It was removed from his website so its in google cache

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sugexp=chrome%2Cmod%3D6&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.liberal.org.au%2FLatest-News%2F2012%2F05%2F30%2FTony-Abbott-Address-to-the-Minerals-Council-of-Australia-Canberra.aspx


Quote:

Thank you very much indeed. It’s an honour to be here at the Minerals Council lunch. It’s great to have a warm welcome and to be amongst friends but I’ve got to say, you’ve given me a very hard task today. You’ve asked me to follow Angus Taylor here at the podium and he is an excellent orator. The last time Angus and I shared a podium, I made a speech. He got up to follow me and he got a standing ovation, an ovation which I hasten to add was denied the earlier speaker. So, thank you for making Angus so welcome and look, you don’t have to give me a standing ovation – no matter how upset I feel about the welcome that Angus got the other day. Ladies and gentlemen, it is good to be here because I am acutely conscious of the debt that every Australian owes to the minerals sector. We depend upon those ore carriers travelling north as surely as our forebears rode on the sheep’s back. Australia’s prosperity now, for the foreseeable future and for much of the recent past has critically depended upon the work of the minerals sector. You may only directly employ 200,000 of us. You may only indirectly employ 600,000 of us. You may only be about eight per cent of our gross domestic product but you are fully 54 per cent of Australia's exports to the rest of the world and our prosperity critically depends upon our ability to pay our way in the world and we pay our way in the world because of you. This is a fundamental fact and it must never be forgotten by policy makers. Not only does your hard work and your success underpin the prosperity of every single Australian but in an important sense you have been nation builders as well as wealth creators. Since the mid 1960s no fewer than 26 towns, 12 ports and well over 2,000 kilometres of new railway line has been built and sustained by the mining industry and it’s so important that we do whatever we reasonably can to keep that going. Now, it’s hard to imagine with all the reports of new developments here, new investments there, to think that an industry as dynamic as yours could ever be at risk and I'm not going to say that you are at risk but I think it's important to face up to the fact that your expansion could easily be jeopardised by bad government policy and right at the moment, the universal advice that I am getting and I'm sure the Government is getting from people in this room, from the experts in the sector, is that at current Australian Dollar levels, at current minerals prices and at current cost structures the case for new investment in Australia by and large simply cannot be made. Now, existing investment will go ahead and that gives us a significant buffer but at these prices, at these dollar values and with these cost structures, in the vast majority of cases the case for new investment cannot readily be made. So, the challenge for policymakers is to do whatever we reasonably can to get your cost structures down so that the investment can continue and the jobs can continue to be created and the prosperity on which all of us depend can continue to flow in the decades to come as it has in the last decade or so. That is exactly what we in the Coalition want to provide. But I do have to say to you in all candour that only one side of Australian politics right now is focussed on helping you to get your costs down.

SOB

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The other side of politics is addicted to spending, it's in thrall to unions and it’s engaging in what can only be described as a class war. I can remember years and years ago someone saying that to grow rich is glorious. It was in fact none other than Deng Xiaoping, the former leader the Communist Party of China. That lesson, alas, has been lost on the current leaders of the Australian Labor Party who think that to get rich might be glorious but if you earn more than $80,000 as a single or $150,000 as a family, we're means-testing you out of benefits and Heaven help anyone who happens to be a billionaire and criticises government policy. It doesn't matter how many jobs you've created, it doesn't matter how much investment you've brought into this country, you're fair game to be demonised in the Australian Parliament. Well, it’s not the way to run a country and it's certainly not the way that the Coalition will proceed. Right now, there are a range of threats to the continued prosperity and expansion of the minerals sector. Obviously there is the mining tax which initially would have been immediately crippling for your sector but even in this revised version is still a threat to your long-term expansion. The whole point of the mining tax is that it neglects the fact that this sector is already paying plenty of tax. Mining companies, resources companies, they pay ordinary company tax, they pay royalties. They are already doubly-taxed and they are appropriately taxed through royalties for the non-renewable resources that they take from the ground, but to be doubly-taxed is surely enough; you don't need to be triply-taxed as you would be and will be under the minerals resource rent tax. The interesting thing about the minerals resource rent tax, formerly the resources super profits tax, is that it was supposed to be a fundamental reform. It was supposed to be a way of spreading the benefits of the mining boom to those sectors of our economy that are not enjoying such prosperity. But the reform has turned in to a handout. The money from the mining sector that was supposed to fund a tax cut for other businesses has now been redirected into a series of cash splashes. Now, I don't know how many of you would have received these letters – probably not very many – but to give you an example as to how this Government's so-called reforms have degenerated, let me read from a letter from has gone out to millions of Australians just in the last few days: “Extra cash for you. You have just received some extra money. This advance is just the start. There's more to come. From the middle of next year you will get extra cash with your regular payments. Don't worry, you don't need to make a new claim. This will come automatically just like the cash you've just had. P.S, this is just part of the extra help the Government is giving to millions of Australians.” Well, ladies and gentlemen, not for a second do I begrudge the forgotten families of our country, the struggling people of our country, extra assistance. But how responsible is it for the Federal Government of this country to be paying more handouts at this time on borrowed money because that's the truth of what this Government is doing right now. Then, of course, there's the carbon tax and we all know what the carbon tax is designed to do: it is designed to reduce our use of coal and our use of gas. In other words, it is designed to limit the production, ultimately, of the minerals upon which our country so critically depends and if you look at the government’s own modelling, iron and steel production is projected to be down by 21 percent within four decades because of the carbon tax. Aluminium production designed to be down 61 percent in that time period because of the carbon tax. The government’s own documents say that Australia’s energy production from coal, absent carbon capture and storage, will fall from over 70 percent right now to 10 percent by 2050. So, the carbon tax is designed to damage the very things on which our country's wealth depends. The only way our country's wealth can survive the carbon tax is if other countries don't do what we're doing. If China and India took the same attitude to coal and gas that we are taking, our export industries would be in diabolical trouble and, of course, the carbon tax will not even reduce in the short or medium term the emissions that it is designed to reduce. Again, if you look at the government's own modelling, emissions are 578 million tonnes now. Even with a carbon tax of $37 a tonne by 2020 they will be 621 million tonnes and then, of course, there are workplace relations changes that you are wrestling with, particularly the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission which has done so much to ensure that the rule of law operates in major engineering projects. The one thing that this government did to try to help you was announce enterprise migration agreements a couple of budgets ago and I commend the Minister for Resources for his robust defence of enterprise migration agreements before this audience today. I just hope he was as robust in the caucus yesterday because this is a government which is already walking away from these agreements. What has happened over the last few days is that the unions spooked the Prime Minister and now the caucus has rolled the cabinet on these matters. You can be absolutely confident that as time goes by, these enterprise migration agreements will be more difficult to negotiate, more onerous yet less useful to you in your desire to try to develop appropriately our country. So, my job is to try to demonstrate to you and to prove to our country that there is a better way and you know that it is possible to massively develop our minerals sector because that's what you were doing for so many decades prior to the shocks of the last few years. We will abolish the mining tax. We will abolish the carbon tax. Now, I've had people say to me but it's hard, isn't it? Well, let me assure you that a tax that's been put in place by legislation can be removed by legislation. What the Parliament does, the Parliament can undo. Now, yes, the Government talks to journalists about how they are Abbott-proofing all of the changes that they've made. People-proofing is effectively what they're doing. They are trying to prevent the next elected government from undoing the harm that they have done and there is no doubt that there are measures associated with both the mining tax and the carbon tax that will be difficult to undo.

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We will be able to deliver tax cuts without a carbon tax. We will be able to deliver pension improvements without a carbon tax because we won't shirk the fiscal discipline that is necessary to ensure that sustainable tax cuts and sustainable increases can be delivered. We will fully restore the Australian Building and Construction Commission. We will bring the workplace relations pendulum back from where this government has placed it into the sensible centre and we will do everything we humanly can to try to reduce the red tape burden under which you labour. The BCA recently pointed to a major mineral development in Queensland – a very, very big development to be sure – a development that's spent $25 million over several years, had to go to 4,000 meetings, prepare a 12,000 page statement in order to get environmental clearances. Finally, there were 1,200 state criteria and conditions, 300 Commonwealth conditions, 8,000 sub conditions and this is on a project that is going to bring vast numbers of jobs, a great deal of wealth to our country. We do not want for a second to lower environmental standards, but we are absolutely committed to reducing environmental paperwork. That's why we announced recently that we would offer the states the capacity for one-stop shop environmental approvals. We would offer the states the ability to administer federal environmental laws. Let me say to you in conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, that you will never hear from me gratuitous attacks on people whose hard work and savvy has brought investment and jobs to our country. Any Prime Minister who gratuitously attacks the people upon whose hard work and insights our prosperity depends is badly letting down the decent working people of our country. There is no such thing as a job unless an employer is prepared to offer someone a job and the more we blaggard the employers and the investors of this country, the harder we make it for them to offer the decent people of our country the work that they need. You will never see under any government that I lead a focus on wealth redistribution to the exclusion of wealth creation. That's my pledge to you, that I will understand – in a way that my political opponents demonstrably don't – that you cannot have a cohesive society, you cannot have healthy communities without a strong economy to sustain them and the absolute essential precondition of a healthy economy is profitable, private businesses. Governments don't create prosperity. Business creates prosperity. No country ever taxed itself into prosperity. I understand that. My colleagues understand that. Unfortunately, there's an abundance of evidence that the current government doesn't. So, again, I thank you for the contribution that you make. I congratulate you on the intelligent dialogue that you've had with the Minister for Resources earlier today and I hope that the lessons that you have for our policy makers are well heard and heeded for the rest of your conference because our country needs you and our country needs to understand how important you are to a successful future.

[font=Papyrus]MUSHROOMS REMEMBER!![/font]  :o :o :o

Thanks, Death. I've put them on my shopping list.

Anything else?

Ladies and gentlemen, it is good to be here because I am acutely conscious of the debt that every Australian owes to the minerals sector.

Interesting quote.  Supposedly we all owe some debt to miners.  Gina will be calling to collect soon i imagine.

Doctor Jolly wrote on Jun 4^th, 2012 at 5:08pm:

Ladies and gentlemen, it is good to be here because I am acutely conscious of the debt that every Australian owes to the minerals sector. Interesting quote.  Supposedly we all owe some debt to miners.  Gina will be calling to collect soon i imagine.

No Tnoy will collect it for her as usual.

Dnarever wrote on Jun 4^th, 2012 at 6:57pm:

Doctor Jolly wrote on Jun 4th, 2012 at 5:08pm: Ladies and gentlemen, it is good to be here because I am acutely conscious of the debt that every Australian owes to the minerals sector. Interesting quote.  Supposedly we all owe some debt to miners.  Gina will be calling to collect soon i imagine. No Tnoy will collect it for her as usual.

How much do I owe ?