Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. How could we forget? Congratulations, Mr Palmer! I know it was not much of a surprise since your industry receive several billion dollars of subsidies in government support every year, but on the plus side all of that free money will make it easier to justify buying your fifth private yacht. I should also congratulate you on your success as salespeople.

Government senators interjecting—

I can see that we get under the skin of the government here. The mining industry has sold the Australian public an utter falsity. Somehow you have convinced us that your economically unsustainable industry deserves billions of taxpayer dollars to prop it up but that, when you make billions of dollars, you deserve to keep it for yourselves instead of paying back that money for the mineral resources that we the Australian people have given to you. Congratulations! If home shopping companies were half as good at self-promotion as the mining industry, every household in the country would have a kitchen full of wonder knives and an ab swing in the lounge room. Congratulations! Private investors are reaping the rewards of our resources boom and money that should have been used to build railways and hospitals will instead be used to pay for private jets and replicas of the Titanic.

The current government's approach to mining is short-sighted and economically unsustainable. Foreign owned companies are trashing our natural environment, selling our resources and leaving us with very little in exchange. The experts say that a mining superprofits tax would actually promote job creation. The moguls who run the mining industry are not putting the Australian public before their own private interests. That is our job as representatives of the people here in parliament. Until this government removes the charade by abolishing the parliament and putting BHP, Rio and Xstrata in charge of everything, we Greens will continue to fight for a fair share for the people of Australia from the resources that they indeed own. The foreign owned mining companies are frankly ripping us off, and this government is letting it happen. That is how the tax was designed—it was designed to fail because the mining companies wrote it that way. After an advertising campaign which toppled a Prime Minister and shredded the resource superprofits tax, the big mining companies wrote their own tax rules. If individuals could write their own tax rules, the country would not have any money. Xstrata, Rio and BHP, as we know, wrote their own rules and so they changed the 40 per cent rate to an effective 22½ per cent rate. They changed the minerals to which the tax would apply to just coal and iron ore—no word of any of the other minerals that the Henry tax review had originally recommended should be covered by this tax. If these companies are not making superprofits then they will not pay the tax.

Debate interrupted.