Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

Sorry, he did not mention Prime Minister Rudd’s name once. He mentioned Minister Martin Ferguson several times. He mentioned the minister who was not consulted in the development of this tax, who is playing catch-up to try to restore his credibility with the mining industry and to try to restore the government’s prospects. Minister Ferguson is left playing catch-up on this.

As Senator Bishop, this whole chamber and the Australian public know, only two people made this decision, a gang of two: the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. They were the two, they are the ones who did it and the rest of the government are left defending something that none of them really believe is a good thing. They know it is not a good thing because, of course, everybody can see that this is going to have consequences into the future. Those consequences go to the very heart of employment, jobs and investment in Australia.

Frankly, this is a government that has taken the most cavalier attitude to jobs and investment seen in recent Australian history, and we saw that on display from Minister Wong today. Minister Wong, of course, is the only South Australian in the federal cabinet. Yet, when asked about the damage to jobs in South Australia of this tax, she demonstrated not just a cavalier attitude but that she really did not care and had not looked into it.

Today we had leading investment analyst Morgan Stanley come out and talk about the Olympic Dam project. They are not a mining company. They are not spokespeople for a mining company. They are independent investment analysts. What did they say of the impact of the Rudd Labor government’s mining tax? They are reported as saying:

… under the RSPT as proposed the project has no economic value in our view.

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Including the RSPT at 40 per cent, the Olympic Dam project would fail to achieve an adequate return on invested capital in our view.

We think under these fiscal conditions, the project would be unlikely to be developed.

Minister Wong had clearly not even heard of the Morgan Stanley report when she was asked about it. She tried to brush it off as one of numerous reports, tried to pretend it was a mining industry report—tried to do everything she could to avoid talking about it and the threat to investments and jobs in South Australia. This is a $20 billion investment, creating thousands and thousands of jobs—6,000-plus jobs during the construction phase.

OneSteel are a major employer in Whyalla and a value-adder to our resources industry. They are one of the few value-adders, in many ways. They do not just mine the iron ore; they value-add and continue in steel production. What did OneSteel’s chairman have to say about this? He said that the new tax:

… fundamentally changes the economics of the Whyalla steelworks and threatens the viability and, hence longevity, of our steel businesses.

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Unless the Government makes substantial changes to the tax there is likely to be serious implications for our shareholders, employees and the local communities in which we operate.

Those serious implications are that their jobs and the future of their communities are on the line. That is what is at stake here—future investment, because mining capital is incredibly fluid. We saw from Senator Bernardi’s questions to Senator Wong that the Chileans, the Canadians and all those other countries with significant mineral resources are celebrating what the Rudd Labor government is proposing because they know that the fluid capital of mining investors will go to their countries—to Chile, to Canada, to Russia, to anywhere but Australia—because they will offer a better return on investment. The jobs will go to those countries and Australia will be poorer as a result. That is what this tax will do. It will crush the mining industry, it will crush value-adding in the mining industry, it will crush jobs and investment in Australia and it will hurt all Australians as a result.