Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

There is so much wrong with the premise of that question, I do not know where to start. Firstly, the staffing reductions in the ATO were actually initiated and banked by none other than Senator Wong as the finance minister. So that is an important first point to make. The second point to make is that the tax commissioner actually clearly spelt out in Senate estimates that this is not impacting on the operational effectiveness of the ATO in any way, shape or form—that they were able to make the necessary efficiencies in order to give effect to their staff reductions. Finally, of course, the reason that we have not allocated any money to it is that—unlike the previous government, which allocated $12 billion in revenue against the mining tax, spent it all before they raised a zack, and then did not raise any money and exposed the budget to structural difficulties—we are taking the Keating approach. When Paul Keating introduced the petroleum resource rent tax, he estimated zero dollars in revenue in his first budget and then raised money. Well, we want to get the money we need in order to ensure that these businesses pay their fair share of tax, but we are not going to get ahead of ourselves; we are going to do the work first.