Gina Rinehart: "spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising"

[Tannin]

^ lots of bluster, very little real content here. All this trash talk about how big mining is in WA is completely pointless - you can pick ANY geographical area and there is always a significant industry. In Gippsland it's all dairy farming. On the Queensland coast, tourism is massive. In the Melbourne CBD finance is huge. In Griffith it's wine and stone fruit. And so on - every area has particular specialties. It's the total contribution which counts.

Second, the very high export values for coal and iron ore last year were at the peak of the commodity bubble. They will drop back to the field now, and make up a still large but more sustainable part of our overall economy. Those prices won't be seen again for a very, very long time.

Third, for an industry which trumpets its "massive contribution" to the economy, why doesn't it actually contribute? Mining produces 30% of the corporate profits but only pays 15% of the corporate tax. All the other productive, tax-paying industries are carrying super-rich miners like Rinehart - paying twice as much tax per dollar of profit. And all the other industries between them account fot 97% of employment, mining a mere 3%.

The point here is that Rinehart and her fellows contribute much less to Australia than other people in other industries (exactly half as much, to be precise) but shout and bluster much, much more about how poor they are. People like Rinehart should do more work, pay more tax, and talk a lot less.

 

[Calliope]

People like Rinehart should do more work, pay more tax, and talk a lot less.

Also people like Tannin should do more work, pay more tax, and talk a lot less.

 

[DB008]

The point here is that Rinehart and her fellows contribute much less to Australia than other people in other industries (exactly half as much, to be precise) but shout and bluster much, much more about how poor they are. People like Rinehart should do more work, pay more tax, and talk a lot less.

Really?

 

[Tannin]

Really?

Yep. As an industry, mining pays 15% of all corporate tax in Australia, but makes 30% of the total profit. Mining is an important and very valuable part of the economy but we need to stop the bloodletting in the rest of the country (or what's left of it). Miners like Rinehart need to be required to pay their fair share of tax, and the mad exchange rate (largely caused by the mining boom but now sustained by excessively high interest rates) needs to come back to somewhere near sanity so that the broad mass of the economy can get back to making profits. A healthy economy has a healthy balance between many sectors, and a healthy democracy treats the self-interested bleatings of the super-rich as just what they are - entirely predictable attempts to grab a larger slice of the economic cake.

 

[IFocus]

Is it a bad thing that we can see the person without the spin

Once you enter the public arena trying to sell ideas (political weight) that will further your own interests then words matter and presentation crucial.

Business is all about spin at the big end, Twiggy Forest one of the better exponents (I mean that in a nice way)as he build FMG using other peoples money.

 

[IFocus]

Yep. As an industry, mining pays 15% of all corporate tax in Australia, but makes 30% of the total profit. Mining is an important and very valuable part of the economy but we need to stop the bloodletting in the rest of the country (or what's left of it). Miners like Rinehart need to be required to pay their fair share of tax, and the mad exchange rate (largely caused by the mining boom but now sustained by excessively high interest rates) needs to come back to somewhere near sanity so that the broad mass of the economy can get back to making profits. A healthy economy has a healthy balance between many sectors, and a healthy democracy treats the self-interested bleatings of the super-rich as just what they are - entirely predictable attempts to grab a larger slice of the economic cake.

When the GFC hit retail hardly down sized its labour, mining dumped 19% of its work force. Had it been the other way round no amount of stimulus would have saved us.

 

[sptrawler]

When the GFC hit retail hardly down sized its labour, mining dumped 19% of its work force. Had it been the other way round no amount of stimulus would have saved us.

That's right retail are dumping them now and so are the miners?
Meanwhile we have $360b debt?
But they have homeloans from$20,000 first home grants, plasma t.v's also dodgy insulation. The only problem is we go into the recession we have to have under labor and everyone is maxed out, including the government.