Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It was worth sitting through that speech just to get to that last bit, Senator Fifield—because that really exposed you. You started with confusion, which I will try and assist you with—through you, Madam Acting Deputy President—and you concluded with ignorance, which I am afraid I cannot help you with much at all.

We will start with the confusion, however, because it is a fair question: since Labor senators have looked to us, as Senator Bishop did, and coalition senators did as well, and you passed this tax—so then, in indication to the crossbenchers, how can you now come back and want to review it? I will help with that confusion. Our options in this place, as the crossbenchers, when a bill is brought forward by either of the major parties, are twofold—and we need to choose. This place does not always tolerate ambiguity: when it comes to a vote you need to pick one side of the chamber or the other to sit on. Our options in the instance of the MRRT were twofold: the ALP, the government, on the one hand—a major party that for a brief period of time chose an evidence based approach—set a task before the Treasury secretary and then adopted it, more or less as proposed, after a long process of review and design, such that the extraordinary profits being raked off by the resources sector could be, without any kind of structural damage either to the economy at large or to those individual companies, once the profits got to a certain level, redirected and redeployed through a super-profits tax. This would not be the first jurisdiction in the world, you would be aware, where this has been tried.

Following that initiative by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, there was a $22 million public relations onslaught, which I think unbalanced the government and caught them somewhat by surprise. Because of some of the rhetoric we heard a moment ago from Senator Fifield, you would be aware that the Greens are used to the kind of invective being directed at us by people like Senator Fifield, who effectively just read in a bunch of press statements from the Minerals Council of Australia, and not particularly original work. You do appear to have stolen Mitch Hooke's homework there, Senator Fifield, because there was not an original word spoken.