Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Minerals Resource Rent Tax Repeal and Other Measures Bill 2013. I have just spent 20 excruciating minutes listening to Senator Siewert redefine failure in terms of the Greens' perspective on things. It is worth reminding this chamber that we have this mining tax, and we have a whole bunch of other failed and dreadful taxes, because of the alliance between the Greens party and the former Labor administration—an alliance that so maladministered our government and our nation's finances that it has put us in this position where we have to repeal a tax in order to save taxpayers' money. It is an extraordinary circumstance. The great brains trust of the Greens party got together with the Labor Party and cooked up a tax that costs more to administer, and costs more in the largesse that supposedly flows from it, than it is actually going to take in. Only the Greens and the Labor Party could concoct such a failed scheme. And yet here they are—and Senator Siewert picked it up, redefined it as a great success and spoke about how it was going to provide all this largesse. The reality is that it is not. The reality is that this mining tax is an abject failure. And Senator Siewert and her team have redefined it.

One of the most startling things in her speech—and I am not sure if Hansard has recorded my interjection—was that Senator Siewert committed that Gillard-esque failure of pronouncing hyperbole as 'hyperbowl'. In the Greens-Labor alliance, maybe the hyperbowl is some sort of American football game where they hype each other up about what a great success they are, but that is not it. Hyperbole is about exaggeration. When I mentioned that to Senator Siewert, what did I hear from Senator Rhiannon? 'You can say it however you like.' This is The Magic Pudding; this is the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland of the Greens—that is, 'it means whatever we want it to mean'. This is nonsense. They overturn basic economics. They overturn the normality of the English language and they say that whatever they say can mean whatever they want it to mean, notwithstanding convention and facts.

I would suggest to the people of Australia that the Minerals Resource Rent Tax Repeal and Other Measures Bill 2013 is a great leap forward. It is a great leap forward that is being ignored by the economic Luddites in the Labor Party and in the Greens because they refuse to accept that their Marxist rhetoric—defending bigger taxes and irresponsible spending—is sending this country broke. And they are standing in the way of the mandate that the Australian people delivered to the Abbott government to repeal not only this pernicious tax but also the carbon tax, and to make the changes that are absolutely important. The minerals resource rent tax is the penultimate failure of mismanagement by Mr Kevin Rudd, Ms Julia Gillard and the previous Labor-Greens alliance. It encapsulates their complete incompetence and their inability to manage taxpayers' money. It reminds us of the burdensome excessive taxation which came to characterise Labor's time in office, as well as the reckless spending measures of the last six years. The repeal of the mining tax is just one of the steps that the coalition is taking in order to put Australia back on the right track. We should be grateful—and I know the Australian people are grateful—that the highest-taxing government, and the most irresponsible government, in Australia's history is finally gone.