Whish-Wilson, Sen Peter

Senator WHISH-WILSON (Tasmania) (20:57): I would like to quote one of my favourite authors, Gregory David Roberts, who wrote a book called Shantaram. I noticed this quote and wrote it down when I read the book nearly four years ago. I only recently read it again and, of course, remembered and revisited it. He said in the book, 'The only thing more ruthless and cynical than the business of big politics is the politics of big business, and when the two come together they are an unstoppable force.' I have been thinking a lot about that quote in recent weeks. The classic example of it is today with the carbon repeal package getting voted up. It was good public policy getting voted up by the business of big politics and the politics of big business coming together. We are about to see it very clearly with the mining tax repeal. We saw it in the chamber this week with the FOFA regulations, which were snuck through on the weekend while we were all away from Canberra, to support the big banks in what they wanted in terms of financial regulation. So what exactly does he mean by the 'business of big politics'? There is no answer to that—it is all open to interpretation—but I think the author means the business of big politics is getting elected. It is getting your party into power, doing what it takes. That is reasonable for any political party because, if we all believe in what we do, we want to be in power to influence decisions and get outcomes in line with our political philosophy. But I suppose it all comes down to how ruthless and how cynical you are going to be in prosecuting your party and your party's interests and policies you put forward. I have absolutely no doubt that the government, in the last three years of campaigning to get into power, have been the most ruthless, cynical government and opposition in this country's history. Some people would say they have done a good job. Some people would say, 'Well, it worked; they managed to get into power and they managed to help destabilise their opposition, Labor, here tonight alongside the Palmer United Party and the Greens.' But it was at the expense of good public policy and the public interest. It is a very sad day for our country when we see a political party—a political party that will do anything and say anything to grab power—putting their own interests ahead of the interests of the Australian people. What about the politics of big business? That is pretty straightforward. The politics of big business is doing what it takes, influencing who you need to influence to make more profit, to look after the interests of your business and your shareholders. I see Senator Bushby mumbling over there. Senator Bushby, you understand as well as I do that it is enshrined in corporations law for a company to make returns to its shareholders. The No. 1 thing a corporation is designed to do—and it is enshrined in law—is to make profits for shareholders. To be precise, it is to maximise wealth. That is not necessarily a bad thing in itself, but if the interests of that company are taken up by legislators and put ahead of the public interest then that is a bad thing. We all know the special interest theory, we all learned it at university and it is pretty well accepted. It is not just that these companies will lobby aggressively to get what they want and donate to political parties— Senator Cash interjecting— Senator WHISH-WILSON: Through you, Madam Acting Deputy President, I will take the interjection from Senator Cash on Graeme Wood, because it is exactly what I am talking about. Graeme Wood made a donation to the Australian Greens. Senator Cash: How much was it? Senator WHISH-WILSON: Through you, Madam Acting Deputy President, it was $1.7 million, Senator Cash. He donated $1.7 million to contribute to a campaign to take action on climate change. This is a really important point: that donation was made not in any self-interest but to take action on climate change. It is very different to your donors, Senator Cash—through you, Chair. It is very different to the big banks, who have given you money to repeal the FoFA reforms. It is different to the mining companies, who donate to get the carbon tax and mining tax repealed and to maintain their subsidies. We know they were lobbying Treasury—there are several words I would like to add to enhance that description, but I do not think I am allowed to say them in the chamber. They were lobbying the Treasury very hard to get these concessions. That is understood under the special interest theory. What is not as well understood in this theory is the fact that most voters, most citizens, cannot invest the time to understand the issues that are at stake, because they are too busy with their lives. The special interests know this and they prey on it. Then make it more difficult by making issues complex. One of the classic things that they do is advertise, put out misinformation and run campaigns to get what they want. Does that sound familiar, Madam Acting Deputy President? The previous Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would be familiar with that because he was knifed in the back because of what the mining companies did to the Labor Party. The pressure they put on him brought a leadership change and the watering down of this mining tax that we are debating the repeal of tonight. The Greens have said ad nauseam that we wanted the mining tax fixed. We wanted it taken back to the original Henry tax review and we wanted the tens of billions of dollars it would bring into this country to help pay for schools and help pay for hospitals, but in this country and in this chamber we did not have the political conviction to fix it. Now it is going, and the opportunity to levy a fair tax on the resources, the mineral wealth, owned by all Australians has passed us by. I have said this in previous speeches, but probably no-one in here was listening to them, so I am going to say it again. I attended Ken Henry's very last public talk. I was there at the exact minute he retired. It was at six o'clock on a Friday night at the University of Western Australia. He got up to speak and we introduced him as the head of Treasury and then, as the clock struck six, he became citizen Mr Henry, no longer in his position. He gave a great speech and, at the very end of the speech, we went to question time and a young student said to him: 'Mr Henry, what do you think is the biggest challenge facing this country?' And he said: 'A lack of political conviction for reform.' It is his review, the Henry review, that recommended this superprofits tax we are debating here tonight, albeit in a watered-down form. But it is his reform and I wonder how he feels tonight and today when he looks at this country. He also said to that young student: 'I hope the bright young students in this crowd go into politics and public service and change the future.' He talked about action on climate change—it is all on record. That has also been torn up today because of the ruthless, cynical politics of the Liberal-National Party, which do anything, say anything, lie and deceive to get themselves into power. This is good policy. It is some of the most significant structural reform seen in this country in decades. It is an attempt to use the best economic tools possible to price carbon pollution—an externality, the biggest market failure of our time. Every tonne of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas that goes into the atmosphere will impact the future of this planet. Only fools dispute that. Yet the best tools we have available—I agree they are not perfect and are just some of many approaches we need to take to problems like taking action on climate change—have now been ripped up because the Prime Minister of this country made a promise to an election that he knew might get him elected if he played his cards right. It had nothing to do with whether it was good policy or not. In fact, I watched the YouTube clip of him a couple of nights ago where he said he supported a carbon tax—when it suited his ruthless, cynical political agenda within the Liberal Party. Let's go back and think about the mining tax and the carbon tax and what happened in 2010. I ran with Senator Milne on the Senate ticket in Tasmania, in 2010, and I was not here for the shenanigans that went on in parliament but, like most Australians, I watched from a distance. I remember the negotiations Prime Minister Tony Abbott had with the crossbenches and the Greens and I remember Labor's negotiations. The Prime Minister did not get to power. We all remember the famous quote from ex-MP Tony Windsor, who said that the Prime Minister had said he would do almost anything to get power, but he did not. Immediately a power-sharing arrangement was struck between Labor and the Greens, he opposed everything. He not only opposed everything and campaigned ruthlessly and cynically against good policy day in, day out, but continued over the next three years to lie and deceive the Australian people. He has conned the Australian people. And we are about to find out the extent of that con when people do not get money back on their electricity bills and when their cost of living does not change one iota. I am looking forward, when that data comes in, to making sure that Australians know they have been conned and deceived. But even if they did not know, we need to take action on climate change. It is the moral challenge of our generation. When I think about the special interest theory and about the lengths that big business will go to with their politics to get what they want, it suddenly occurs to me that not only are special interest groups donating to parties advertising against them—aggressively, if they have to—with all sorts of different mechanisms but they are in this parliament controlling this Senate. We are voting on a carbon tax today and a mining tax—a superprofits tax—maybe tonight or tomorrow. Mr Palmer, who runs the Palmer United Party, is a coal baron—I am not saying anything that is not factual here— and, supposedly, a billionaire who has extensive coal and iron ore interests in this country. Both of those commodities will pay taxes under the superprofits tax regime. I remember Mr Palmer saying that he would step aside if there were a conflict of interest. To be honest, I have not seen any follow-up on that. But I would expect—and I say this while Senator Wang is in the chamber—that the Palmer United senators will abstain from the vote tomorrow, because he has a direct conflict of interest in this debate. I would like to hear more from Mr Palmer on this. I have nothing against his success as a businessman; I have nothing against him as a person. But I do have something to say about his influence on public policy, when his own vested interests are clearly at stake here. The same applies to the vote from the Palmer United Party today on the price on carbon. One of Mr Palmer's nickel companies pays carbon tax—that is all over the papers and everyone is aware of it. How is it that the man controlling this party was allowed to have his senators vote on that tax today? That matter is very important in this debate and has not been explored enough in the media. According to the Australia Institute—and these numbers are not disputed, although I note the coalition have expressed some cynical views about the Australia Institute in the past—$84 billion of pretax profits was earned by mining firms operating in Australia in 2011-12, of which nearly 80 per cent went offshore. Ken Henry looked at the current royalties regime in this country and found it lacking. There is a huge amount of information on that if you want to have a look at it. He felt that a more efficient tax system, a fairer tax system, would be to introduce a superprofits tax that in periods of boom allowed Australians to benefit from the wealth that could go towards hospitals, schools, defence and all these areas of public interest. But in times of bust the system would share the risk with mining companies. That all went out the door and I have already gone through that. The opportunity to put a fairer, more equitable tax on the resources that are owned by all Australians is going to pass us by tomorrow if we do not keep this tax and if we do not go a step further and fix it. Why have the coalition opposed the mining tax? I have already outlined my view: extreme, ruthless, cynical politics, tied in with a very cosy relationship with the big end of town. But they have consistently laid smokescreens in the Senate, things like, 'It's going to increase sovereign risk,' or 'It's going to impact the profits of the mining companies.' We know that it has not impacted the profits of the mining companies, because they have hardly paid any mining tax. Let us deal with the sovereign risk. I have argued in here several times that it was a load of baloney. The latest update of 2014 Rankings of countries for mining investment: "where not to invest" by Behre Dolbear mineral industry advisers. I used to use a lot of these types of weightings when I taught international finance, when we looked at sovereign risk. They explain that there are a whole series of different things that they look at for sovereign risk. There are 25 main countries around the world where mining companies operate. They look at a country's economic system; the political system—often referred to in its own category as political risk—the degree of social issues affecting mining in the country; delays in receiving permits due to bureaucratic and other issues; the degree of corruption prevalence in the country; the stability of the country's currency; and the competitiveness of the country's tax policy. Interestingly, that last one might intersect with what we are discussing here tonight. You can have a look at this document yourself. It is not very big. Out of the 25 countries where there is international mining and investment, Australia ranks No. 2 behind Canada. Of the West African countries that Senator Eggleston used to love talking about as being competition for Western Australian companies, Mozambique is ranked No. 22 out of 25. Mozambique is where one of the biggest mining companies in the world recently lost $8 billion and its CEO because of sovereign risk. Zambia and Tanzania are Nos 12 and 13. In the area of tax it is the same. We are No. 2 out of 25, only marginally behind Canada. Our ranking has improved in the last financial year, possibly because at the end of the day the mining companies were paying hardly any tax anyway. There you have it. There are plenty more of these if senators actually want to go out there and have a look. The idea that, somehow, the mining tax was impacting on the profits of large multinational companies is baloney and it always has been. It is just one of the levels of deceit and propaganda that have been peddled by people to win a political victory. I am going to finish on a topic that I know all of my fellow senators have talked about tonight. I personally agree with paying down budgets over time. What I do not agree with is the idea that we are in some sort of crisis. Sensible strategies are needed. Sensible strategies mean raising revenue as well as making cuts. We are kissing goodbye through both the carbon tax and the mining tax over $30 billion in revenue. Why? Because of someone's ruthless and cynical political agenda. Taxing bads like pollution and levying taxes on common pool resources are perfectly reasonable, efficient, logical taxation systems. Mr Henry and Mr Garnaut—you could list the eminent names who have supported this—agree, but it matters not a dam in this place. Sadly, it is very likely that, tomorrow, we are going to see the mining tax lost and with it the opportunity to get this right and, as we have seen in Norway and other countries, to get the money together for sovereign wealth that we can use to invest in innovation, technology, new industries, our hospitals and our healthcare system. Instead, we are taking money off the people who can least afford it and giving money to the big businesses, who make the most profit and who can survive on a more effective, higher tax regime.