Prof. Ross Garnaut gave the Hamer Oration at Melbourne University on Thursday. He pointed out that Australia has not experienced a recession for 17 years, a record for The Lucky Country. Such a period of unbroken growth is not just an Australian record, it is a world...
BLOG: henry review of taxation
Australians should be very, very angry – we get no RSPT
This week’s backdown by the federal labor government on the Mineral Resource Rent Tax will cost Australian taxpayers $35 billion over the next ten years. The shortfall in government revenues will be made up from taxes on work and taxes on business. That means it is...
Mining Democracy
photo credit: Urban~Spaceman Miners finally agree to tax reform. What are the changes? The attempt to harness economic rents for the public good has been renamed from the Resource Super Profits tax to the Mineral Resource Rent Tax. The MRRT kicks in at the...
Has our Prime Minister been replaced to suit the overseas shareholders of BHP and Rio?
“Gillard must come out strongly and call the lobbyists for who they are. She must assert control over the RSPT rather than negotiate with each and every individual company.
Gillard to Game Machiavellian Miners?
photo credit: Gary Denness Harold Mitchell, advertising supremo, summed up the mood that led to Kevin Rudd's downfall, as quoted in the AFR, 23 June: It is an 'amazing fact' that 'ordinary people on the street are barracking for five people...who have got so much...
Victoria’s Transport Plan a No-Brainer
photo credit: Schaffner Sometimes the ignorance of experts makes my blood boil. Why can’t they do the arithmetic, the sums plainly before them? The Victorian Transport Plan will cost $38 billion and produce benefits of $180 billion, according to a state-commissioned...
Aussie miners: no one likes a whiney child.
photo credit: loungerie The Henry Tax Review recommended a resource rent tax to the Australian government, carefully designed to maintain incentives and reward risk. The miners responded with apoplexy and a campaign of deliberate misinformation that has left the...
Resource Rents to Balance the Playing Field
photo credit: Yuga. The government must focus on the rate of return between those who benefit from economic rents and those that are entrepreneurial. The Age reports today: ...a Senate estimates committee was told the average profit in mining was 37.1 per cent,...
Housing Data Beckons Fall
photo credit: funadium Yesterday's ABS release of a 14.8% fall in seasonally adjusted building approvals shows that property insiders understand that a crash is coming. If not them, then the banks curtailing credit for housing is another signal that housing is...
The New Resources Tax Reduces Mining Risk.
photo credit: jcarter The Commonwealth of Australia was built on the sound principle natural resources are part of every Australian's endowment. The Henry Tax Review recommended and the Rudd government has accepted a new tax system for mining that builds on this...