Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

As the member for North Sydney will know when it comes to royalties, 10 years ago, for every $3 that companies received in profits, $1 came back to the governments of Australia through royalties. Ten years later, for every $7 which companies received in profits, $1 was coming back in royalties. Furthermore, the member for North Sydney would be aware that, if you then added royalties to the company tax cake, you would find that on average receipts relative to profits have halved compared to the proportion which existed 10 years ago.

I say to the member for North Sydney, though: whichever way you cut the cake—whether it is on royalties, whether it is on company tax and against all ranges of measures—the bottom line is that because of the current structure of the taxation regime the return to the Australian people via the taxation system is infinitely less than it was a decade ago. In the intervening decade, Australian families have faced a range of additional imposts to fund the infrastructure of the future.

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