Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties. We deal with double taxation all the time. So there—I have mentioned all three aspects of double taxation. But the real point I want to raise is about my state of Victoria, which epitomises small mining and medium mining operations. I will quote from a very well put together article in the Age newspaper, no less, which highlighted just how Victoria is going to be affected by this taxation. The article said:

… the Victorian mining industry turns over more than $600 million a year and employs more than 5,000 people directly and 10,000 indirectly and most of them in regional Victoria.

If you damage these operations, you damage the integrated economies of regional Victoria—no less, of course, those industries in the Latrobe Valley where there are open-cut mines and 80 to 90 per cent of that coal is directed into the power stations that feed the households of Victoria. Up go the household electricity costs. Did you ever consider that? I do not think you did. You just saw this as a class war against Rio and BHP. This is going to affect every household in Victoria through their electricity costs. It was not bad enough that we had to force the ETS to be dropped. You had to drop one supertax, so you found another supertax to whack onto the Victorian people. The article continues:

Victoria mines 65 million tonnes of coal a year, which produces 85 per cent of Victoria’s electricity.

Victoria also mines gold—

of course—Ballarat and Bendigo are famous for it. And mineral sands and gypsum. Around Bendigo alone there are 42 small and medium sized gravel and sand quarries.

The quarrying industry employs about 3000 people direct and 7000 indirectly.

               …            …            …

… Victorian quarries produced 48.7 million tonnes of material worth about $703 million.

               …            …            …

Victoria is also thought to have significant potential as a future location for gold deposits …

These will now become marginal to say the least. I know that in Stawell and in Ballarat, at the Castlemaine mining company, they are reviewing all their exploration and expansion efforts. They are telling me off the record that any further expansions are highly unlikely. They have to see the detail of this tax, but you have no detail.

The mining tax would also affect all the downstream industries. There is Gekko in Ballarat which supplies mining equipment. They have already laid off six workers and have directly attributed that to the mining tax. The article also makes the point:

Victoria is the heavy manufacturing capital of Australia, with a significant share of automotive, steel and aluminium production.

These will all be affected by the cascading effect of this tax. Of course Victoria’s agricultural sector will be affected by fertiliser mining’s increased costs if this tax goes on. My point is: drop your class war. Look at the true effect of this tax on small and medium businesses in my state of Victoria and drop the tax.

Question agreed to.