Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Speaker. I was just trying to catch the Leader of the Opposition up on months and months and months and months of economic dialogue that he has clearly missed out on, so let's just start at the beginning. I, working with the Deputy Prime Minister and the minister for resources, entered an agreement with the mining industry. We then had a policy transition group overseen by Don Argus. We then brought the legislation to the parliament. The legislation passed. We implemented the tax. There was a question about unsustainable royalty increases by state governments. We made that part of what we asked the GST review to look at. And of course there are people involved in the GST review who have got a connection to the other side of politics—I am obviously thinking here of Nick Greiner—and they have produced a report. Following the production of that report, it has been clear publicly that federal Treasury has been in dialogue with the heads of state treasuries. There is nothing new about that. Anybody who had picked up the Financial Review or the Australian newspaper on more days than today would have been able to tell you that complete story months and months ago. So the Leader of the Opposition once again, through the form of his question and his carry-on in this parliament, just shows how deeply uncomfortable he is and how deeply ignorant he is of economic matters.

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