Matt Thistlethwaite (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In the wake of those comments, Mr Limbaugh was of course criticised in numerous quarters. So what was his comeback? Was there an apology? No. Was there some contrition? No. His comeback was:

Okay, she's not a slut. She's round-heeled.

This is the type of person that coalition senators are relying on to justify their arguments against the minerals resource rent tax. They are scraping the bottom of the barrel for serious arguments about policy on this issue and the reason is that they know that this reform is important to Australia and it will see the benefits of the mining boom spread across the country. They are not exactly the type of people whom we should be promoting as experts on taxation policy in this Senate.

In my view, these changes are long overdue. Minerals prices began to climb in the late 1990s and early in the new century. The previous government had seven years of booming resources prices and did nothing about it. This country is the biggest exporter in the world of bauxite, alumina, rutile and tantalum; the second biggest exporter in the world of lead, ilmenite, zircon and lithium; the third biggest exporter in the world of iron ore, uranium and zinc; and in the top five producers in the world of black coal, gold, manganese, nickel, aluminium, brown coal, diamonds, silver and copper. Any country that can roll off a list like that must ensure that the wealth that is generated from the extraordinary earth we have inherited that lies beneath our feet is used not just to ease the burden on this generation but to build for the next generation—and that is what these reforms will do. The revenue from these reforms will ensure that those ships that are lined along the coast of New South Wales as we speak do not just load up in Newcastle or Port Kembla and sail off into the distance with our nation's wealth in tow but put back into our economy for the benefit of working Australians, for the benefit of small businesses, for the benefit of rural and regional communities and for the benefit of our children's future.