Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to the announcement yesterday by Xstrata that it was suspending its $30 million North Queensland regional exploration program because of the Prime Minister’s great big new mining tax. In particular, I refer him to Xstrata’s statement, which read:

… the proposed tax has introduced great uncertainty about the potential impact on the economics of developing resources into viable operations in Australia.

Will the Prime Minister guarantee that there will be no further loss of investment, projects and jobs in the mining and resources sector as a result of his great big new mining tax?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question, because it goes to the government’s proposal to introduce a resource super profits tax. The reason the government is proposing to do that is that we need to do three things: (1) provide proper super for working families across Australia (2) provide tax cuts for all businesses in Australia and (3) properly fund the future infrastructure needs of Australia. These are the three reasons we are proposing this tax and doing so consistent with the advice provided by the Secretary of the Treasury in his review.

I say to the Leader of the Opposition that as he goes through project by project it would be useful for him to reflect on what others have said in the commentary in recent days about a fear campaign being run by those opposite and by some in the mining industry on the impact of this proposal. I draw his attention, for example, to the comments the other day by the former chief executive of the Minerals Council of Australia, David Buckingham, who described the current fear campaign as ‘utterly baseless’. I also draw his attention to those comments today in the Financial Review from the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia.

It follows logically that, if you are going to impose a new tax to fund these three priorities of nation building for the future, you are going to have opposition from some of the mining companies concerned. We have outlined our tax proposal and we have outlined a consultation process with the mining industry which will go to detail, which will go to implementation and which will go to transition. We are embarked on that process and will continue it into the period ahead.