Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry) Share this | Hansard source

I do not call for a one-party state, sunshine, but what I call for is economic reliability and sustainability and sense—and you failed on all three fronts. You produced deficits the likes of which were never seen in this country.

All through my electorate, workers in the mining industry have been affected, whether from the shutdowns at various mines throughout the Hunter or, indeed, the layoffs, or the indirect flow-through to places like WesTrac and Sandvik which have laid off people and have potentially more layoffs to come. And why? As I said, at least I am honest enough to admit that it is at least in part because of commodity prices, but it is also because of the cost of production. And the minerals resource rent tax and the carbon tax are both contributors to the cost of production.

There are around 265,000 people, according to the ABS, employed in the mining industry across Australia. If you add the indirect to the direct, they say that it could be roughly a million people employed in our mining industry—that is a lot of jobs. That is about eight per cent of our national workforce. And eight per cent of our national workforce deserves the support of both sides of the House, through removing this insidious tax which raised nowhere near the revenue—nowhere near the revenue, thank God—that it was intended to. I mentioned the member for Cunningham earlier. The Peabody mine at Helensburgh has lost 42 jobs locally and the company has lost 400 nationally.

It is not just confined to New South Wales. If you look at the Northern Territory, the member for Lingiari's Frances Creek iron ore mine is becoming unprofitable and jobs will go. Why? In part because of the cost of production. There are 20 companies that are paying the MRRT but there are at least 145 that have to go through the auditing processes and submissions, which cost an awful lot of money. I will go through some of the job losses that have occurred. At the Glencore Xstrata Newlands Northern coalmine, 50 jobs will go in the next couple of days. Bradken Foundry is shut, with 1000 jobs lost. At Wollongong Coal, formerly Gujarat NRE, there were 47 voluntary redundancies; the workforce dropped by 20 per cent. At Aurizon workshops, jobs were cut in June; 480 jobs will go by 2017. At Arrium, 120 jobs, or 20 per cent of the workforce, are to go at the Newcastle Warratah site. At Gindalbie Metals, admin jobs were cut at the Karara project in Western Australia. BHP Illawarra Coal will cut 36 jobs by 30 June. Glencore Ravensworth coalmine is going into care and maintenance in September with 17 redundancies and possible redeployment for another 110 people. The Vale Integra coal complex at Camberwell and Glennies Creek will cut 500 jobs. Forge went into administration, cutting 1,370 jobs. The Anglo American Drayton coalmine has 500 employees for the chopping block by 2017. BMA's Saraji coalmine in Queensland will lose 230 jobs. Rio Tinto announced job cuts to come at the Hail Creek coalmine earlier this month. Joy Global's machine maintenance services at Rockhampton has lost 25 jobs. The LDO Chain Valley colliery, in the member for Charlton's seat, has cut 73 jobs in March; sixty were already retrenched from Ravensworth. It goes on. There have been 4,230 recorded job losses since January this year, according to an article from AustralianMiningon 26 May.

Mining is the backbone of our communities. I come from a mining area and I understand how that flows through the whole economy. In fact, there was a very good article written by Ian Kirkwood in the Newcastle Herald which focussed on the flow-through effect of the mining industry and how it affects everyone from car retailers to cafes and sandwich shops—businesses across the whole of the community.

This Labor opposition would rather see jobs go; and be mindful that most of the jobs going in the mining industry are those of members of the union movement. It is not only that they are not standing up for jobs—they are not even standing up for the jobs of the people who contribute their union fees to their political party, and that is disgraceful. They have deserted these people in their hour of need.

If we could get rid of this tax, at least it would be one more barrier to growth out of the way. Commodity prices will come and go, and we can all speculate on them. But what we need to do is make sure we keep our industries in Australia competitive. Mining capital is very fluid capital. It will take the path of least resistance and currently that is going to other countries, not into Australia. We need to see, and to demonstrate as a government, that we are open for business—that we will support the mining industry. We will maintain environmental standards but we will cut red tape and help reduce input costs so we can keep those jobs here in Australia. It is part of our bright future. Our nation deserves it and our economy needs it because, without a successful mining industry, our debt position will continue long into the night. That debt position—let us be abundantly clear about it—was created by a miserable Labor government that had no understanding of the nation's economy, how to budget or indeed even how to tax properly. They were very good at expenditure; they were excellent at expenditure. They gave themselves AAA for expenditure but, as far as revenue collection and design go, they got a big F. To raise $340 million, to date, while putting down $16 billion worth of expenditure shows me they have no economic credentials with this nation.

I commend these repeal bills to the House. It is about time the Labor Party stood up for its workers, particularly those union members in the mining industry, and did something to support them.

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