George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

So $25 million for the Gladstone Port Access Road. For the Townsville Ring Road, which will have to be used by some constituents in the northern part of my electorate and certainly by constituents in the member for Herbert's electorate, $160 million was to be funded out of this mining tax. Where is the money going to come from? Wouldn't you wish for whinging Wendy from the Labor Party ads to turn up right now to front the Treasurer and ask, 'Where is the money coming from?'

The government say that they are not going to touch the mining tax and that they are not going to fiddle with it to increase the revenue. That may be right for now. There are already dogs baying. We had the member for Hunter say last night that the tax should be fiddled with to get more out of the mining industry. We have had the member for Griffith allude to that as well. As sure as night follows day, we are going to see after the next election, if—heaven forbid!—this government is returned to office, that the mining tax will be jacked up and that all bets will be off.

The mining tax has already caused sovereign risk to Australia. The resource industry just simply does not know what government policy is these days. After the next election, there are going to be question marks again. I want to tell you, from my electorate's point of view, what it has done. We have had, according to the Queensland Resources Council, something like 3,200 jobs lost in the last year—and they say there is another 1,000 more on the way. In just one part of my electorate—Mackay—we have 5,412 direct full-time employees engaged in the mining industry. That does not include contractors. In the indirect employment that is generated from mining, we have up to 62,600 employees. These are people actually engaged in mining or in services that flow on from mining.

The mining industry contributes $3.8 billion to that region through voluntary community contributions and the purchase of goods and services from local companies. Yet 3,400 positions were cut over the last six months, and 1,000 more are predicted to go. We have had report after report in local newspapers about this—jobs going at different mines, mines closing down throughout the Bowen Basin, and ancillary companies to the mining industry having to lay off dozens and in some cases hundreds of employees.

Winston Churchill actually said, regarding socialism, 'It's a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.' Well, there could be no better description for the Gillard Labor government and its mining tax. It is a failure of a government. It put in place a tax policy based on envy, ignorant to sovereign risk that it would create and the subsequent impact on mining investment and jobs. The result has been a failed tax spreading a miserable $5.50 per head of population. What a failure of a tax, what a failure of a government, what a failure of a Treasurer. He should stand down; he should resign.

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