Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Central to the government’s reform agenda, central to the modernisation of resource taxation, central to the boost for superannuation, central to the investment in infrastructure and central to the cut in company tax is to support jobs and business in this economy. That is what is central to our agenda. I can absolutely guarantee that the rounds of reform that we are putting in place will grow our economy for the long term.

What are we dealing with here? We are dealing with an opposition that mismanaged the last mining boom. As a consequence of their mismanagement, they put upward pressure on inflation and capacity constraints emerged in our economy. We on this side of the House are absolutely intent on making sure that we manage mining boom mark 2 so we maximise all of the opportunities that will flow from that for all of our citizens—and, of course, that includes supporting employment.

Let us take the example of small business. If those opposite had had their way during the global financial crisis, tens of thousands of small businesses would have hit the wall and tens of thousands of people would have lost their jobs. What we are going to do now as the economy recovers is put in place a generation of reforms that will support economic growth, that will deal with capacity constraints, that will invest in infrastructure and that will make all of our companies much more competitive.

What are those on the other side of the House saying about our proposal? They are saying that the mining companies in this country pay too much tax. Effectively they are arguing for a tax cut for the mining industry, plus they are going to increase the corporate rate by 1.7 per cent for all companies over a certain level. So there is a big tax out there, a very big tax slug from those opposite, for Australian corporates. We are asking some of the very profitable mining companies in this country to pay a fair share of their superprofits to the owners of those resources—the Australian people. As the price of commodities goes through the roof, those opposite have the extraordinary proposition that the Australian people should not get a fair share of it.

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