Why is it that the only people that want Rudd’s mining tax are overseas competitors and foreign governments?
“Sovereign risk in Australia is higher than South Africa,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Cutifani said today in an interview in Johannesburg. “Australians are horrified. It potentially damages the industry. It’s a great opportunity for South African industry.”
AngloGold Ashanti Ltd., South Africa’s largest producer of the metal, said Australia has a higher sovereign risk because of its proposed 40 percent mining tax.
Rudd should probably think again if he thinks he can win an election with this tax. Virtually every investment advisor is saying what an incredibly bad idea this tax is. Mining magnate, massive tax-payer, patriot and freedom fighter (not meant to be a play on words, aka Little Britain’s Fat Fighters ) Clive Palmer:
Mr Palmer, a long-time supporter and bankroller of the Liberal National Party in Queensland, says the policy is reminiscent of tax regimes ‘tried by communists and socialists’.
‘It will mean communist China will have a far better tax system for resources than Australia,’ he told The Courier-Mail.
The article qualifies Palmer as a ‘right-wing billionaire’ – like that’s a problem. They don’t qualify Rudd as a ‘money grubbing angry socialist’. Consider also the following. BHP has 600,000 Australian shareholders and employs around 160,000 Australians. That’s 760,000 people Rudd has gotten off side over night, not including people indirectly effected by the tax increase – including local communities in regional electorates. When you add in Rio Tinto and the other miners, there are millions of people directly effected by Rudd’s tax grab. Paul Kelly continues his growing distrust of Rudd:
Consider the situation: Labor is now at war with the world’s biggest resource company. Surely this is not the way tax reform was supposed to begin…The government looked unconvincing as Rudd and Swan struggled to explain how the new tax would work.
Then there is this damning rebute of Rudd’s lies about foreign interests and the local mining industry:
Chief executive Mick Davis said Xstrata, which owns base metals and coalmines in Australia, made $44 billion in Australian revenue since 2002. Of that, $27bn was paid to employees, to suppliers, the stakeholders in communities and towns and to the states and commonwealth tax offices. “The remaining $17bn, and another $1bn outside the country, has been invested in Australia to develop or acquire new mines and infrastructure,” Mr Davis wrote in a letter to The Weekend Australian. “That’s more than a fair share for Australians.”
Peter Costello smells a rat:
The government says miners pay only $9bn in royalties despite generating $80bn or more in profits over the past decade. But that number does not include income tax. The industry says its total tax burden was $22bn last year and it has paid $80bn in taxes and royalties in the past decade.
Peter Costello joined the debate, saying the charts prepared by Treasury were wrong. “The graphs were bodgied up,” the former treasurer said.
Costello goes on to say that Abbott is 100 per cent correct in opposing the mining tax and such a proposal would have never been approved by himself as Treasurer. Rudd has picked one almighty fight. A fight bigger than any an ETS could provoke.
One of Australia’s richest men, Fortescue Metals chief Andrew Forrest has also accused the Prime Minister of misleading the Australian people over the nature of the tax, and labelled the plan – under which the government would share in 40 per cent of profits and losses of projects – as “nationalisation of the mining industry”.
Paul Kelly backs up this nationalisation claim as correct.
….the complex design that involves government as a silent equity partner to 40 per cent of every resources project via a new tax allowance…
Pretty remarkable how far we have come from Rudd declaring to the country on TV in 2007 that he was an ‘economic conservative’ to where we are now.