Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. As I said, here is a company making $15 billion, absolutely involved in tax avoidance extraordinaire, and now it is to be rewarded by abandoning the tax altogether instead of fixing it. So do not bother going to the G20 later this year and rabbiting on about how Australia wants to get some changes in tax laws and tax evasion, because this company is already making billions out of Australian resources, owned by the people of Australia, and what are we getting back for it? Practically nothing. But, rather than actually fixing the tax so they pay, we are going to see the government insisting that the Senate should pass all these cruel budget measures. If you can afford to give away $21½ billion to your mates, who have donated massively to you, who advertised on your behalf and who are sitting back waiting for the cash to roll in, do not expect this Senate to go and say to the Australian community, 'Sorry, Mr Hockey gave away all that money, so now we have to go and get it out of the pockets of the community.'

I want to quickly go through some issues here around the effect on the mining industry as such. Add to that the fact that not only are we talking about the loss of carbon pricing but, by repealing the mining tax and the carbon price, we have a total of $5.4 billion taken out of government revenue and given specifically to the mining industry, and that is because, as a result of the repeal of the carbon price, they will get their full fuel tax credit given to them. They actually will get 6c a litre more as a result of today, as well as picking up an end to the mining tax, as well as not having to pay for the pollution they cause and never having to accept their responsibility for climate change. They are driving this—they are driving more intense storms and more extreme weather events that are going to kill people in Australia and lead to loss of infrastructure. How did we feel when their coalmines were filled with water during the Queensland floods? And then, no doubt, they were out there claiming all kinds of insurance benefits and the rest, as a result of having driven the climate crisis in the first place.

Do not think the community are not waking up to that. The community are going to feel very short-changed when they find that all that has happened in the last few days is not money flowing to them, because it is a joke that they are ever going to get anything like a $550 per average family return. They are going to find that not only are they not getting that but all these hits on their pocket are so that the big end of town can get these mega-profits through an end to the mining tax and an end to the carbon price. Now they can pollute and use our resources to their heart's content and fill up the coffers of their overseas shareholders. That is exactly where we are going.

What about all the advertising about how many jobs they create? Oh, yes, the mining industry is the backbone of jobs—joke. That is not actually happening. Mining currently employs 2.4 per cent of the Australian workforce. So let's get real about this talk of jobs. Now that it is transitioning from the capital intensive phase to the production phase, this is when the super-profits will occur, because their revenue from production will be rising and they will be less able to deduct it against their capital investments. In the production phase, I would hazard to guess that they are not going to employ even the lowly 2.4 per cent of the Australian workforce, because a lot of these mines are going to be automated. That is the next thing. All these people who think all the jobs are going to be up there in the mines—no, they are not going to be there. They are moving to automation and computerised control of their trucks and the rest of it. What we are seeing is even a reduction in the jobs, even if you thought 2.4 per cent was worth giving them a massive windfall gain.

What we are seeing in Australia is a megaindustry which has advertised itself into a position where governments are too afraid to take them on as they rip off the Australian community, take the profits overseas and engage in tax avoidance on a grand scale. What sort of deal is that for the Australian community? Where is the leadership? We need to be transitioning from an economy that is overly dependent on the resource-based sector to one that is based on a future vision of a country that is knowledge and information based. It is about services, education and training, new technologies, renewable industries and decarbonising our electricity sector.

Unfortunately, what we are seeing are the vested interests of the old order in terms of those big mining companies, big polluters, and the Liberal Party and the National Party which represent them to the hilt—to which they donate. That is the old order looking backwards to the old fossil fuel age and stealing from the future, because instead of a sovereign wealth fund to fund the future, the benefits of the boom have been squandered. That is why we should fix the mining tax. I am standing here ready to help Mr Hockey to put money into the coffers of this government, not to facilitate him giving away money from the budget in order to make life hard for the unemployed, the sick, the old and the student community. That is not where we are going and we most certainly will not be taking away the low-income bonus for superannuation. Why should not those people get something to give them a decent old age?