Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I know that it sends a little shiver of fear through the spines of the Labor Party when we talk about the Labor Party and mining. There is a rich vein there that only individual members of the Labor Party know how to exploit but, as a collective, they seem to get it wrong—as they have throughout this entire debate. And we saw it again in question time today. The Prime Minister is always keen to give us a sanctimonious lecture about accuracy and facts. Today in question time, in answer to the Leader of the Opposition—the very first question—she entirely confused, and later admitted that she had, the report of Don Argus and the implementation committee with that of a general GST review with the states. So if the Prime Minister does not understand her own mining tax, this is the obvious excuse for her—to renege on a deal, a deal that she did, by her hand, through her negotiations with the chief executives of BHP, Rio and Xstrata on the eve of an election.

I intend to go through a few of the facts today, the irrefutable facts, which the member for Griffith helped to stimulate my memory about in an interview with David Speers today. Imagine that—David Speers! 'What a coincidence you are down here in my office with a camera. What a coincidence that I have a photo of me with the Pope.' How did that happen? You can imagine the phone call: 'David, it's Kevin.' 'Kevin?' 'Yes, Kevin—Kevin Rudd.' 'Kevin Rudd?' 'Yes, the former Prime Minister. You know: Kevin Rudd, I'm on Twitter all the time.' 'Oh, yes, that Kevin.' 'I have a great photo of me with Ben—Benedict. Come down and let's do an interview about how the government's going.' Well, as the member for Griffith so successfully did, he nailed it. He said, 'There was an agreement.' First of all, he identified that there was an original commissioning of a review into taxation by the Treasurer—and that is exactly right: the Henry tax review. And, as the member for Griffith said, that was the Treasurer's own work. Quite right it was! We had to drag that out of the Treasurer, him kicking and screaming. Finally, he released it. He said, 'Great news; we've got this new tax. This new tax, the RSPT, will raise $12 billion over two years.' Wow, that is a hell of a tax. It was such a hell of a tax that the mining industry went bananas, and understandably so. Effectively, it meant that we had become uncompetitive. The Canadians were even advertising that they did not have an equivalent tax. The visceral reaction of the mining industry was such that it brought down the member for Griffith's prime ministership. And the new Prime Minister identified that there were three issues that she was going to address, because she had been a part of a government that had lost its way and she was going to send it on the right course.

At the top of the list was No. 1, the mining tax; No. 2 was carbon; and No. 3 was boats—she was going to stop the boats. She failed on all three. No wonder the member for Griffith is now down to ringing David Speers and asking him to come around for an early morning cup of tea.

I would say to you that the revenue projections from Labor have gone from $12 billion over two years, to $10.5 billion over two years, to $7.4 billion, to $6.5 billion, to $4.4 billion and less.

But the problem is that Labor committed $14 billion of expenditure against the Christmas bonus tax that it has not collected. And these geniuses have used such heroic words as 'redistributing the benefits of the boom' and calling it an 'historic tax'—an historic tax that at its very best raised less than one per cent of taxation revenue. Everything Labor does, everything Labor says, has to be the biggest and the grandest and the most monumental of all. There is no greater reforming government than the Gillard government. There is no greater change that can be enacted for the benefit of the Australian people than that enacted by the Prime Minister and her cohorts. Nothing at all. But the bottom line is on every point, at every station: Labor just exaggerates and gets it dead, dead wrong.

Of course they do not just do it in this place; they do it to their constituents. I have this letter from the member for Lilley, which says:

Dear Daniel,

I was talking to a local resident the other day who asked, 'Wayne, at a time when we are in the middle of a massive mining boom, why aren't people like me sharing more in its benefits?'

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