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

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to Mr Dick Karreman, who runs a family owned quarry in Brisbane, who said in relation to the government’s great big new tax on mining:

When you walk into your house in excess of 70 per cent of that house comes out of one of these quarries.

The new home buyers of tomorrow, if this tax is introduced, are going to pay. So I ask the Prime Minister: why does the government want to make it even more expensive for families to own their own homes?

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

Mr Speaker, the fear campaign run by the Leader of the Opposition reaches no bounds. The Leader of the Opposition has been out there talking about the proposed impact of an RSPT on share markets, on superannuation earnings, on food and on everything else under heaven, without a single shred of evidence to back up each and every one of his claims. He said so about share markets: have we looked and seen what the Australian share market has done relative to other share markets across the world? Have we looked and seen what has happened with the Australian share market for mining stocks against mining stocks in other parts of the world? The Leader of the Opposition is engaged in an utterly shameless fear campaign against an RSPT because he has no alternative tax policy.

I refer the attention of the Leader of the Opposition to the contents of the modelling in the Treasury document concerning the RSPT and its calculation in relation to economic growth, in relation to employment and in relation to price impacts. I would also draw the attention of the Leader of the Opposition to this: if you are also bringing down the company tax rate across the country, that also has an effect on the price of goods and services in a positive direction for the general community.

What this all points to is a fundamental lack of policy on the part of those opposite. On Monday of this week we had, I think, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who has been in the news of late, saying that the mining companies were paying just the right amount of tax. Then on Tuesday we had the shadow minister for infrastructure come out and say that he was open to them paying some more tax. What we have today, however, is volume 3 from the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition gave us tax policy No. 3 today when he said that any fair minded analysis of the evidence would suggest that mining companies are paying more than their fair share of tax.

So, on Monday they were paying just enough tax, on Tuesday we had Barnaby saying they were not paying enough tax and now on Wednesday we have the Leader of the Opposition saying that in fact they are paying too much tax—one, two, three tax policies in three days. You begin to think that Goldilocks and the three bears are running their tax policy—not enough, just too much, a little bit more! They can credibly participate in this debate on tax policy when they have an alternative policy. The truth is that they have none. We stand for better super for workers; we stand for tax cuts for small business and greater investment in this country’s long-term infrastructure.