Christine Milne Transcript: Uni funding cuts, mining tax costings, Coalition’s paid parental l

CHRISTINE MILNE: Australians love the fact that our universities churn out some of the best research in the world and whenever there are breakthroughs the community celebrates. We have not only had the bionic ear but we’ve had in the last 24 hours news that the University of New South Wales has had breakthrough in solar technology. We love the fact that our universities are producing things that the world desperately needs for this century. So we don’t want to see our university funding cut. The Prime Minister should think again. The Greens will not be supporting cuts in this year’s budget to our universities. We want to see education funded from early childhood right through the school system into our universities and TAFE colleges. It is so important, the one thing that changes lives in Australia for the better is education. We all know that, it equalises where people have come from, it doesn’t matter where they live, what their parents’ backgrounds have been, access to education is a transforming influence and we support it.

And that’s why the Prime Minister should think again about the mining tax. The Greens have been saying very clearly, don’t cut education, don’t cut university funding, instead fix the mining tax. When the Prime Minister said everything was on the table when it came to revenue-raising, she should have explained to the people of Australia why the mining tax isn’t on the table. The Greens’ research now provided by the Parliamentary Budget Office shows quite clearly that in this financial year the mining tax is going to return even less than the Government expected. They had written it down to $2 billion, now we find it will only bring in $800 million. Only $800 million from the big miners and yet the Prime Minister takes money out of the pockets of single parents and is now going to slash university funding. It’s not on. If we were to fix the mining tax, restore it to a 40 per cent tax rate, block the loopholes and also get rid of the very generous depreciation provisions, we would be able to raise billions. And even though there has been a drop in commodity prices which the Parliamentary Budget Office says is about 3 and a half billion dollar drop in overall forward estimates, by including gold in the mining tax you could restore that. So even with commodity price drops, fixing the mining tax and including gold would see you get when it $26.2 billion over the forward estimates. So everyone who is considering a university education, everyone who wants money into schools, everyone who appreciates the great research done in our universities, get behind fixing the mining tax. $26.2 billion over the forward estimates is there to be had and Prime Minister you and Tony Abbott should explain to the Australian people why won’t you go after Rio Tinto, BHP and Xstrata, why are they a protected species actually filling up their shareholders’ pockets at the expense of single parents and our universities. It’s not good enough, let’s fix the mining tax, let’s get $26.2 billion, let’s look at the $800 million raised last year and think to yourself that is really a disgrace, let’s get the $26.2 billion and let’s have our universities celebrating as well as our schools.

JOURNALIST: If you increase taxes on the miners won’t that in turn mean they employ less people? Is it all about really just might lining their own pockets?

CHRISTINE MILNE: It’s absolutely about lining the pockets of the mining companies – they spent $22 million on advertising and saved themselves in excess of $40 billion – that’s not a bad return for a big attack on the Government and they folded. It’s as simple as that. It is not about the companies going overseas, Rio made a big fuss about sovereign risk, ask them about their business in Mozambique or Guinea and you will soon see what sovereign risk is. This is all about the mining companies protecting their mega profits at the expense of the Australian community and both Liberal and Labor being too afraid to take on the big miners. Well the Greens are not afraid to take on the big miners, we won’t support the cuts to universities, we will support fixing the mining tax and raising $26.2 billion.

JOURNALIST: Craig Emerson says that it’s a profits based tax, so obviously when profits go up then they’ll raise more money, so the tax isn’t actually broken.

CHRISTINE MILNE: It’s absolutely broken. The mining tax is broken and the excuse Labor is using is the fluctuation in commodity prices. What it’s not saying is that it is fundamentally flawed in the decision to rebate all the royalties to the states, in the decision to give the most outrageous, generous treatment to the depreciation and what we need to do is fix the rate at which the tax is levied and so it should be a 40 per cent rate across the board. There is no excuse and I challenge Craig Emerson to say why shouldn’t gold be in it, why shouldn’t there be a 40 per cent rate across oil and gas as well as all the minerals. That’s where the Government refuses to answer the questions and it’s because the mining companies ran rings around the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and Martin Ferguson in designing the tax; the mining industry knew very well what they were doing and the politicians were outsmarted. The Treasury were in the backroom and the tax office weren’t there all. It was a joke and the mining industry has been laughing all the way to the bank since but the people who are not laughing are the people in universities who stand to have mega cuts, and single parents who have had their support cut. So let’s actually take a reality check. It is not just about fluctuating commodity prices; it’s about fundamental flaws in the design of the tax which have to be fixed in order to raise the $26.2 billion that’s there to be had.

JOURNALIST: If you’re not going to support the cuts to higher education what does that mean in terms of funding for the Gonski education reforms, I understand that Julia Gillard said that the cuts to the universities will go towards funding the school reforms.

CHRISTINE MILNE: Well the Prime Minister has said she intends to cut universities to pay for schools but they’re two separate pieces of legislation. We will most certainly be supporting the implementation of the Gonski review into education, absolutely. The Greens have been arguing for a fairer funding model for schools, we love a fairer funding model for schools and we want to see that money flow and we will be voting for it. Equally there will be a separate piece of legislation cutting the funding to universities and we will not support that but we are not saying that we want to spoil the budget figures, we are saying no, let’s raise the money, don’t take it out of universities don’t take it from single parents, but rather take it from the miners and we are sitting there with the numbers, with the Government to fix the mining tax. The big question is why won’t the Prime Minister take on the miners? Is it because she is too afraid after the advertising campaign they ran against her?

JOURNALIST: If you support the Gonski review and the Government decides not to alter the mining tax what will you did then, will you still vote down cuts to university funding?

CHRISTINE MILNE: The Greens will not be supporting cuts in university funding under any circumstances, it’s as simple as that, and we will be supporting implementation of the Gonski education reforms because we want to see a fairer funding model. We stand ready to block the budget gaps and to make sure that the money is there. The question is it’s about priorities, it’s about saying where are you prepared to raise the money? Well we’re not prepared to take it out of universities, we’re not prepared to take it out of the pockets of single parents but we do want to see the miners pay a fair share return on what is the resource that belongs to the people of Australia. That is not an unfair thing to do and when Gina Rinehart and the big miners BHP, Rio Tinto and Xstrata said they can’t afford to pay – have a look at their balance sheets, have a look at the record profits that they are now making in an historical context. There’s no excuse for this, there’s no economic rationale for not including gold for example, there’s no economic rationale for saying it’s a 40 per cent tax on oil and gas, 22 per cent on coal and iron ore and nothing for other things. There’s no rationale of that so let’s get real, let’s fix the mining tax, let’s raise the money and have universities funded, have Gonski implemented in our schools and have single parents supported and Newstart increased. All those things are possible if you fix the mining tax.

JOURNALIST: What do you make of talk today that the Coalition might be backing down on their paid parental leave policy?

CHRISTINE MILNE: Well the wheels are falling off the Coalition’s policies all over the place. Their Direct Action in addressing global warming is a complete mess and they argue with each other all the time about what they are going to basically compensate and what they won’t and now the wheels are falling off their paid parental leave policy. It’s suddenly occurring to people in the Coalition that when they get into government if the polls are right that they actually have to implement the things that they’re saying that they’ll do and that’s why there’s a bit of a backbench revolt going on in relation to Tony Abbott’s parental leave policy. The Greens are saying that the Government’s policy does not go far enough, we need to make sure that paid parental leave covers 26 weeks, we need to make sure that it includes superannuation. So what the Greens are saying is that the Government needs to go further and the Coalition needs to rein in the generosity to the high income earners. I mean it’s basically saying it will pay people a replacement wage for their 26 weeks up to the $150,000 salary mark, in other words they’ll pay $75,000 for six months of paid leave. We think that that goes way too far in terms of how much it costs the overall budget but we think there’s a middle way. The Greens are saying 26 weeks, include super, let’s do this the right way.
Christine Milne Australian Greens Leader