HOST:
David Bradbury, there are different estimates of how much tax the Government will get over the next three years from the MRRT. What is the guaranteed return in your mind?
BRADBURY:
Look Marius, you are right to point to the additional revenue that this mining tax will deliver. The Government estimates, and these are based on Treasury forecasts are that we will be receiving $10.6 billion over the three years.
HOST:
Can you guarantee that $10.6 billion will go to revenue?
BRADBURY:
Forecasts are always important for Governments to rely upon. We have well-tested, well-costed forecasts but they are the basis that we are proceeding with this stage, as all Governments have to do.
But the significance here is that we are ensuring that all Australians get the benefit of accessing some of the gains that come from the resources boom.
HOST:
There is, as you're aware, a lot of questioning of the amount of money this tax will raise. For example, Fortescue Metals, one of the companies you'll be hitting with the tax, says that most of the big miners will actually benefit, so generous are your tax breaks in the first few years, most miners will benefit and be better off. Fortescue Metals says for our own case, that in the first three years we'll be paying something between zero and $20 million in tax in each year.
BRADBURY:
I'm not going to comment on the specifics of individuals companies. If they want to come forward and put their commercial material on the table for the public to scrutinise, that's a matter for them, and if they want to start putting some figures out there then I'd encourage them to do that in a more fulsome way. But what I will say is that critics of this tax can't get their stories straight.
On the one hand we have people telling us that this is such a big and wicked tax that it is going to tax the mining sector into submission, that it will kill off investment in the mining sector, and then on the other side we have people saying it won't raise nearly enough tax as people are suggesting. On both counts, people are already starting to be proven wrong, particularly on the count of those that assert that this will be a tax that will kill off investment in the mining sector. What we've seen in the last year, through a period where all and sundry have been aware that we are introducing this mining tax, we have seen a doubling in the amount of direct investment in the mining sector in this country. This is a good tax, it's a tax that taps into a sector of the economy that is in overdrive to ensure that we can spread the benefits of that boom.
Mr Abbott, he wanders around the country, turning up at worksite and workplaces talking about the perils of the carbon price, yet these very same workplaces are the ones that will benefit from a cut to the company tax rate. But he says he's not prepared to support one. The first Liberal Party leader in living memory to walk into the Parliament and vote down a business tax cut. I think it's shameful.
HOST:
The mining tax was one focus of attention in Parliament. Yesterday, Craig Thomson was another. It was a battle over whether he should be granted a pair because of his report of illness that prevented him going to Parliament. The Opposition has now decided that it will allow a pair to Craig Thomson; he'll be absent from the Parliament for the rest of this week. Is that an embarrassment out of the way for the Government.
BRADBURY:
This is just another example of the Liberal Party ‘look over there' strategy – look over there, look over there, if you're looking over there, you won't see the absolute shambles of a Liberal Party coming into this Parliament opposing a tax cut for business. We saw last week, running gun control arguments – first time I've seen a Liberal Party stand up running gun control arguments. What about all the years that John Howard was Prime Minister and gun crime was running amok in Victoria? Why is it that we've principally only seen gun control issues in New South Wales yet somehow it's a Federal issue?
Yesterday we saw Mr Entsch and Mr Pyne out there playing doctors and nurses. Frankly, what do these people want? They've got a doctor's certificate. Any other employer in the country would be satisfied with that. What do these people want? A personal physical examination?
HOST:
David Bradbury, thanks very much.
BRADBURY:
Thanks very much Marius.