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

Mr Speaker, I know this might be difficult for those opposite to listen to but it does go directly to the question which has been asked by the Leader of the National Party, which is: what is the impact of tax reform on overall perceptions of confidence in the mining industry? Today, together with the Vice-President of the People’s Republic of China, we witnessed the signing of a facility agreement for $US1.2 billion between Karara Mining Ltd and the China Development Bank Corporation. Furthermore, we also saw a cooperation agreement between Resourcehouse Ltd, Export-Import Bank of China, the Metallurgical Corporation of China and China Power Holdings to establish a $US8 billion China First Coal Development project involving the construction of a mine and a 476-kilometre railway to the port of Abbot Point near Bowen. That is what was signed in our presence earlier today. Perhaps there is a third one which I should draw our attention to as well, and that is an engineering and procurement contract cooperation agreement for China Gezhouba Group Company Ltd to provide procurement engineering and design services to Fortescue Metals Group Ltd. At current estimates the expansion, I am advised, would add up to $A5 billion of annual export revenue to Australia.

Here are three sets of agreements which have been signed in my presence and the presence of the Chinese Vice-President about one-and-a-half hours ago. I know that those opposite have difficulty in confronting the facts in this debate; they would much rather run a fear campaign. This government is interested in tax reform because it delivers better super for working families—7.5 million of them; better tax arrangements for our 2.4 million small businesses right across the country; tax cuts for some three-quarters of a million incorporated Australian businesses; and a dedicated infrastructure fund for our resource states, Queensland, WA and elsewhere, to build the road, rail and ports that they desperately cry out for for the future. So I say to the Leader of the National Party—apart from the fact he is not interested in representing in this chamber his constituency’s interest in the National Broadband Network—that on the question of the impact of our tax reform proposal he should look very carefully at the facts and the content of what is occurring out there in the community, and if his overall argument is that there is no confidence on the part of international investors in the impact of the government’s tax reform proposal, I would ask him to look very carefully at the three sets of agreements which were signed in my presence and the presence of the Chinese Vice-President today.

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