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

I thank the member for North Sydney for his question. I am advised that, on 3 June, Xstrata said that it would suspend exploration at Wandoan coalmine and said it would jeopardise jobs in construction and operations over the next five years. The Financial Review, I noticed, reported on 11 June that Xstrata’s executive general manager for the Wandoan coal project, Steve Bridger, said the company would continue to pursue the approval of a mining lease from the state government and would continue buying up land in the 32,000-hectare exploration area.

This brings me to the broader question of the integrity of various claims that have been made concerning the proposed impact of this taxation regime and the fear campaign which those opposite are engaged in. Let me go through some of these in sequence, having dealt with the Wandoan matter. Let us not forget the claim made on 4 May that Cape Lambert announced that the RSPT would jeopardise its future operations in Australia. That was just five days before the chief executive of Cape Lambert proceeded to buy a million dollars worth of Cape Lambert shares. That is the first one. We then had the Liberals saying that BHP was cancelling its Olympic Dam project. That is the second one. The opposition said the new tax was already threatening multibillion dollar investments, most of all the $22 billion expansion of Olympic Dam in South Australia. The shadow finance minister said that Olympic Dam would be put off for 10 to 20 years. However, we then had BHP CEO Marius Kloppers say on 26 May:

… it is not frozen. We are carrying on. We are spending money, there are 200 engineers working on it. Otherwise we would have made a statement to the contrary.

The third example goes to Xstrata, which I referred to before. Then of course we had a splash, I understand, in the Australian newspaper on 6 May, which stated:

… Rio Tinto has shelved plans to spend $11 billion expanding its … iron ore operations in Western Australia …

Three hours after that and after a two percentage point fall in share prices, Rio submitted a notice to the ASX market which included the following statement:

Rio Tinto today confirmed that no decision has been made to shelve any projects in Australia …

Then we go on to various statements which have been made one after the other by other mining companies. I go also to a report in the Financial Review on 9 June which said that the Chinalco bauxite development in Aurukun would join the eight projects worth $55 billion that had been put on hold due to the government’s resources tax. At 2.18 pm that day Reuters reported that Chinalco denied dropping the Queensland project. It reported that Chinalco had said that it had no internal discussions on pulling out of its $3.04 billion Aurukun bauxite project and that it was carrying out feasibility studies and comparing proposals. Furthermore, quoting Mr Lu Youqing Chinalco:

We do not have the consideration of withdrawing

from this project. It is one example after the other of exaggeration and overclaim (a) by various companies from time to time but (b) being harnessed by those opposite to prosecute a fear campaign. What this says is that the member for North Sydney does not do his homework. It says that the member for North Sydney picks up a clipping from a newspaper and equates that with fundamental, deep research. We expect higher standards from the member for North Sydney in this debate in this chamber. I would suggest if those opposite are running fear campaigns, the first and foremost requirement is to get your facts straight.

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