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Australian Federal Election - 2019

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And a well designed resource tax should also be based on the volume of disturbed ground
You should not reward the waste of low yield ore forever by only
caring about the final production
Overall and grossly, the environment cost and the ore which is given to a miner is linked to the disturbed ground, not the absence or not of efficiency of the miner
We should encourage the best use of our resources
 
As you say, it should be volumetric based.
 
qldfrog said:
And a well designed resource tax should also be based on the volume of disturbed ground
You should not reward the waste of low yield ore forever by only
caring about the final production
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Agreed although I think the detail needs some careful thought.

Don't want to waste the lower grade ore certainly.

On the other hand taxing someone for moving lots of clay and rock to get to the gold below, and gold's almost always at a very low concentration, could end up being somewhat punitive versus an iron ore mine where most of what's dug up can be sold as is.

A middle approach could be taxation on the basis of mineral content so counting all the iron ore, gold or whatever regardless of grade (so the volume approach) but not counting the clay or whatever's sitting above it and which will be put back afterward.

Or for fuels then tax on the basis of energy content not physical volume. So 1 tonne of 30 MJ / kg coal pays the same tax as 2 tonnes of 15 MJ / kg coal. Etc (not that anyone's mining 15 MJ / kg coal at the moment, both of those mines have shut in the past few years, but in principle that seems reasonable since the value is in the energy not the ash or water).
 

With the amount of money that could be made, a department dedicated to working out the tax for all minerals, could be established.
The iron ore companies, were selling iron ore a couple of years ago for $30/ton, now it is selling for $100/ton, I'm sure a few dollars could be taken as a resource tax.
The miners say they pay tax through employing people, however with automation, the jobs are reducing and the tonnage removed is increasing.
It is just dumb not to introduce a volume based tax system, profit based tax can always be avoided, volume based would be difficult to avoid.IMO
 
sptrawler said:
It is just dumb not to introduce a volume based tax system, profit based tax can always be avoided, volume based would be difficult to avoid.IMO
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We're on the same page, my only concern's about the detail of measuring the volume but I'm sure that could be worked out as you say.

Taking it one step further, tax reductions or exemptions could be given for certain uses.

Eg no tax on iron ore or coking coal that goes into a steelworks located anywhere in Australia since having that industry is itself of benefit.
 
Gents there will never be an increase in mining tax or revenue remember the state nat from the NW that ran on a $5 a tonne increase?

Money / wealth is power we will never be in Norways league for returning a counties resources for its own benefit.

Poor fella Australia, rich fella corporations.
 
Smurf1976 said:
Taking it one step further, tax reductions or exemptions could be given for certain uses.
Click to expand...

Maybe any minerals tax should be in the form of an export tax, anything that is used internally is exempt.

That will give the "leveraging" effect you mentioned before and give a competitive advantage to our own industries.
 
SirRumpole said:
That will give the "leveraging" effect you mentioned before and give a competitive advantage to our own industries.
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The way I'm looking at it's fairly straightforward.

Dig something up and load it onto a ship. Relatively few jobs and to make any real money requires rapid depletion of non-renewable resources.

Take the same minerals and turn them into something of value and now it's worth ~20 times as much (that's roughly the ratio for some non-ferrous metals) and there's an order of magnitude more economic activity, employment etc created.

Some years ago Tasmania was exporting 6 million tonnes of woodchips a year but it was the Norske Skog paper mill processing 0.4 million tonnes of that which was accounting for most of the economic benefits of it all. That says it all.

Same with any resource. Exporting iron ore and gas from places not far apart in WA is crazy really when we could instead be putting to them to far better use either locally or at least somewhere else within Australia.

Instead of selling ores and fuels of all kinds we'd be far better off selling half the volume at an order of magnitude higher price by doing the processing here. That way we get greater benefits and the resources last longer since whilst they're not scare they will run out someday that's a given.
 
There's also backdoor ways of doing this if the idea of a direct tax is politically problematic.

Eg instead just pass a law that only government can own and operate shipping ports since they're deemed to be strategic national assets.

Then jack up the price for loading ships with unprocessed minerals = defacto mining tax.

The issue of taxes though is just detail. What we need is a government that stands up for Australia's national interests and drives a seriously hard bargain.
 
The ridiculous situation is highlighted by Lynas rare earths, rather than process it here they built the plant in Malaysia, they have had nothing but trouble with the Malaysian Government.
Now they are going to build a second plant in the U.S, why havent they built a plant here?
We get sod all for the raw material, there is no jobs and the material is being removed, weird logic.
 
Jim Chalmers put up a creditable performance on Q&A tonight.

Looks like he could be in the running for Labor leader.
 
SirRumpole said:
Jim Chalmers put up a creditable performance on Q&A tonight.

Looks like he could be in the running for Labor leader.
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Never heard of him, but a completely new face really is needed, too much baggage with most of the rest.IMO
McGowan in W.A came from a Navy background, not a union background and seems to be doing really well. Having said that, the opposition in W.A is just about non existent, without Barnett.
 
sptrawler said:
Now they are going to build a second plant in the U.S, why havent they built a plant here? We get sod all for the raw material, there is no jobs and the material is being removed, weird logic.
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We need to become a competitive place in which to do such business and beyond that, either process it here or leave it in the ground.

I don't know much about that specific case but considering the nature of the activity I'll take a damn good guess that it's yet another negative consequence of the energy debacle we have in this country. A debacle that should never have occurred in a country with abundant wind, solar, coal, uranium, thorium and natural gas and not insignificant biomass, hydro and oil resources.

Energy is a problem Australia just shouldn't have. To anyone looking from outside, well it's somewhat incredible really to think that it has ended up this way.
 
Especially when the mineral is mined in W.A, plenty of gas and power.
 
Why isn't the plant built here? There must be some clear reasoning for it. Then we need to do something about those reasons. Seems horribly weird we can make money mining but not in refining. What is that really about?
 
And regulations, bureaucracy
Time it takes to build anything here, the discovery of a secret site and an endangered butterfly the minute you do a building application, etc etc
And then if you run the business, the tax rate on it
I mean seriously, why would anyone build a business in Australia if you can build it elsewhere?
It was a no go for me even to consider opening an it branch here for our international,startup and i need zip infrastructure, can find people here and power is not an issue
No surprise we only have captured audience business here:
duopoly woolies coles, westfield shopping center, a few construction companies, wheat cattle,mining as big companies here
But labour solutions is more taxes....
 
We need a full reboot here or we head the Argentina way, with a chinese master instead of a US one
Think again about the above in 20y
In the meantime, half the population concern is about our australian contribution to global warming ..zip and the other half on MAFS latest drama
 
And about resource tax, yes obviously a bit more subtle than tonsof earth moved, but a volumetric based tax should be included
Do we really want to even see mining at all if we destroy enormous area for token minimal profit, and with taxpayer footing the bill for rehabilitations?
 
qldfrog said:
But labour solutions is more taxes....
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At what point will you work out there has been a Coalition government for the past 6 years, and as a result of last Saturday, 3 more to come!
Maybe, however, you were as well informed as everyone else about their specific policies for fixing the ills you mention, and which have persisted.
Maybe you can remind us what they were, and why they got returned to power to do so much good.
 
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