Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister aware that Kevin Markle, author of the University of North Carolina report used to accuse the mining sector of being tax avoiders, has told the Australian online that the data was dumped from a subsequent version because the sample was too small and could have involved as few as four companies? Will the Prime Minister now apologise to Australia’s 4,290 resource companies for attacking their reputation? Does he now accept that sending out the Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister with such flimsy evidence has made the government look foolish and irresponsible, and will he now release all Treasury and ATO modelling or is he afraid that the real evidence will fatally undermine his great big new tax on mining?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the question from the Leader of the Opposition. It goes to the fundamental need to reform the tax system for the Australian mining industry and to use the revenues which would come from that reform to fund better super for all Australians, better tax cuts for all Australian businesses and, on top of that, better investment in Australian infrastructure for the future.

The Leader of the Opposition refers to the effective tax rates for particular mining companies and the industry at large. I draw his attention to a Treasury Roundup article released today which says that Treasury’s analysis shows that the resources sector faces an average company tax rate about 12 per cent lower than the average tax rate across all industries. This is because of the very generous tax concessions that the mining sector enjoys, which reduces their headline rate of company tax. A separate Treasury minute to the Treasurer notes that the average company tax rate for the mining sector was 17 per cent in the decade of 2004-05, compared with 19 per cent for construction, 27 per cent for transport and 29 per cent for finance. The Treasury minute notes that the findings in the Roundup article for mining are similar to those in the Markle and Shackelford 2009 paper. I suggest that the Leader of the Opposition acquaint himself with economic fact rather than simply act as the puppet of the MCA in this place.