Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Coalition Policy Development Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. I refer the Treasurer to the statement that Don Argus, former head of the resource minister's own Policy Transition Group on the mining tax, did actually make. I quote:

You … don't want to start double-taxing the resources companies … As it is, people are looking at the sovereign risk and starting to wonder what's going on.

Will the Treasurer address growing uncertainty in the mining sector by ruling out a further redesign of the mining tax?

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do thank the shadow minister for his question. I think everybody on this side of the House is concerned about how competitive our mining taxation regime is, and the need for that went to the very core of the report that was produced by Mr Argus and Minister Ferguson. Nobody could fundamentally disagree with that. If you are rational and if you accept the facts, you would not fundamentally disagree with the proposition that royalties are inefficient, that royalties discourage investment, and that, if we are going to have an effective and efficient form of resource taxation in this country, it has to be some combination of resource rent taxation and the existing royalties regime.

Of course, what we have seen occur in recent times is substantial royalty increases in some states which have deterred investment and which have punished some companies and punished employment, particularly in my home state of Queensland. Between the time that we announced the MRRT and we put it in operation, we saw the biggest surge in mining investment in our history in this country, with—and I will check this—an additional 53,000 jobs created in the mining sector. Why do I make that point? Because every one of those people opposite, when we introduced the MRRT, said it would be the opposite—they said investment would go out the back door, as would jobs. Of course, investment boomed and so, too, did jobs. But we do understand that there is an interaction between the two, which is why this matter was referred to the GST distribution panel and why it is now being dealt with at an officials level between state and federal Treasurers. That is how it has been dealt with because the interaction between the two is an important consideration. That point was made in the Argus-Ferguson report at some length, which, by the way, was a public process, a transparent process, which consulted right around the country—a very important report. We are working within those parameters because what we want for Australia is a resource pipeline that generates jobs and generates investment, and we make sure that, as a consequence of that, all Australians share in the benefit of that investment. This is where there is a fundamental difference of opinion, because those opposite think one dollar of a resource rent tax is too much, because they are down on bended knee to the mining billionaires.