Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

A small business is what a medium- to large-sized business was before Labor came to power. Now, because of everything Labor has done, those businesses have turned into small businesses. We do know that good small businesses are the engine room of the Australian economy. Unfortunately, under Labor they have been saddled with so much debt.

We all remember that it was the mining tax in its first form that brought down the prime ministership of the member for Griffith. We all know that. On 23 June 2010 he was tapped on the shoulder. The mining tax was a huge issue. That was one of the critical significant factors that brought about the end of the first tenure of the member for Griffith. In typical Rudd government style the mining tax was a thought bubble, designed probably on the back of an envelope and implemented for a headline without due consideration to the ramifications of its implementation. So rushed was this policy that the mining sector mounted a successful campaign for change. It, along with many other factors, brought down a Prime Minister. Even when the member for Lalor, then Prime Minister Julia Gillard, negotiated the MRRT it was still a flawed model that had a flawed outcome for the Australian economy—an outcome that meant that investment was going to be smaller and that meant it was going to cost jobs, security and safety for Australian businesses, certainly Australian mining companies and those mining companies that wanted to invest in Australia.

Despite Labor's talking points saying that the MRRT was about Australians reaping the benefits of our natural wealth, the MRRT allowed the nation's three biggest mining companies to write their own law. It was a rushed policy for the sake of a headline. We all know that Labor were very conscious to make sure that they got good headlines and good press. That, along with GetUp! and all the social media outlets, was what was ruling this country. It was not Labor; it was what the media wanted and what Labor wanted to get out in the media and the social media.

The MRRT disadvantaged what I will call the junior miners—the small businesses, such as the Lake Cowal goldmine near West Wyalong in my electorate in the north-west of the Riverina—and allowed the big miners' profits to continue to grow. This sent a message to the rest of the world, like most of the Labor Party's policy initiatives, that the Labor government was more interested in a news grab than it was in sensible, methodical or strategic governance—and isn't that so true of the Labor government?

That is why it was not surprising to the coalition that in late October last year, the MRRT, the key policy of the Labor Party, which was about sharing the wealth and investing in the regions which produce that wealth—and there is nothing wrong with that—had raised a mere fraction, a smidgen, of what was initially promised. No rivers of gold; no promised dividend from our important national resources; no budget surplus on time as promised. But we all know this landmark policy that Prime Minister Gillard and the then Treasurer, the member for Lilley, told this parliament on so many occasions was supposed to deliver a budget surplus on time as promised was a fallacy. It was flawed policy from the start; that announcement just proved Labor's lack of policy nous.

Unfortunately, the Labor announcements for the sake of headlines did not stop there. Rural and regional members in this place will be well aware that the Regional Development Australia Fund, or RDAF, which was supposed to fund projects in our electorates, including many in the Riverina, was entirely reliant on revenue from the mining tax. I know that in the Riverina $3.2 million in federal funding was promised, and the 13 local government areas that I represent were told that if they got their applications in there would be all sorts of projects that they could fund. I know Wagga Wagga City Council was promised $668,888, and it went right down to Murrumbidgee shire with $123,664. The other 11 local government areas in my electorate were also all promised things in RDAF round 5, which became A. Then the regional development minister, the member for Ballarat, came into my electorate on the Monday of election week and promised half a million dollars for post school options at Griffith, as well as a youth outreach service for Narrandera and five trade training centres. Now I am certainly all in favour of trade training centres; I think they are fabulous. I think this parliament needs to recognise that a trade certificate is just as important, just as valuable, as a tertiary qualification, a degree. Both sides of this parliament have probably not recognised the fact that we need more electricians, more plumbers, more people who have trade qualifications, and that those qualifications are every bit as important as having letters after your name.

Certainly I am very much in favour of these trade training centres. In fact I opened a hospitality trade training centre at Gundagai High School just the other day. They were very much impressed with the facility they had, and I will acknowledge that that money was probably from a Labor government. I am all in favour of trade training centres, but we have upset so many of the other schools that Labor promised it would deliver trade training centres to. I can name them: Batlow Technology School, Tumbarumba High School, Ardlethan Central School, Barellan Central School and Ariah Park Central School. And you could probably throw Temora High School into the mix there as well. They are good schools and they are good kids and they deserve every bit of success, but so many of these projects that Labor promised were not delivered because there was no money there. There were no rivers of gold from the MRRT. Labor came out and said, 'Look, we're going to fund all these projects', but there was never any funding there. Labor promised; it said: 'It's already allocated in the budget. It's already there. The money's good.' But it was not good because it was reliant on a flawed tax, and there was no money—there was never any money.

As far as the RDA funding is concerned, the scheme was supposed to go to financial year 2017-18, and yet as of the 2013-14 financial year all the money has just about been allocated. Labor are carrying on about funding their promises—we are expected, now we have come into government, to fund all Labor's promises—when they did not even intend to fund them themselves! There was no money to do it, so I do not know exactly how they were going to fund all of these projects!

Nobody criticises the projects in the 13 local government areas I represent. Certainly the trade training centres throughout the schools I represent, and certainly the Griffith post school options for disabled people and their families who really desperately need that care and those options for after-school training and initiatives, and certainly the youth outreach centre at Narrandera—I am really angry about it because they are good services, but we cannot fund them because there is no money there. Labor has absolutely spent the lot. That is also why we have to raise the debt level ceiling, because we cannot continue to spend that which is not there.

Riverina families understand it; Riverina businesses understand it: you cannot keep spending money that you do not have. Anybody who has ever been in business, anybody who has ever had to put in a BAS, anybody who has ever had to make sure that they feed their families knows that you cannot spend more money than you earn. The trouble is that when you looked across to the opposite side—and I looked at them in the last parliament when the numbers were very even—you could see people who had not been in business. They were all from the union sector. There is nothing wrong with that. I was in a union myself once upon a time, for 21 years, which is probably longer than many of the Labor members; I was in a union myself, so I recognise the role they play. But I was also in business; I ran a business for eight years. It was tough work; it was really hard work.

Ms Brodtmann interjecting—

The member for Canberra says that she ran a business for 10 years, and good on her. I am sure it was highly profitable. But I am sure the member for Canberra would not have spent more money than she earned because, if she had, she would have been out of business; if she had, she would have been out of a home; if she had, she would not have been able to feed herself—and that is the critical thing. You cannot keep spending more money than you earn. The whole problem with the MRRT was that it never raised the money, the rivers of gold, that Labor said it would, that Labor promised it would. But we all know that Labor promises are always empty. They never deliver on what they say they are going to do, and it is such a shame.

In his farewell speech last week, the member for Griffith said that politics is all about power. Unfortunately, we have seen for the past three years particularly, and probably going back over the last six, that for Labor politics was all about power. But it should not be about power; politics is about people. The people of Australia matter and they need to know that they are going to have a good, sensible, methodical, adult government. That is why, on 7 September—the last time I looked the election result was 90 seats to the coalition, 55 to Labor, one Green, one PUP, one Katter Party and two Independents so that makes it 90 to 55.

The people of Australia have spoken. They gave us the mandate to repeal the carbon tax. Yet that side is fighting so hard and so desperately and using all sorts of excuses to stop that mandate that we have got, both here and blocking it in the Senate, which is just mischievous. I think a Prime Minister once called it 'unrepresentative swill'; I wouldn't be so unkind as to call it that, but in some ways Paul Keating was right. He was probably standing right here where I am now when he made that comment. We have been given a mandate to repeal the carbon tax. We have been given a mandate to absolutely repeal the mining tax—and we will do it, because that is what the Australian people want us to do. That is what the Australian people said when they went to the ballot box on 7 September.

The member Canberra knows that, the member for Throsby understands that, and the member for Kennedy understands it. They know that this government was put into place to get rid of that toxic carbon tax. They know that this coalition government—this Liberal-National government, this Tony Abbott-Warren Truss government—was put into place to absolutely get rid of the mining tax. Because politics is about people. It is about serving the people who elect us to do the best of our abilities. Keeping the promises we make to the Australian people is at the heart of everything we will do over this term of government of the 44th Parliament.

It is why we are moving to abolish this mining tax today—a national mining tax which, for all its promises, for everything Labor said it would do, it never did because it was a flawed policy. It never realised and reaped the benefits that Labor said it would. That is so typical of Labor—they go out there, they try and sell something, they half do it and they cock it up. That is why the people spoke on 7 September, that is why the people have put us into government and that is why we will get rid of this dreadful mining tax.

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