Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you Acting Deputy President and thank you Senator Brown for your timely intervention. What is important here is that the coalition position is not changing. We are unequivocally opposed to the mining tax and we will abolish it in government. It is good for Western Australia to abandon the mining tax, and what we know, in the current state of our economy, is that what is good for Western Australia is good for Australia.

In the debate today at question time we heard the government leader say that the tax was important for long-term reform. The government kept telling Australians that they would share the benefits of the boom through their historic reform of the mining tax. This historic reform has so far raised only a fraction of the money promised in the budget.

Labor is right on only one point—that the coalition will most definitely repeal the tax. Even the Reserve Bank has recognised that sharing the benefits of the boom occurs through jobs, through company tax and through royalties. The RBA, as we have heard today, found that soaring resource exports over the past seven years have created about 500,000 jobs across every major industry.

Not only is Labor dysfunctional and incompetent; it is divided and confused over its own position. Earlier this month, on 15 February, the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government, Simon Crean, said:

In the meantime we're seeking to address the design flaw in—well, we're seeking to actually now change the design—

of the mining tax. Only days earlier, Prime Minister Gillard had told the parliament:

… the government has no plans to change the design of the MRRT.

Labor cannot be trusted on this tax nor on any other plans to tax the Australian community. In giving evidence at Senate estimates on 14 February, the Secretary of the Treasury, Dr Parkinson, confirmed that the flaws in Labor's MRRT were the result of the negotiations orchestrated by the Prime Minister and Treasurer after the ousting of Kevin Rudd.

Senator McLucas interjecting—

I think this is a critical point—that the flaws were the result of negotiations orchestrated by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer after the ousting of Kevin Rudd. The Australian newspaper—