Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

It is unfortunate that the question was based on a false premise and that Senator Sinodinos sought to put words into the Secretary of the Treasury's mouth and then draw implications from them. It is unfortunate. Clearly the MRRT collections have been lower than Treasury expected. As Mr Swan said last month, there is no doubt that when you look at the data the PRRT and MRRT will both be down substantially. But the MRRT is only six months old, and mineral prices, particularly iron ore, have been volatile over that period. Resource rent taxes are by their nature difficult to forecast, and some volatility in revenue relative to the estimates is to be expected. This is similar to the PRRT, a profits-based tax that has been around for over 25 years and is also a volatile but important source of revenue. The volatility of the PRRT collections exceeds that of any other revenue.