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

My question is to the Treasurer. If, as the Treasurer says, his figures in his 9 May Economic Note are correct, how does the Treasurer explain the pie chart that said mining companies paid only 27 per cent in royalties, resource taxes, and company tax in 2008-09, when just one year earlier, according to the Australian Taxation Office, they paid 41 per cent?

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

There could be a variety of reasons for that, and it may not be true. Let me give you one example of the way in which the opposition is misusing figures in this House. I will give you just one. They have sided with the mining council’s assessment that the effective rate of tax paid by the mining industry in company tax is 27 cents in the dollar. But what they do not tell you is the way in which the mining industry council has calculated that, because it has only been calculated using taxable income—not economic income. So they are moving figures around all of the time and juggling them up. I am happy to stand behind any of the figures that I have issued and I will not be there with the mining council distorting figures like they are.