Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

That is far too hard. The reality is that, when you talk to the international financiers of the resources sector, they think Australia has gone crazy. They have seen a country that had it all in front of it, with a resources sector ready to supply the huge demand to the north of us, and it has just been ripped to pieces by a government that cannot manage its own money. I notice that the member for Isaacs did not mention the huge explosion in government debt when he was trying to talk to us about the economic management that we have seen. The reality is that every time this government overspends it turns to the mining sector to take money from it.

We have seen the carbon tax and we have heard the comments of Marius Kloppers on the impact that that had. For the benefit of the member for Kingston—I have remembered the name of her seat—I will read what Marius Kloppers said about the carbon tax:

But aside from that, all of the other things like increased operating cost, carbon taxes and so on have all conspired to turn this from a fairly low-cost environment and therefore competitive to a higher cost environment.

That was Marius Kloppers, the CEO of BHP Billiton, on 6 June 2012. There are other quotes here from Jac Nasser, who is an extraordinarily successful Australian CEO who headed Ford globally for a time. He just shakes his head in dismay at the way this government has taxed and treated the Australian resource sector.

In the time allocated I will not be able to explain the fact that these projects are funded by these companies themselves and they are funded out of profits, and so when you introduce extra taxes on profits you reduce the capability of those companies to fund new projects themselves. The reality is that these changes are impacting not only on the profitability of companies and therefore their ability to fund these projects but also on the investment profile in Australia.

The reality is that yesterday we saw a clear signal, accepted by the Minister for Resources and Energy and Minister for Tourism, that under a Labor government the resources boom is over, that under a Labor government resources companies simply do not want to invest. It is not just Olympic Dam and it is not just Outer Harbour. It is coalmines at Peak Downs that were already signed off. Because this government has proceeded with its carbon tax and the mining tax, it has got itself into a position where it has said to investors around the world: 'We don't want you anymore and, if you happen to come here, we have got a Treasurer who will personally abuse you, who will pick you out and abuse you for being a successful Australian. He will say to you, "We don't want you either."'

The biggest concern I have is about the pipeline that keeps being talked about—not in the next two or three years, not projects that were already locked in four or five years ago, but the ones that should come after that, the ones that guarantee jobs for people in five and 10 years time, the ones that guarantee jobs for our children. My question to this government is: what are you going to do about it? What encouraging signals are you going to send out to the investors of this globe to come to Australia and invest here? The answer is none. The minister for resources runs up the white flag and says, 'Under the Labor government the resources boom is over.' Can I assure those potential investors that, under an Abbott government, we will do everything we can to get that investment back and create jobs for Australians in the resources industry.

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