In a statement released today, the party said including gold in the MRRT would generate $2.8 billion alone, making up for the shortfall from the precious metal’s declining price.
“It’s time Julia Gillard explained why everything except the big miners is on the table for revenue raising,” the statement said.
“It's time Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott stopped asking the community to brace for tough choices, cutting funding to universities, single parents and foreign aid and stood up to the big mining companies that can and should pay more.
“It’s ludicrous to think we can raise the revenue we need to plug the ballooning deficit with more and more cuts to the community when Rio Tinto and BHP and Gina Rinehart made multi-billion dollar profits this year.”
Liberal senator Mathias Cormann confirmed that the MRRT had missed its targets but advocated scrapping the tax instead of expanding it.
“Instead of the $4 billion in net revenue the Treasurer Wayne Swan originally predicted the MRRT would raise this year, it has raised just $88 million net so far,” Cormann said in a statement today.
“The last thing we need is for a bad, value-destroying tax to be expanded to other parts of the mining industry which are already confronting significant challenges without it.
“The MRRT is bad for investment in one of our most important industries, arguably at the worst possible time.
“As such it is bad for our economy and, as is now obvious to most, bad for our budget too.”
The Greens, meanwhile, reported that recent figures from the Parliamentary Budget Office revealed that forecasts for MRRT revenue had been lowered by $3.5 million since October last year.
“As economics professors Ross Garnaut and John Quiggin told the Senate Inquiry into the MRRT hearing last Monday – there is no economic rationale to limit the tax to coal and iron ore at that low rate and the royalties debacle and overly generous depreciation provisions are fundamental flaws that need to be fixed,” the party said.
“Only the Greens have the guts to stand up to the mining companies so that we can invest in our community.”
Cormann responded that the tax was fundamentally a “mess” and warned against any effort to increase it in scope.
“The Greens want to close down the mining industry,” he told the ABC.
“But once the Greens have got their way, no amount of tax targeting the mining industry will raise any money whatsoever.
“They don't have the best interest of the mining industry at heart.”
