Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I do thank the shadow Treasurer for his question, because it gives me an opportunity to build on the answer that has been given by the resources minister. The facts do not match the critique and they do not match all of the talking down of our economy that we are seeing from the Leader of the Opposition, the shadow Treasurer and the shadow finance minister. They should be ashamed of what they have done—talking down our economy—because, as the resources minister has pointed out very clearly, we have a record pipeline of investment in the resources sector. There is nothing announced by BHP yesterday which indicates anything of the sort that was just raised by the shadow Treasurer. This is what the head of BHP said yesterday:

The South Australian Government, the Federal Government and all of the agencies that have worked with us to make this a reality have been absolutely wonderful partners and I can't put that in more strong terms …

That was Mr Kloppers yesterday. He went on to say: 'The tax environment for this particular project has not changed at all. The MRRT only covers coal and iron ore, not copper, not gold, not uranium. The tax environment has not changed since we started working on this six or seven years ago.' That is what Mr Kloppers has said. What we have is a record pipeline of investment in resources—an additional $90 billion in the past year alone and, as the resources minister said, $270 billion at the advanced stage. What do we get? We get the continual trashing of our economy by those opposite to hide their embarrassment at the fact that there is a $70 billion crater—

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