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

by leave—The government’s plan for a stronger, simpler, fairer tax system was announced three weeks ago. Since that time, it has been the subject of robust debate around the country—particularly on the Resource Super Profits Tax. We welcome this debate about the future of our economy, and we hope it continues. It is important that debate remains constructive—contributing to increased public understanding and a robust design for the RSPT. Inaccurate information and scare campaigns risk getting in the way of this, undermining the important work we must do to strengthen our economy and secure higher living standards for working families.

We must not lose sight of the key aim of the policy—to ensure a fairer share of the proceeds of the resources boom are invested in a stronger economy for all Australians. We will do this by replacing royalties with a Resource Super Profits Tax and directing the proceeds to higher retirement savings for Australians, more roads, rail and ports, and less business tax and red tape, especially for small business.

The Australian people own 100 per cent of Australia’s natural resources and they deserve a fairer share of the superprofits mining companies make, particularly during this boom. As these profits have risen in recent years the Australian people’s share of those profits has fallen. Before the last boom, the country got $1 in every $3 of mining profits through royalties and resource charges, but at the end of that boom that was down to just $1 in $7. It is impossible to justify a system where Australians pay proportionately more tax as their income goes up, while mining companies pay proportionately less as their profits go up. The companies have been unable to justify this, and I cannot let the situation stand.

Profits were over $80 billion higher in 2008-09 than in 1999-2000 yet governments only collected an additional $9 billion in revenue. The government simply wants to take the Australian people’s share of mining profits back to around where it was in the early 2000s. The Howard government was not overtaxing the resource sector then, and this government won’t either. In fact, we will get the same share with a more pro-investment tax structure.

The reforms will broaden and strengthen the economy, ensuring all sectors grow in a sustainable way that benefits all Australians. We must finally grapple with the policy failures of past mining booms by ensuring the resource and non-resource sectors grow together, not apart.

Of course, we have analysis to support this. Independent modelling by KPMG Econtech of the RSPT and the effective abolition of royalties says resource investment increases by 4.5 per cent, resource sector employment by seven per cent and resource sector output by 5.5 per cent. The modelling also shows that the tax reform package—including the RSPT and our cuts to company tax—will actually reduce the price of food and housing.

In the last week I have travelled across most Australian states discussing the story of our budget, a story of our nation’s successful navigation of the global recession. I have also been discussing our economic plans for the future, including our important tax reforms.

I have met with big miners, and smaller miners. I have met with some of the people who will pay more tax given current high profits under our proposal. I have also met with many of the businesses who will pay less.

People have explained their concerns about how the last boom was handled, how capacity constraints and an infrastructure deficit choked growth. I have also spoken to South Australian and Victorian manufacturers, and Queensland tourism operators, who have outlined the challenges created for them when the dollar is high.

As a Queenslander, I recognise the particular importance of resources to my home state, but also to Western Australia. I have seen the problems of infrastructure deficits in cities and towns along the Queensland coast. My many visits to Western Australia have convinced me of the need to keep reinvesting in the resource-producing regions.

The government’s infrastructure fund is designed to do just this. It will provide a permanent structural source of funding for infrastructure, especially targeted at resource states and regions. It will start at $700 million in 2012-13, and grow over time, delivering more than $5.6 billion in additional funding over the next decade.

I welcomed the opportunity over this past week to get out and engage directly with businesses, especially the mining sector. Now, I am the last person to stand here and tell this House that the miners are all thrilled with our plans. Those who will pay more tax are unhappy, and I will not whitewash that.

But you cannot make big reforms, and you cannot attempt to remedy the policy failures of past mining booms, while keeping everybody happy. It might be the job of those opposite to pretend you can, but government is a very different and a much harder business.

I used my time with miners this week to explain the core design features of our RSPT. I discussed with them that we were effectively abolishing royalties by refunding them against the RSPT. That the 40 per cent rate is fair because it gets us closer to where our tax take was in the past. It is also the rate of the existing resource rent tax that has been operating for 23 years.

Sometimes in these discussions I heard a few myths, and I want to deal with those now.

The first is that this tax threatens Australia’s economic prosperity.

Nobody disputes that the existing arbitrary and continually changing state royalty regimes result in less mining investment, fewer mining jobs and less mining production. Royalties tax production and ignore the costs involved in generating that output. Many of our mines shut down too early, while others can’t ever get off the ground. It also means we poorly manage our resources—we leave too many commercially viable resources in the ground, purely because royalties make them uneconomic.

Similarly, all reputable economists agree that resource rent taxes like the RSPT do not affect investment, jobs or production. I encourage members to read the article by Ben Smith from the Australian National University in today’s Canberra Times, or other pieces by Professor John Freebairn from the University of Melbourne and, of course, Professor Ross Garnaut.

Second, some have claimed the RSPT is a triple tax on mining.

The leader of the miners’ campaign, Clive Palmer, even talked about a 70 per cent tax. This is blatantly false and has never been substantiated. The RSPT will not be imposed on top of royalties and company tax. It will effectively replace royalties by providing firms with a refundable tax credit for royalties. Where royalty payments are higher than the RSPT liability, firms will get a cash refund for the difference.

The RSPT is also deductible against company tax. Regrettably, even some sophisticated commentators have talked about the theoretical maximum rate of 56.8 per cent as if every project will pay that rate. This is also incorrect for a number of different reasons.

One reason these estimates are wrong is that they ignore that the RSPT only taxes super profits, not all profits. If a project does not generate super profits it does not pay any RSPT. And it will benefit from a company tax cut to 28 per cent and the government refund on the royalties it pays.

Firms that have lower profit levels will have a lower effective tax rate—for example, on reasonable assumptions a project with a risk-free return of 15 per cent—still a very, very healthy return—might still have an effective tax rate of 45 per cent.

However, even this calculation is an overestimate, because it does not allow for the generous company tax concessions that mining companies already benefit from.

The effective company tax rate for mining companies is well below the statutory company tax rate. This is due to a range of concessions that benefit the mining industry, most particularly generous deduction concessions.

Independent research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, and co-authored by Professor Douglas Shackelford and Kevin Markle, looked at company tax concessions across industries and countries. They found that domestic mining companies in Australia face an effective rate of 17 per cent and multinationals face an effective rate of 13 per cent. That is well below the statutory company tax rate of 30 per cent.

Perhaps the most pervasive myth is that every return over six per cent will pay resource super profits tax. I regret to say this is a calculated and deliberate misrepresentation. If you hear a mining executive saying it, they are either lying to you or they are ignorant—either way it should be of concern to their shareholders.

It deliberately ignores three offsetting elements of the tax design. Royalties are rebated; RSPT is deductible against company tax; and the company tax rate is being cut. Once you add the combined effect of these elements, a project earning six per cent in fact pays substantially less tax under our reforms.

So for those—especially those opposite—who say the uplift factor is somehow a tax on entrepreneurialism, I say this: compare the RSPT to current royalties, which tax every dollar of return you get. But they don’t stop there. Royalties also tax your wage costs, your operating costs, this on top of applying to your investment costs. Royalties tax you before you even make a profit.

Another myth is that the economic impact of taxes depends only on how much money they raise. Every serious economic commentator understands that different taxes have different impacts, depending on how they are structured. A core finding of the independent tax review is that raising a dollar of revenue through different taxes has different impacts on growth. Royalties are one of the worst taxes for growth; resource rent taxes are one of the best.

Shifting revenue from royalties to resource rent taxes increases growth, including in the resource sector. This is because it reduces the tax paid by the smaller, more marginal mines, and increases how much we charge for the use of the highly profitable mineral deposits. And, because they are highly profitable, production will continue regardless.

That is why these reforms will improve our economy. The government’s very strong view—and the Treasury’s view—is that our reforms will grow the mining industry and the broader economy in the longer term. Again this is supported by independent economic modelling.

So let us talk about the benefits of the package as a whole for a minute or two. All revenues from the RSPT will be used to deliver a stronger economy for Australian families. About a third of the package will directly assist the resources sector. This will be delivered through the resource exploration rebate and the new ongoing infrastructure funding.

Our plan will also improve the competitiveness of the entire economy. It will deliver a company tax rate cut for all companies. The general company tax rate will be cut to 29 per cent from 2013-14, and to 28 per cent from 2014-15. Small business will get a head start, with the rate cut to 28 per cent from 2012-13. Small business will also have access to instant write-off of assets up to $5,000 and a single depreciation pool for most other assets. These changes promote growth across the entire economy, giving some of our other industries a better chance to compete on the world stage, even with the continued success of our resource industry.

We are also determined that Australia should have something lasting to show from the sale of our non-renewable resources. We cannot squander the next boom like those opposite squandered the last one. That is why the government will boost national savings. We will boost savings through an increased superannuation guarantee, phased over 10 years. We will also boost savings by making superannuation concessions fairer for low-income earners, and we will provide more generous contribution caps for the over 50s looking to make catch-up contributions to their superannuation. And we will introduce a 50 per cent tax discount on interest income, including on deposits held with any bank, building society or credit union, as well as bonds, debentures and annuity products.

Let me comment on how this debate has played out over the past few weeks. As I said earlier, I did not expect our reforms to be greeted with singing miners in the streets. Nor did I expect any support for strong economic reform from an opposition that showed last week it has completely lost what little grip it ever had on economic policy. If you really want to judge whether to believe the Liberals’ scare campaign, look at what they do, not what they say. In the very week they were saying the mining industry would totally collapse, one of their most senior frontbenchers was buying shares in BHP because he thought they offered good long-term value.

But let me talk about the reaction from the sector more generally. I welcome Ross Garnaut’s call for a rational and reasoned debate on the RSPT—this of course is a call that has been echoed by John Hewson. As Professor Garnaut has said, the campaign against the RSPT has been long on rhetoric and threats and very short on reasoned argument. John Hewson has said that a lot of posturing is going on, but in policy terms this tax is right. Ben Smith, one of Australia’s leading resource economists, wrote today that:

… the natural reaction is to think that the industry’s predictions about its impact may well be correct. In fact, they are entirely false.

He goes on to say:

In fact, the only danger to future exploration and mining activity is the possibility that suppliers of finance might believe the industry’s rhetoric.

And David Buckingham, a former head of the Minerals Council, has lifted the veil on the hysterical scare campaign that some miners are still waging.

I have a lot of respect for the leaders of our business community. I do value their constructive input to any number of political debates. I say this publicly and I say it privately to them when we regularly meet or talk on the phone. I do expect a healthy degree of argy-bargy and brinkmanship with some people in business who do not want to give up any of their super profits. I understand their position. But even the mining bosses in their heart would know that there is a rolled-gold case for a fairer way to tax the industry. Their own submission called for a profits based tax.

Unfortunately, we have had a relatively small number of large companies choosing to conduct a vocal and public campaign. It has also been very strategic: companies have taken turns issuing threats to investment, so as to create maximum publicity for minimum share price impact on their own companies. They have also been careful to put projects on hold, rather than cancel them, again to minimise share market impact. They can always be taken off hold later when needed—as most think they will. As Professor Garnaut says, any project that is profitable before RSPT is profitable after. The opportunities from the mining boom are simply too big to ignore, even if the super profits are a little lower.

The government will not be swayed by a political campaign from the miners. So I call on companies to engage properly in the consultation process. The RSPT is not going away, but generous transitional arrangements will be put in place, as we have said all along.

These last three weeks have seen a few very noisy companies, and many more very quiet ones. I have been impressed by the quiet, professional engagement of some companies with our Resource Tax Consultation Panel. I do not think those companies like our RSPT any more than the noisy ones, but they do accept the right of the government to govern, and they accept our offer of consultation as genuine, and they are engaged with us in getting the implementation right.

Since our announcement of the policy, we have had more than 80 companies engaging with the Treasury consultation process. This is a serious commitment of time and effort by government and business. We believe that it is important that all companies engage so that all views can be taken into account.

Every business in Australia and every working family in every corner of Australia has a stake in sustainable and broad economic growth. Our tax package is expected to grow the economy by 0.7 per cent in the long run, boost investment by 2.1 per cent and reduce prices by 1.1 per cent.

I invite the House to compare this with the opposition’s policy to lift the company tax rate by 1.7 per cent. Our modelling shows this policy will reduce GDP by 0.2 per cent, reduce investment by 0.55 per cent and increase consumer prices by 0.25 per cent.

Australia has many significant economic advantages that can provide the foundation for growth and prosperity into the future, provided we get the policy settings right. This side of the House has a pro-growth, pro-investment policy to leverage Australia’s strengths, but that side does not.

Our substantial natural resources, strong growth in demand for our exports from countries in our neighbourhood and the quality and resilience of our people—as demonstrated most recently during the global financial crisis—give us cause for confidence that Australia’s best days lie ahead.

We are also confident that our reforms will maximise Australia’s opportunities while also meeting the challenges posed by the ageing of our population and shifts in the global economy that will see the return of boom conditions in our mining sector.

We never expected this tax to be applauded by every company, domestic or foreign. But we do expect our reforms to build a broader, stronger economy for working families and that, after all, is why we are all here.

I ask leave of the House to move a motion to enable the member for North Sydney to speak for 19 minutes.

Leave granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent Mr Hockey speaking in reply to the ministerial statement for a period not exceeding 19 minutes.

Question agreed to.

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

The Treasurer today put the government’s case for a great big new mining tax on Australians. He has locked the government in. He has emboldened the government’s case for the tax. So be it—the battlelines are drawn. The coalition believes that this is a bad tax. We will oppose it as an opposition and we will rescind it in government.

The government’s case for this new tax is built on an enduring untruth. The economic rationale behind it is that it is an inefficient royalty system that is being replaced with a more efficient resources rent tax. It is claimed this will lead to greater investment in the industry and stronger growth. This argument might make some sense if the total tax take from the mining industry was unchanged, but this is not the case. The government’s own projections suggest that the new tax will increase net tax revenue by $3 billion in 2012-13 and $9 billion in 2013-14. This is a huge additional impost on the resources sector.

The ATO tables which I sought to table today but which the Prime Minister refused to recognise—the actual tables that record the dollars received by the government from the mining industry—tell the truth about the state of the contribution of the mining industry more generally. ATO table 8 states that the mining industry paid $8.1 billion in company tax in the 2007-08 financial year. In that year they also paid $3.9 billion in state government royalties. While company tax can be expected to rise over the next few years as a result of higher commodity prices and higher mining company profits, the additional tax take of $9 billion a year net represents a very significant additional impost on these companies. It is something like a 100 per cent increase in the contribution of the mining companies to the federal government. This is the bottom line. This is where the debate is at. The government will mouth weasel words about all sorts of transitional arrangements, but understand this: the bottom line is the government collecting nearly 100 per cent more in revenue from the mining companies each year as a direct result of this tax.

I note the government does not have the agreement of the states to abolish royalties. Royalties will still exist. We have been advised that companies will need to maintain four sets of books. Even though royalties will be rebated in part, the inefficiencies will remain. The royalty rebate applies only to royalties in place or foreshadowed on 2 May 2010. There is absolutely nothing to stop the states from lifting royalties from current levels. The government has not committed to refunding any additional royalties. If it does not, then the mining companies will pay twice and pay more—a much forgotten piece of the policy debate at the moment.

There is much debate about rates and transitional arrangements. It is still the case, even by the Prime Minister’s own claims, that anything above the long-term government bond rate of around six per cent is deemed a superprofit. The fact of the matter is that the long-term bond rate is seen as a riskless investment by investors. It is AAA rated and a six per cent return is clearly insufficient. Investors I have spoken to in the United States and the United Kingdom about international benchmarks declare that in the US they are looking for a 15 per cent after-tax return on investments and outside the US it is about 20 per cent in returns.

Even the appearance of Australia Post before Senate estimates today was quite telling. My colleague Senator Cormann asked, ‘Does that put Australia Post in the category of earning superprofits?’ Australia Post replied, ‘I wouldn’t have thought so, Senator.’ Senator Cormann then asked, ‘So you don’t think a return on capital of 12.2 per cent is a superprofit?’ Australia Post responded, ‘I wouldn’t have thought so, Senator.’ Senator Cormann asked, ‘Why not?’ The reply was, ‘I think it is a reasonable return on equity.’ So it is okay for Australia Post to have a return on equity of 12 per cent, but for anyone involved in mining where of course there are significant risks, which I will allude to a little later, that is deemed to be a superprofit.

The government claims that increasing the total tax take from an industry will lift investment and growth. It seems difficult to believe that lifting the tax take will lift economic activity. If that were the case, it would seem to be a simple policy decision to increase Australia’s economic growth through the simple expedient of raising taxes. There would be few commentators, if any, who would agree with that proposition. Indeed, I refer to BHP Billiton’s notice to the Australian Stock Exchange that in the year to 30 June 2009 their effective tax rate, including company tax royalties and production taxes, was 43 per cent. The average between 2004 and 2009 was 42 per cent. The government would have us believe that it is somewhere between 13 and 17 per cent. CEOs of small, medium and large sized companies have an obligation under section 181 of the Corporations Act to act in good faith—to tell the truth, effectively—and their statements to the Stock Exchange, from the larger ones at Fortescue right through to the smaller players, are all warning of the real impact of the government’s tax on declared projects. We can also look at the experiences of other countries which have suffered loss of investment and growth in the face of regulatory uncertainty.

This would all appear to indicate that an increase in taxation will be negative for the mining industry. The government’s own rhetoric seems to contradict its claims that an increase in taxation is to the benefit of business. The Treasurer notes that the cuts to company income taxes:

… promote growth across the entire economy, giving some of our other industries a better chance to compete on the world stage.

The coalition would not disagree with that. However, reducing taxes leaves more money in the hands of business for them to invest and create jobs. Reducing taxes lowers the dead hand of government on business. It seems inconsistent for the government to claim that increasing the tax take from the mining industry will lift investment and growth at the same time they claim that they have got to lower company taxes to stimulate investment and growth.

The Treasurer says that in the last week he has travelled across Australia discussing the government’s changes to taxation. I have also travelled across Australia over the past week discussing the proposed new super mining tax and I have received a very negative reaction to the tax. This was not just from the mining companies but also from the industries which service this sector such as manufacturing and services, from the workers who are employed in mines and associated activities such as transport, and from local government and state government officials. They were all very concerned about the impact of this tax on investments and jobs. I noted the Premier of Western Australia being repeatedly and outrageously verballed by the Prime Minister during question time today in that regard.

All of these business people, from small business to large business, are very concerned about the impact of this tax. They do not accept that this great big new tax will be good for their businesses or for their employment. The new tax will apply to all mining activities. It is not just the big companies which mine minerals in strong demand from offshore, such as coal and iron ore; it will also apply to gravel, sand, clay for bricks and rock for aggregate—the base materials which feed directly into Australian industry. Increasing the taxes on companies involved in other areas will reduce their profits. This will either cause them to absorb it or increase their prices—a simple equation. The increased prices will feed into the costs of building homes and factories. They will impact on every Australian. Unquestionably, it will lift the price of building homes, factories and infrastructure.

The government claims the mining industry does not pay its fair share of taxes. Data provided by the mining industry and based on ATO data shows that the mining industry’s average corporate tax rate on income was 27.8 per cent. Including royalties, that was lifted to an effective tax rate of 41.3 per cent, the highest of all industry sectors. This compared with an average across all industry sectors of 27.18 per cent. I note that the finance and insurance services sector—basically the banks—paid 21.5 per cent. Therefore, if this is a tax that other industries think will only apply to mining under Labor, they should think again.

The Treasurer claims the intention of the changes to the tax system is ‘to build a broader, stronger economy’. We certainly support that objective. During our last term in government, the coalition doubled the size of the economy. We did that through real tax reform, with the introduction of a broad based consumption tax and the elimination of a raft of inefficient state taxes. Reducing the number of taxes is real reform. Labor is not reducing the number of taxes; it is increasing the number of taxes. The coalition also boosted economic growth by keeping taxes low, by running surpluses, by repaying Labor’s debt, by reducing the regulatory drag on business and by reform of the financial system. Most importantly, we maintained an environment which encouraged foreign investment in Australia.

Since the announcement of Labor’s resource tax, there has been considerable disquiet expressed from commentators offshore. Moody’s Investors Service said on 17 May that the government changes to the taxation of the mining industry ‘could reduce earnings for firms by nearly a third after it takes effect in mid 2010’. They went on to say:

Australia’s mineral resources will stay put, but global producers such as BHP, with half its assets in Australia, and Xstrata, with a third, can decide whether to extract the minerals or shift some operations to lower-cost countries to avoid the higher tax regime.

The government has cast this tax as a justified way of recouping income from foreign shareholders who are in some way—outrageously, according to our Prime Minister—taking something that belongs to Australians. On 4 May, the Prime Minister was quoted as saying:

These massively increased profits … built on Australian resources are mostly in fact going overseas.

That is what the Prime Minister, who is meant to be encouraging investment, said.

The Treasurer continued this assault on the miners with his comments today that mining executives were either ‘lying’ or ‘ignorant’. I do not think this is the right way to treat someone from whom we want investment or dollars. The greatest bone the government is throwing to people it wants to invest in Australia is, ‘If you lose $100, we will give you $40 back.’ Anyone who has been on a roadshow, as I have, knows that, when you ask someone for $100, you want to give them more than $100 back. It is in fact no incentive at all to give someone the line: ‘Good news, guys! If you lose your money, you’ll get 40 per cent of it back.’ That is not a sell job. That is not something you can say to international investors, nor to Australian investors for that matter.

What the government forgets is that Australia is critically dependent on foreign capital. Australia has never had sufficient savings to finance the investment we need to build the country, to build business. Australia is currently importing $17 billion of capital every quarter from overseas investors. It is critically important that Australia do everything it can to preserve faith in Australia as a safe and dependable place to invest and do business.

We the coalition believe that you do not win a game by hampering your best-performing player. The mining sector is hugely important to our prosperity. It is an industry where Australia has an international comparative advantage. Mining accounts for nearly two-thirds of the value of Australia’s exports of goods and half of Australia’s total exports of goods and services. Mining directly employs 172,000 Australians. Most of these are in regional areas. In 2008-09, mining accounted for fully one-third of all business investment. The crucial importance of this for the Australian economy overall has been recognised by the RBA. In its May statement, it said:

… mining investment has been at record levels as a share of GDP and further increases are expected, with very large projects in the LNG, iron ore and coal sectors. This pick-up in investment will support growth in the Australian economy at a time when the boost from the earlier expansionary policy settings is diminishing.

Beyond these direct advantages of mining, there are huge economic benefits for associated industries such as manufacturing and various mining services. This new tax does not just hurt overseas shareholders—it hurts Australians. If you use a conservative industry price-earnings ratio of 10 to one, taking $9 billion a year from the industry’s earnings will reduce the net worth of companies which comprise the industry by around 10 times that number or $90 billion. This reduces the value of shares held by Australians.

The new tax regime also carries significant fiscal risk. The revenue gained from the resources industry will vary according to the cycles in demand and prices for commodities. The industry is currently riding a period of strong demand and high prices, but it is not always so. It was only 10 years ago, at the beginning of the 2000s the Treasurer referred to, that demand was weak and prices were low. The government has tied this new tax to a regime of spending which will inevitably rise over time. This is the point I made at the Press Club. This mismatch between ever-rising spending and cycles in resource revenue is building a structural imbalance into the budget. This is not responsible nor sensible fiscal management. In this respect, I note that the Treasurer said in his address today that he:

… wants to take the Australian people’s share of mining profits back to around where it was in the early 2000s.

That was a time when the mining industry was in the depths of one of its regular cyclical lows and there were plenty of mining engineers and geologists driving cabs around Perth. The industry has advised that this was a time when it was barely recovering the costs of its investment capital. This period is hardly a rational benchmark for determining an appropriate share of profits. We do not agree that entrenching that state of affairs would be good for the resources industry or for the nation.

There is another aspect to this new tax regime which increases the risk to Australian taxpayers—the proposal for the government to share in the losses as well as the profits from resource operations. The reason why we are reluctant at this stage to get into a debate about modelling is that the government keeps talking up transitional arrangements, which adds to the uncertainty for investors and leaves everyone wondering whether the government truly knows what it is doing. The best illustration of that is its commitment to pay for 40 per cent of the losses. The government will refund accumulated RSPT losses at the 40 per cent RSPT rate when projects are closed.

In the 2008-09 financial year, one major company closed an unsuccessful project with a write-off of US$3.6 billion. Under the Treasurer’s plan, this would have rendered the Australian taxpayers liable for up to US$1.6 billion of that loss. Note that in the parliament the week before last I asked the Treasurer exactly how much money is budgeted for to allow the government to write out cheques to those businesses that fail. The Treasurer refused to answer the question. The fundamental question is: is this Treasurer being honest with the Australian people? We know he is not, because a motion was passed by the Senate:

That there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Treasurer, no later than noon on Thursday, 13 May 2010, all modelling, costings, consultancy statements and other relevant documents used by the Government to inform its response to the ‘Henry Review’ (Australia’s Future Tax System report).

The government has not done that. So the government is happy to provide us with a model without any inputs. It is happy to claim that it has modelled our taxes, but it will not release any modelling of what it wants to do to the Australian people. This illustrates that the government has failed to think through this scheme. The government has failed to think through the impact of this new tax on Australian jobs or on foreign investment. It is one thing to talk about economic modelling, which might appeal to all the tax boffins, but the fundamental issue is whether people have confidence to invest in the mining sector in Australia as a result of this government’s tax. Emphatically, the people who actually run the companies, the people who employ people, are saying ‘Not with this tax’ and the coalition joins them in that charge.