Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

The Minister for Finance said to the Deputy Prime Minister and me: 'We must find a way to fund these roads because they are vital for Western Australia, they are important roads for Western Australia.' The Minister for Finance said, 'We have to find the money in the budget to fund these roads.' So what did we do? We funded them. In December last year, contrary to the scare campaign the member for Grayndler was running around with, we funded them out of the budget, out of real money—not out of a tax that did not raise any revenue in the first place, Member for Perth.

Just dealing with that tax, for a party that have now appointed, in an act of symbolism, a parliamentary secretary for Western Australia, if they really cared about the Western Australian economy, if they really cared about the Western Australian people, what they would do is get their senators in the Senate to vote down the carbon tax, to get rid of the carbon tax. Of the top 20 carbon tax bills, 16 have been sent to electricity companies. Electricity companies have been slugged a total carbon tax bill of $4.1 billion in Western Australia. If you really want to do something for consumers in Western Australia, for Western Australians, get rid of a carbon tax.

The second thing you can do if you want to do something other than symbolism for the people of Western Australia is get rid of the mining tax. The member for Perth, in a moment of clarity a couple of weeks ago in the caucus—sources have reported—got up and said to the Leader of the Opposition: 'Bill, get rid of the mining tax, it's killing us in WA.' But it must be said for the purposes of the record, to make sure that we are not misleading the parliament, that on 22 August 2010, shortly after her state political career had ended, the now member for Perth said in The Australian:

I think there were many aspects of our story, I think the fact that we vacated the field on the mining tax, you know I actually think the mining tax is a bloody good thing and we should have gone out and told people why it was good, why we needed to do it …

That is the problem with the Labor Party. They think taxing your most successful industry, taxing the thing that has made the great strength of that great state Western Australia, is so important. We should do more of it.

Ms MacTiernan interjecting—

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