Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer outline the importance of repealing the mining tax? How will repealing the mining tax assist families in Western Australia and elsewhere?

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is hugely important to repeal the mining tax. The mining tax represents sovereign risk to potential investors in Australia. It has been a disastrous tax from its very inception. The mining tax has been one of the great financial disasters of modern times. In its original form it was meant to raise $12½ billion in this current financial year, but it has barely raised a dollar. The most insidious part of all this is that the Labor Party committed $16 billion of expenditure against a tax that raises no money. They were spending money they were never going to receive. That is the fraud the Labor Party has imposed on the Australian people, including the people of Western Australia who rely so heavily on the resources and mining industry. The Labor Party are the architects of the worst tax in modern times; a tax that hits everyday Western Australians and everyday Australians. It is a terrible tax. Yesterday, I said in 100 years time they will be writing about the mining tax as the worst tax that was ever designed. I did not know how apt it was for me to make that reference at the time, so I went back to the budget papers of a hundred years ago.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There will be silence on my left.

Mr Brendan O'Connor interjecting—

The member for Gorton will leave under standing order 94(a).

The member for Gorton then left the chamber.

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The mining tax, designed by the member for Lilley, actually raised 95 per cent less than was forecast. In 1914, it was also a Labor Prime Minister and Treasurer, Andrew Fisher, who designed a tax for the introduction of probate and succession duties that was meant to raise one million pounds but raised just 39,000 pounds—96 per cent less than what was forecast. So Labor introducing a tax raising no money seems to be a once in a hundred years event. But I bet Andrew Fisher did not have the hide to spend money he never received.