Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Today's debate, on the Minerals Resource Rent Tax Repeal and Other Measures Bill 2013, is a debate about our national priorities. It is a debate about the sort of country we want to be. It is a debate about fairness. It is a debate about the power of vested interests. It is a debate about courage or the lack of it in our Australian parliament. The history of this tax represents everything that is wrong with Australian politics. The genesis of this tax, a tax that was proposed by the former Rudd government, is instructive, and it is worth reflecting on that. The original resource super profits tax was a good one. It was an important reform. It was a reform that this country desperately needed. It would have raised billions of dollars that could have been invested in vital infrastructure, in critical health services, in funding our public education system. It was a fair tax. It was a tax based on the resources that are owned by each and every one of us. It was a tax that said, 'You are a beneficiary of the Australian wealth that lies beneath our feet, and, as a beneficiary of that, you, too, must contribute to the great Australian story.' It was fair, and it was equitable.

Yet what we saw was a concerted campaign from the mining industry. Terms like 'sovereign risk' were thrown around. There were claims that the industry would move offshore if this reform were introduced. It was nonsense, of course, because the mining industry in this country has it very good. We have a very stable political environment. We have an environment that is good for international investment. There are protections under the rule of law that do not exist in many other developing economies where mining is so important. The mining industry also has it very good because they have unprecedented access to the decision makers in this country. Every day, walking the corridors of this place, there are lobbyists or representatives from those industries—those rent seekers—who seek to influence decision makers, because they are pursuing their own interests ahead of the national interest. Through this debate we saw not just lobbyists but also members of staff and, in some cases, members of parliament doing the bidding of the industry. In the face of threats of an advertising campaign against the legitimately elected government of the country, we saw our politicians go to water.

It is very easy to look at this reform simply as though we were facing a contest that was inevitably going to result in a win to the mining industry. But this is not just a story about the power of vested interests; it is also a story about the lack of political courage that now infects the Australian parliament. It is impossible to carry a reform that might impact on a particular industry or business group. We saw it through the reform on poker machines, where a modest reform that would have helped put food in young kids' mouths, that would have stopped relationships from being torn apart and that would have stopped people from losing their homes was defeated, again, by a very powerful lobby group.

That power only exists because we give it to them, because we capitulate and because we do not have the strength to stand up and say: 'No more! We are the democratically elected people of this place, and we make the decisions, not you.' What we saw was the death of a reform that would have guaranteed funding for vital infrastructure, funding for health services and funding for public education. What do we see now, sometime later? The minister who had been responsible for oversight of that reform is now a paid-up mouthpiece of the petroleum industry and is launching a broadside attack on the workers of this country—a former member of the Labor Party is claiming that the union movement has gone too far in protecting the rights and conditions of workers.

This is a very, very sad day for the Australian parliament because we are reflecting on a reform that would have meant that people right around the country would have benefited from the wealth that belongs to each and every one of us. What do we have in its place? We have a Commission of Audit that says we can no longer afford those things, and what we need to do in order to bring our debt down is to start cutting those things—cutting health care, cutting jobs in the public sector and ensuring that the national disability insurance scheme will be delayed. That is the consequence of the lack of courage that has been demonstrated right through this debate.

We are getting a confected story that was constructed through a set of terms of reference given to the commissioners who are charged with looking at the nation's finances. We are getting a confected story that is telling us that we need to make cuts because we are spending too much. The truth is very different. Government spending is under control. For two decades, Commonwealth spending has been stable. Far from being bloated and inefficient, our public service is one of the most efficient and one of the leanest government sectors anywhere in the world. Government spending as a proportion of GDP is lower than it has ever been in the nation's history and lower than it is in most countries that can be compared with ours. We are told we are a high-taxing country when, again, the opposite is true. Government revenues have fallen. We are one of the lowest-taxing countries, as a proportion of GDP, anywhere in the world, and, in fact, we are being taxed at a far lower rate than we were under the previous Howard government. That is why this reform is so important, and that is why the original mining tax would have been such a magnificent reform for this country.

It is important to note that this is very much a debate about the sort of country that we want to be. Are we going to continue to allow big business to dictate the terms on which this parliament acts, or are we prepared to say that, as the democratically elected representatives of the people of Australia, it is we who will decide the priorities for this nation and the level of investment in services that the people of this country want—a decent health system, a decent education system, funding for vital infrastructure—or will we continue to allow these rent seekers to name the terms of debate?

The Greens will not stand for it. We are here because we believe that society can afford—and, in fact, has a right to—adequately funded health care. Rather than cuts, we want to see investment in health; rather than cuts, we want to see investment in education; rather than stripping away protections for our environment, we want to see those protections strengthened; and rather than politicians caving into the big end of town, time and time again, we need to take a stand. There is no more important issue on which to take a stand than ensuring that this country has the revenue to fund the things that all Australians want and deserve.