Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer outline how resources businesses, including small resources companies in Western Australia that employ thousands of my constituents, will be better off because of the new government's plans, particularly its taxation plans?

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

Thank you very much. That is a great question, because it focuses on the fact that it is the coalition that is getting rid of the mining tax and getting rid of the carbon tax. We want to reduce the burden on business so that business can get on with investing and creating jobs. But the Labor Party is opposing all this, of course. The Labor Party is opposing our attempt to get rid of the carbon tax, to reduce the electricity bills for people in the member for Forrest's electorate—every electorate in Australia, in fact. And the Labor Party is opposing our abolition of the mining tax. The mining tax is a signature example of failed policy. When it was originally announced—and I want to pay credit to the member for Lilley for the policy, because he was the architect of the original policy—the member for Lilley described it as a historic reform. He wasn't wrong, was he! It was a historic reform.

A government member: He's pretending not to listen!

Well, he didn't bother staying around for the member for Griffith last night, which was quite rude, so he wouldn't listen to me if he doesn't listen to the member for Griffith!

I just make the point that the RSPT, when it was announced originally, was meant to raise $49.5 billion. When the second version of the mining tax was announced, they reduced it and they said it was going to raise $26.5 billion. The tax has been such a success to date that it has raised $400 million, and it has cost the Australian Taxation Office $50 million to collect $400 million! But the problem for the Labor Party is this: they locked in all this expenditure against a tax that does not raise any money. Therefore, if we get rid of the tax and all of the expenditure, it improves the budget bottom line by over $13 billion.

The Labor Party are so appalled, outraged, about the debt that they are opposing everything we are trying to do to get it down. It is like poisoning the well and then, afterwards, when they go into opposition, they start to drink from the well and they do not understand why it does not taste like Coca-Cola. It actually has poison in it. The Labor Party do not understand that they poisoned the economy and they poisoned the budget. Like bad tenants, they trashed the joint, and now they are doing everything they can to stop us from fixing it. But the bottom line is: this is Labor's debt, this is Labor's mismanagement, this is Labor's mining tax and we are going to get rid of it.