Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Cormann for his kind words—the first part, that is. In relation to the MRRT, it is the case that the government has been upfront about the reduction in revenue from that revenue head, and we were upfront about that at the MYEFO and at the budget. In fact, I think Senator Cormann asked me quite a number of questions about that. Being from Western Australia as he is, he would know the extent to which the spot price has moved over the last 12 months. He would know the very rapid reduction in the spot price that we saw last year. He should also know that, as a profit-based tax, the MRRT—like the PRRT—is relevant to profitability rather than to volume, which is one of the benefits of this design of the tax.

As the senator knows—and I know this because he has talked quite a lot about this and he certainly has tweeted a lot about it—the financial statements we released in December for the first quarter of the 2012-13 financial year showed $501 million collected in resource rent tax. Whilst total resource rent tax revenue is published every month—if you just stop interjecting then I could finish the answer. I am answering the question, but if you want to interject we can just wait. While a total resource rent tax revenue amount is published every month, the advice from the tax office is that it cannot provide specific information about the first instalment revenue of the MRRT without breaching privacy provisions. As the opposition would know— (Time expired)