Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Finance and Debt Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister’s latest incarnation of the nationalisation of the mining industry has to be seen to be believed. Australia is going down a path and who knows where it is going to finish. But just on one issue, the issue of quarrying and the impacts that this tax will have on it, it seems that Mr Rudd, Mr Swan, Mr Tanner and Ms Gillard are oblivious to the effect that this is going to have on that sector of the economy.

There are approximately 2,200 quarries operating across the country. They are excavating about 130 million tonnes of stone, limestone, gypsum, gravel and sand. These are used in such things as construction, and 18,000 people work in this industry. We have about half a million people working in the mining industry itself, and the Labor government seems to be oblivious to the fate of working families, to the prosperity of this nation and to where this tax goes.

The economics of Australia are so heavily reliant on our export of minerals that the reality is that if we do not have those boats parked off our west coast collecting the red rocks and the boats parked off our east coast collecting the black rocks then our nation would be in such dire financial circumstances that it would be beyond belief. We fool ourselves if we think that we are the sort of manufacturing powerhouse that Japan or the United States are; or the sort of financial centre that London is. We are a nation that has as the cornerstone of its prosperity our mining resources, and we are lucky that we are blessed that it is in situ—in the ground in Australia. The capacity to live, to act and to have all of the luxuries that so many other nations in the world crave would not be there if we did not have the mining industry. It is absolutely negligent to start putting pressure on an industry where if it topples over the ramifications will come home to everybody. You do not have to love miners or hate them; you just have to understand the basic premise of the economics and how our nation works.

If we drill down to a microform of what the effect of this tax will be, from where I am standing I can look around me and see steel purlins that are holding up this building. Underneath me would be concrete and running those lights is a coal-fired power station somewhere. All these are going to be affected by this tax. Through the process of this debate we have also seen almost the debauchery and prostitution of the Treasury. The sorts of things that the Treasury have been wheeled out to say just do not pass muster; they just do not make sense.

The latest one is where Dr Henry, who has said in the past that I have an oversimplistic view of things, stated that from high school he knows that if you have a tax on profits—even if it is at 40 per cent—it does not affect the motivations and the aggregate size of the economy. Then, when pushed, he said that it would not affect it if it were 60, 70 or 80 per cent. In fact, the only that time he conceded that there might be an effect is if you taxed all the profits. This is very peculiar indeed. Lately, we also had the pie charts. Remember the pie charts that they brought out? They looked awfully like a complete and utter botch.

We asked a question on notice of the Treasury—who are putting their credentials on the line to stand behind this—about where on earth the figures came from that said that in 2008-09 royalties and resources were at 14 per cent and in 2008-09 royalties, resources, taxes and company taxes were at 27 per cent. It is just so blatantly absurd: the figures are bunkum; they just do not pass muster. The answer to the question on notice has come back, and I must say that I am more confused now than when we first asked the question. The answer is just completely absurd. They have constructed and misconstrued the numbers. As poor old Mrs Mrakovcic from the Treasury said, they are not their numbers; they are Wayne Swan’s numbers and the Treasury are putting their imprimatur on them. Why would they do that? Why would they take themselves down this path?

Going into the numbers that they have supplied, we find that the resource rents from 2007-08 to 2008-09 went from $40.7 billion up to $91.2 billion. That was a remarkable year: it went up by 124 per cent. And do you know what is amazing about it going up by 124 per cent? It did this in the global financial crisis—the greatest crisis that we have had! Remember that they said we had to spend all this money to save us from the crisis? If these figures are correct, why bother? It was a boom year; the place was going ballistic. And if we go back through the figures before that we see a more regimented line of proportions of 47 per cent—that seems like a fair take on their profits; 45.8 per cent—that seems like a fair take on their profits; and 37.5 per cent from resources and company taxes as a portion of their profits. Then we have one year—surprise, surprise—the miraculous year 2008-09 where it just drops down 27 per cent.

So it just neatly fits into this graph—the problem being that they have had to jack up their resource rents by 124 per cent. Where were these mines? Where did they open up? What happened? Did we double the Hunter Valley that year in the middle of this crisis where there was $90 billion worth of discretionary spending by the Labor Party to try and keep us away from the crisis? Everything about the economic management of the Labor Party is implausible and they have sucked the Department of Treasury into the vortex of implausibility. To be honest, it is starting to look like the Treasury department and key figures in there have been sullied and in some instances may have been fatally damaged trying to prop up the insanity of the Labor Party.

We have a big football game on tonight: the Maroons are playing the Blues, and the Maroons are going to win. There are some very interesting blues that we should be concentrating on, but they will not be playing tonight. The very interesting blue that we should be concentrating on is the Gray versus Tanner blue—Gary Gray versus Lindsay Tanner—as they start seeing their seats peel off and disappear. Another interesting blue to have a close look at would be the Hutchins versus Kevin Rudd blue—I reckon that blue would be a ripper. Then we have the Kevin versus ‘every sane man, woman and child’ blue, another blue that would be an interesting one to watch. Then we have the Labor versus ‘any person who looks like they are gaining a profit’ blue, another one we would want to look at. One of the best ones is going to be ‘marginal seats and the probability of survival after the Kevin Rudd epic’ blue—that is going to be the best one.

For some unknown reason you have in your first term managed to completely and utterly debunk the mechanism, the reason and the critique you gave for attaining office—that you were apparently economic conservatives, that you would be a safe set of hands and that we had nothing to worry about. Now we find that one of the key groups that is most concerned about your tax is women. Why? It is because they can see what this is going to do to the economy and the overwhelming sense of uncertainty because you are manipulating and meddling with the financial prosperity that is going to pay for their houses, their children and the welfare of this nation into the future. This has been a disaster under the Labor Party, a disaster that has cost us up to $2 billion a week in extra borrowing.

But this resource tax just takes the cake. How we have come to live in a nation where the government has decided to nationalise the mining industry is beyond comprehension. This will come home—of course it will with a new Labor Party tax—as any person who can pass the cost on will pass the cost on to the housewife and to the working family. In this case it might be passed on by putting them out of work. With this tax they have gone to the good people of Western Australia and basically relieved them of their wealth. They have basically picked up the wealth of Western Australia and wandered back to Canberra with it. In Queensland they are doing the same thing. They cannot even keep the left wing of their own party onside in Queensland because they see this as a ticket for Kevin’s insanity. This has to stop and it is our duty to stop it.