Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate that. I note that the net impact is $9 billion and would assume that, given the royalties identified by the Australian Taxation Office in 2007-08 were nearly $4 billion and obviously would rise significantly over the next five years to fit in with that, I would also be interested in the minister providing me with the details of what the government expects to pay back to the mining industry for the 40 per cent guarantee, and also how much of the $15.930 billion is in fact going to be specifically royalties in that year. I ask the minister to explain the Treasurer’s speech of 4 May, where he said:

The fact is, the Government’s reforms will tax the mining industry better. In fact, the most significant ‘spend’ in the entire tax package is over $8 billion every year in state government royalties that will be refunded or credited to mining companies.

Given that there is a net 9 billion, and the total is 15.9 billion, the question is how did the Treasurer get the 8 billion.

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