Senate debates
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
Questions without Notice
Budget
2:25 pm
Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source
What we have is a situation where the mining sector want to defeat the proposed resource super profits tax. They are against paying a fair share of tax, and they are going to reduce their already-low level of company tax by claiming it as a deduction. They are going to claim the advertising campaign as a deduction and reduce their currently effective 17 per cent company tax when the headline rate is 30 per cent. That is one of the reasons this government intends to introduce a resource super profits tax on the future profits of a resource owned by the Australian people. (Time expired)
Mark Duffett
Posted on 18 Jun 2010 10:03 am
"the mining sector want to defeat the proposed resource super profits tax"
How? Isn't it the parliament that makes the laws, and so determines whether the RSPT stands or falls? The mining sector doesn't have any seats in parliament as such. Ergo, it's parliamentarians you need to convince, which should be done through reason and facts, not by spending $38 million of our money to blast propanganda at us.
The Government is essentially using our money to convince us to convince them to do something they wanted to do in the first place. If that's how you want to run things, why not ditch representative democracy and decide everything by popular referendum?