Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to his January 2007 statement that the mining boom had ‘piled in billions of dollars to this country’; to his March 2007 statement that the mining boom ‘is pumping up the national economy’; to his April 2007 statement that our current economic circumstances ‘are propped up by the mining boom’; and to his May 2008 statement to the Minerals Council that the boom ‘has contributed massively to national income and to the Australian economy at large’. Why then did the Treasurer say yesterday that the Australian people have actually been short-changed by the mining sector? And if the mining boom has been so good for the country, why is the Prime Minister now determined to kill it?

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