House debates

Wednesday, 20 November 2013

Bills

Minerals Resource Rent Tax Repeal and Other Measures Bill 2013; Consideration in Detail

6:27 pm

Photo of Andrew WilkieAndrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

The government is making much of the fact that the mining tax does not work, that it does not collect and will not collect enough money, and that is true: it is not working as it was hoped it would work. It is not collecting the sort of money that it was expected to collect. But, instead of just getting rid of it, why doesn't the government fix it? There are any number of ways in which the mining tax could be enhanced to achieve the sort of revenue that is in the forward estimates, the sort of revenue that this country desperately needs to look after the people who need looking after the most.

At the end of the day, what is the role of government? Yes, it is to keep our country safe, but it is also to make sure that everyone gets a fair go in the community. It is to make sure that the people who rely on the public health system can have the best public health system in the world, that the people who need to rely on the public education system can have the best education in the world, that the people who need to rely on public housing do not have to wait years on a list and that people with a disability get the very best care in the world. That is a primary responsibility of any decent government.

Surely it is the responsibility of this government to pick up the mining tax that it was left by the previous government and fix it—for example, to do away with the outrageous depreciation provisions, to prevent the three mining companies that basically designed the tax from getting away with blue murder. The fact is that companies like BHP, Xstrata and Rio have so much that they can write off that they will pay next to no tax for quite some time to come. Well, let us get rid of those depreciation provisions, make the settings right and allow the tax to collect the sort of money it should be collecting.

What about increasing the rate? The fact is that, if any company in this country is making a genuine superprofit, they should pay their fair share of tax. Maybe consideration should be given to increasing the rate. Consideration should be given to fixing the royalty provisions, which are allowing state governments to do whatever they want with the royalties, knowing that they will be reimbursed by the Commonwealth.

What about expanding it to other resources? What about expanding it to gold or expanding it to uranium instead of having it restricted to a very narrow set of resources? In fact, while we are at it why don't we have a conversation about doing this right and, instead of having a very narrow resource rent tax, having a genuine superprofits tax because surely any business in this country that makes a genuine superprofit can afford to pay a bit more? In the fiscal year 2012-13 the four banks made almost $30 billion in profits. Four Australian companies made almost $30,000 million in profit. Now they are crying poor; they are saying it is a very poor return on their investment. I reckon that is hogwash. Surely the banks and the big miners like BHP, Xstrata and Rio can afford to pay a bit more, because it is completely unacceptable that we continue to live in a country where people wait three years for a hip operation, go to a substandard school despite the best efforts of the teachers, wait years for public housing and live in states where the government will not even cough up $300 for a wheelchair while companies like BHP, Rio, Xstrata, the Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, ANZ and NAB are pocketing enormous sums of money. There is a fundamental inequity in this which a decent government would do something about.

Even if we do not have a superprofits tax applying to all companies that operate in the economy, let us at least have the sort of resource superprofits tax that Ken Henry recommended. Ken Henry is one of the leading minds in this country. He made a number of very well researched, credible recommendations to the previous government. If the previous government was not going to listen to those good recommendations then maybe a decent current or future government will pick up those recommendations and run with them. The federal budget for this financial year has a revenue forecast of $388 billion—that is, $388,000 million—yet we are going to rip money off people on low incomes who want a bit of a hand with accumulating their super and we are going to take money from disadvantaged families who need a bit of help with their school costs.

What is going on here? We talk about a corporate rate cut. We are talking about a better deal for the miners and not getting into the banks when in any number of electorates people need a bit of a hand and this tax is one way of creating the money to give them a hand.

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