Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of the answer. Senator Cameron has belled the cat! In his last five seconds, he said the opposition has no idea on economic policy, and he is quite right. There is evidence of it littered all through the history of when you were last in government—the six years that you tormented the Australian people with this nonsense of a response to the GFC. I need go no further than the minerals resource rent tax to expose your economic illiteracy in areas of any kind of prudent fiscal management. That was a tax that went to the very heart of the biggest sector contributing taxes to our economy: the resource sector in Australia. Incomprehensibly, the then government forecast $3 billion worth of revenue in their first period. Actually, it was forecast to raise $3 billion over the first year; I must be specific. We came in, and we got rid of it six months after getting in. That was one of our key election policies. It had not raised $1.5 billion in the first six months. It had raised $126 million. That is how your projections go. At the same time, you put a great cloud over this country in terms of sovereign risk. That was the minerals resource rent tax. Can you imagine if that policy was still there today in the resources sector? It was one of your key planks, your key responses, to the global financial crisis to saddle up one of the biggest taxpaying sectors of our economy.

Then we had the carbon tax. 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead,' was the cry at the time that Julia Gillard was the Prime Minister of the country. In fact, can I have a show of hands? Has anybody on the other side of the chamber got a passport?