will not hear those opposite actually talking about the state of our economy. Under this government, the Australian economy continues to outperform other advanced economies. That is because of our investment in skills, our investment in infrastructure and our investment in education. It is because we acted to stimulate the economy when we needed to.

In the year to March—this is another fact that those opposite choke on—our economy grew by 4.3 per cent. That is more than twice as fast as the major advanced economies as a whole. So far this year, our economy has created almost 100,000 jobs. In aggregate, that is over 800,000 jobs since we came to government. Unemployment is at 5.2 per cent. This is while in parts of Europe we have mass unemployment—millions of people, regrettably, thrown out of work and stuck there. How different could Australia be over the year to March from that particular situation! Over the year to March, private business investment has grown by 20 per cent—another fact that those opposite choke on—to be now at its highest percentage of GDP in 40 years. And in the past year the advanced stage of the investment pipeline in resources has grown by nearly $90 billion to be a staggering 350 per cent larger now than when those opposite were last in government.

And these increases over the past year have come in the full knowledge that we are putting a price on carbon, that we were going to legislate last November—which we did—and that, having legislated, the price on carbon would come in. The most recent economic data—all of it, every indicator you care to look at—puts a wrecking ball not through the Australian economy but through the Leader of the Opposition's aggressive and untruthful scare campaign. We are not, as everybody in this House now knows, seeing the predicted results of the carbon price. (Time expired)

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