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

Of course on coming into government the first thing we had to do was repair the mess and the damage that the most anti-WA government in the history of the Commonwealth had done to our great state of Western Australia. We had geniuses on the Labor side. Former Treasurer Wayne Swan—remember him?—delivered a mining tax that was designed to hit the WA mining industry for six. He thought it was going to raise millions of dollars. He spent all the money he thought it was going to raise and more and created massive uncertainty in Western Australia at the worst possible time. It is this government that got rid of it. It was the Liberal members and senators from Western Australia who repaired the damage that Labor did.