Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw. They cannot explain why before Christmas they had a surplus budget but after Christmas a deficit budget.

They cannot explain why they have never had a surplus budget since 1989. So—shock, horror—they had to introduce a mining tax. They did not calculate that the miners have got better accountants than the Treasury or the Treasurer; they did not realise that. And they got skinned—in fact, our Treasurer became a stuffed duck burnt to cinders with plum sauce poured all over him.

The Treasurer has nowhere to hide. What can he do next? He has pulled all his Houdini tricks out of the bag. Now he is going to have a deficit budget and his surplus is gone. And the mining tax that he relied on so heavily to bring about $15 billion worth of expenditure is no longer there. He based his calculations on the fact that he was going to make all this money out of the mining companies, and that did not happen.

In fact, the mining companies do pay a lot of tax. They pay corporate tax. They pay superannuation to their employees—

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