Hey, today I want to talk to you about a serious issue that we have been mislead about and had ignored in serious examination by the media. I want to talk to you about how the public is regularly screwed out of taxes and fees the government ought to be collecting on big mineral extraction businesses. Because the mining industry spent $20 million on an ad campaign when we last spoke about the mining tax, the labor government wimped out, and let mining lobbyists write the legislation, so you know what that said. They all paid little or nothing on that in the first year it was in.

The miners ads said that if we put mining tax (actually called the minerals resource rent tax) up the economy would collapse, and Australian businesses would all go down, when the mining industry closed up all over the country. Real wrath of god type shit.

The truth is, the mining tax should more accurately be called the resource super profits tax (RSPT), and here is how it was supposed to work in its original form:
1. First up, it gives a fair rate of return for the mining company. They pay no resource super profits tax until
they get 6% return on capital back themselves as profit. You’d have to be Warren Buffet
2. After that, the Australian public, which owns the finite resource, is given a 40% share of the profits.
3. It eliminates a confusing bunch of confusing royalties and fees paid to the states at present, and all royalties
presently paid to the states would be rebated.

But let’s look at the main point of contention, the 40% rate. A RSPT would not “kill off mining and related small businesses” as claimed by the mining industry ads. How do I know this? Because it has happened before, and right here in Australia. Remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth when Australia set the tax rates on all the offshore gas we are now developing for shipment to eager customers.? . . . . . Yeah, I didn’t think so, but it happened, believe me. And guess what, the guys moving the LNG are paying a super profits tax very similar to what is proposed for land based mineral extraction under the RSPT.

So on April 5, vote the Australian Democrats, because the resource super profits tax is just part of what we call sustainable prosperity, and a fair return for all of Australia.