Senator CASH (3:08 PM) —I move:

The minister’s answers to the questions asked today bordered on absolutely delusional, and they demonstrated to the people of Australia just how out of touch and just how disconnected the Labor Party are with both the domestic and the international reaction to Rudd Labor’s supertax. The minister had the gall to call us on this side economic—what was it?—‘knuckle draggers’. I have to say the only economic knuckle dragger in this place is the minister.

This proposed tax is economic vandalism; it is economic lunacy from a dangerous government that does not have a clue about economic management. Even the Labor premiers are now running a mile from Rudd Labor and its proposed supertax. Look at what the Australian says today, under the headline ‘Labor states back big mining companies on resources profits tax’:

This is the impact of Mr Rudd’s announcement to date. The article continues:

What an absolute joke! Under this government, Australia’s sovereign risk is now being questioned.

Senator Sterle interjecting—

Senator CASH —Senator Sterle, the people of Western Australia are listening today, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Stand up for the people of Western Australia; do not sit back there and cop what Mr Rudd is going to do to our state, which is to well and truly finish it off. This is nothing more and nothing less than a blatant tax grab by the Rudd Labor government.

The bottom line with those opposite is that you are part of a big-spending, economically irresponsible government, and the only reason that you need to tax the living daylights out of the industry that is this country is that you have record levels of debt, which has soared up, and you need to satiate your out-of-control spending. Mr Rudd claimed he was a fiscal conservative prior to the 2007 election. I tell you the Australian people are not laughing at that, because they actually took him on his word, and he blatantly misrepresented himself. It is the Australian people who are now going to have to pay back the debt that the government have incurred.

But the bad new for the Australian people is they will not have jobs. They will not have jobs because you are going to destroy the industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people in this country. The joke going around at the moment—and this is from Labor people back in my home state—is that Mr Rudd is the worst prime minister since Billy McMahon. Then the Labor people offer their apologies to Billy McMahon for actually putting him in the same category as the underachiever, Mr Rudd. Mr Rudd is nothing more and nothing less than an underachiever. He is going to destroy this country. He is dangerous for Australia.

This so-called superprofits rent tax will have dire consequences for the industry in Australia which is the most significant to this country, and dire consequences will flow on to the Australian economy. You have to begin to worry when the Canadians actually send a delegation over here to work out what investment they will take as it is driven offshore. Chinese companies are on the record as already redirecting investment to Africa, Asia and South America. And, in relation to the impact on the average Australian, forget about the so-called increase in superannuation; no amount of increase in the superannuation levy is going to make up for the damage that you have done to superannuation investment with your announcement. This new superprofits tax will discourage investment in our mining industry, put projects at risk and send jobs overseas. But what is new with you lot over there?