Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Despite some reservations, I support this motion. During the course of my election campaign I naturally encountered many people both within and outside my electorate. Apart from the key issues which have been well reported and which were relevant in the election in the federal electorate of Melbourne, the one issue which surprised me with the regularity with which people raised it voluntarily—as something they were concerned about which was affecting the way they were voting in the electorate—was the issue of tax reform and the standard of debate around it. It came hot on the heels of the government’s backdown on the mining tax, and the sense that I got from people in my electorate was that many people thought the tax was a good idea. They thought it was a good idea that we apply a tax to the most profitable of profitable projects for minerals that are owned by the Australian people and that we only get one chance to dig up and export. Instead, they saw the government back down in the face of a sophisticated campaign from very powerful interests and the big end of town. There was also a sense of disappointment that the arguments in favour of such a tax were not being properly prosecuted and the information was not being put out in the public domain in the way that it ought to have been.

It is my hope that, removed from the heat of an election campaign, we can have an informed debate about the future of taxation in this country, and the release of this material will assist in that debate. I take on board some of the comments that were raised by the member for Parramatta—I think there is an issue with releasing incomplete drafts—but on the whole the motion is worthy of support. If we are able to have a fuller and franker debate about the future of taxation in this country, we will be in a position to air arguments about, for example, putting the money raised from the mining tax into a sovereign interest fund—an idea that has much to commend it but which has not been aired in the way that it ought to have been. That revenue could then be used to plan for the future of this country. It could particularly be used for infrastructure instead of being subject to potential pork-barrelling in election after election.

On the mining tax, if we as Australians are not able to find a way to efficiently and fairly tax the minerals that the public owns and that we only have one chance to dig up and sell and to use it for the benefit of all of the public, that says something about the relationship between democracy and the big end of town in this country and the willingness to show true political leadership. I hope that release of the modelling assists in the debate about how to properly prepare for our future and moves us towards a tax system that returns to the public a fair share of the natural resources that they own.

See this speech in context