Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I remind her of the Treasurer's failure to deliver the promised surplus this financial year, his failure to collect more than 10 per cent of the promised $9 billion in mining tax revenue, and his failure to deliver on his promise to create at least 500,000 new jobs in two years. I ask: does the Prime Minister still have confidence in her Treasurer?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To the Leader of the Opposition, the answer is: of course. I know the Leader of the Opposition is not interested in, or competent with, economics. And I know that the opposition is desperately trying to pretend that the Leader of the Opposition is interested in economic matters. But I suggest to the Leader of the Opposition that, if he is engaging in this pretence, he should not come in and criticise the person; he should deal with the facts. The facts of the Australian economy are these: unlike economies around the world, we have low unemployment, low inflation and low interest rates; we are AAA-rated by all three major credit rating agencies; we have strong public finances; and, during the worst downturn in more than 80 years, during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, we kept creating jobs. We kept creating jobs because this government, including the Treasurer, to whom the Leader of the Opposition refers, put jobs first.

I understand that the Leader of the Opposition, if he had been in government, would have taken a different decision to Treasurer Wayne Swan. He would not have put the jobs of 200,000 Australians first; he would have consigned them to the unemployment queue. He would not now be getting our economy ready for the challenges of the future. He would not be embracing a clean energy future. He would not be embracing the digital economy. He would not be laying out a strategy for us to tap into the growth in our region, the Asian region. He would not be revolutionising this nation's approach to skills and to schools to ensure that we win the economic race by winning the education race. He would not be engaged in economic policies of that depth and complexity. I understand that.

Because this government has focused on jobs, we have more than 800,000 Australians in jobs that have been created since this government came to office. Because we are investing now for the future, Australians can look forward to a future in which we will see strength, fairness and prosperity in our nation. We will see us harvest the benefits of being a smarter country. None of this future is assured. To get there, we have got to make the right choices. This government, including the Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer, the member for Lilley, are making those right choices. If the Leader of the Opposition has an alternate plan then he should table it. He has had more than enough opportunity as Leader of the Opposition to do it, but I suspect we will never see it. Instead, we will continue to see this personal criticism.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have a supplementary question for the Prime Minister. Does the Prime Minister rule out redesigning the mining tax, which was the Treasurer's own handiwork?

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Prime Minister has the call. I was waiting to give her the call until I had silence from those who had asked the question.

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The answer to the Leader of the Opposition's question is as follows. First, the Leader of the Opposition, if he spent any time following economic matters, if he in any way studied the economic debate, would know that we have been critical of the reckless approach of state governments to royalties. Interestingly enough, the opposition that has always criticised an efficient profits-based tax in the minerals sector has gone tick, tick, tick to Liberal royalty increases around the country. We have been concerned about increases in these inefficient taxes and we have asked the GST Distribution Review to look at the matter. We have received their conclusions, and they are that the current treatment of royalties under the MRRT is both unsustainable and undesirable. That is a reference to what state Liberal governments are doing. We have said that through the Heads of Treasury process we will work on that with state counterparts in coming months. If the Leader of the Opposition in any way kept up with economic matters and economic debate, he would be well aware of that. The Leader of the Opposition should also recognise that a profits-based tax is more efficient than royalties, and if he is concerned about these questions then he should take them up with state Liberal counterparts.