Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I contribute to this debate proudly in solidarity with the thousands of men and woman of Australia who work in Australia's mining industries and with the tens of thousands of my fellow Australians who benefit from, and whose mere existence depends upon, a strong mining industry in Australia.

I am a proud supporter of the Australians for coal industry. I remind senators that where I operate, in Townsville, we are near the Bowen coal basin, where there are hundreds of jobs and billions of dollars of wealth for all Australians out of the coal industry. There are some 54,900 direct jobs in the coal industry. There is some $6 billion paid in wages in the coal industry. The coal industry alone pays $25.5 billion in royalties to state governments in the five years from 2006 to 2012. Seventy-five per cent of the electricity that we use comes from Australia's black and brown coal. A contribution to the GDP is measured in the order of $43 billion with some 90 megatonnes in export value.

The coal industry—and the mining industry generally—is particularly important in my state of Queensland where there are 37 projects proposed or under development in the coalmining industry. Coal exports have contributed something like 15 per cent of Australia's total export over the last five years. The coal industry alone has contributed $260 million to an industry fund supporting low-emission technologies. Some 82 megatonnes of coal have been sent to Japan over the years. Importantly, to defy the arguments of Senator Cameron, Senator Lines and Senator Milne, the coal companies alone—this is not all mining companies, this is just coal—paid $17.7 billion in company tax over the five years. This bill that we are debating today is getting rid of a tax that inhibited our mining and mining exploration in our country. It was a tax that not only discouraged investment and therefore discouraged jobs but also did not raise any money. We know for all the projections of the Labor and the Greens that it was going to raise $49 billion, in the first year or so it raised only $340 million and most of that was spent in trying to administer the act and the collection of those moneys.

As we went—these are the Labor government figures—the $49 billion projection came down to 26 and then came down to 11, then came down to 9, then came down to 7, and then came down to 4. This was a tax that, in spite of what you heard from Senator Milne, the Greens political party supported the Labor government in introducing this useless, worthless and job destroying tax. Senator Milne would have you believe that the Greens were against it. They were totally involved and I am glad that Senator Milne mentioned the three big companies. It was the three big companies that Senator Cameron was disparaging—Senator Cameron forgot but Senator Milne obviously did not—that did the secret deal with Prime Minister Gillard and Treasurer Swan. Remember they went into the little room, came out of it and, as a result of that, everybody paid the mining tax except Xstrata, BHP and Rio Tinto. They must have thought all of their Christmases came at once when they walked into the room to negotiate with Wayne Swan and Julia Gillard. They just could not have possibly believed their luck.

I have heard the class warfare arguments from both Senator Milne and Senator Cameron. If they are so against all of these big mining companies, why didn't they get up and support me when I suggested, just a week or so ago, that the debt levy should not apply only to individuals but should apply to the big corporate people? I think I particularly mentioned Xstrata and BHP and Rio. And yet did the Greens support that? No. They let them go. And they talk about the government being the friends of the big end of town! 'The friends of the rich people'—how many times did we hear that? Yet here is the Labor government negotiating with those 'rich people at the big end of town' to get this mining tax in operation. What absolute hypocrisy of the Greens political party and the Labor Party!