Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I would make a couple of points in response to the question. The first is that, whatever criticisms the senator has of the MRRT, the revenue write-downs that are being seen in the federal budget are far bigger than what we see in the context of the MRRT. In other words, the write-down on the MRRT revenue is a fraction of the total write-down that the government has confronted in putting this budget together—a fraction of the total write-down. I would remind the senator: it is true that the MRRT has been written down, but it is also true that you see, in aggregate, much bigger write-downs from other profit based taxes across the board. So the fiction that Senator Cormann continues in this question is that, if there were a different MRRT, the budget position somehow would change. The reality is that the revenue write down from the MRRT is only a fraction of the $60 billion that confronts whoever is working on the budget. They would be the same figures if Senator Cormann were in government.

In terms of the MRRT, the budget makes clear that the revised projections are for a net of $5.5 billion over the new forward estimates. Obviously, resource rent taxes are, by their nature, difficult to forecast. Some volatility in revenue relative to the estimates is to be expected. I would make the point that Treasury's outlook is consistent with forecasts by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office, as well as market economists like Deloitte Access Economics.