Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I think Senator Sinodinos has been around long enough to know that I am not going to give him an answer to a hypothetical question, which is what that was. What I was going on to say was that the government will release information on resource tax collections each month in the normal way, commencing from the October monthly financial report due out in December, subject to taxpayer confidentiality rules. I referenced earlier the drop in commodity prices which, as the senator might recall, was some 38 per cent in the iron ore price between budget and early September. The senator, unlike most on the other side, would also know that you cannot necessarily extrapolate the total annual take by multiplying the first quarter by four; taxpayers can vary their instalment rate in any quarter and the instalment rate is applied to revenue in each quarter, which varies from quarter to quarter, particularly when you see large fluctuations in— (Time expired)