Grievance Debate

MINING INDUSTRY

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (17:23): On each of the last two evenings, I have been to functions which have been attended by a significant number of people from the mining industry in South Australia. The government has been talking up this industry for a significant period of time. In the context of the recent election, the government has also been talking up jobs growth in South Australia. The Premier, as part of his election strategy, has suggested that in the next six years—I think he was claiming he was going to do it by his own hand—we will see 100,000 jobs created in the South Australian economy. We also know that the Premier often states that most of the jobs that will be created in the South Australian economy in the next period will be in either the mining or defence sectors.

Last Sunday, we saw the federal government and the Prime Minister of this country take an axe to the mining industry. We saw the federal government announce a 40 per cent super profits tax (as the Prime Minister referred to it) on the mining sector. I inform the house that every member of the mining industry to whom I spoke last night and the night before is devastated by this news. They honestly do not believe that our mining industry is going anywhere while it remains under the threat of the new tax imposition. Yet we have heard very little from this government which has been arguing that the mining sector will be the saviour of our economy and will create another 100,000 jobs in the next six years.

What does the Treasurer say about this? On ABC radio on Monday the Treasurer said, amongst other things, 'By and large, this is a pretty good package.' But what else did he say? He revealed that it was also his intention to double the royalty rates on our mining sector. We had an election six weeks ago. The Labor Party put out a manifesto for that election, part of which included policies relating to the mining industry. There was not one mention of a proposal to increase the royalty rates. The Treasurer said, 'We have been doing this for some time. I have had the Budget Sustainability Commission work on this for some time and we were going to double it.' He did not mention it to what has been identified as the most important sector of this economy.

Madam Speaker, the worldwide press over the past few days has noted that the Canadians, in particular, are jumping with joy at the prospect of what will happen here in Australia. The mining industry is worldwide competitive and the one thing for which they compete is finance.

People with lots of dollars to invest in mining have a lot of sense, and one of the things they look at is where they will get the best rate of return. That certainly is not in Australia. Today—before the next tax is imposed—the average Canadian tax rate is 23 per cent on the mining industry. In Australia today it is 38 per cent—and it will rise to 58 per cent.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I am running out of time but I direct members' attention to Robert Gottliebsen's Business Spectator online newspaper. An article today states that he expects a major financial strike to hit our mining sector. He said:

I have never seen an industry so angry. As we saw in the medical area, Rudd just put the proposal on the table and tried to bully his way through, but miners are much tougher than state premiers and the international majors have a raft of projects in other countries that will now take precedence over Australia.

Here in South Australia we have been pinning our hopes for a number of years on BHP Billiton's Olympic Dam project. It is under serious threat from the federal Labor government.