Exactly what Barnett has been saying.
The Federal LNP haven't backed him and Labor before them didn't back him.
Seems crazy to have a super profits tax, when they are offshoring their profits.
More intelligent to charge them for how much they extract.
Barnett was out encouraging as much expansion and production as he could when prices were high.
Can see it with LNG as well.
Prob was Barnett bought into the $120 floor price, and mistook the massive increase in demand to build new ships and mines and infrastructure as permanent demand when it was reasonably transitory.
I was reading an article that is showing over 100 ships will be scrapped this year. At the peak of the ship building freenzy something like 43M tonnes was being delivered, now it's in the tens of thousands. 100M tonnes of steel demand in shipping alone is now gone.
Barnett is also crazy in giving the juniors a rebate on royalties. They're going to die. What's the point of propping them up when the I/O price will never remain high enough to make them sustainable? The more you support uneconomic production, the more we lose.
Also remember it was the current resource minister Ian macfarlane pretty much said on getting into office "We've got to make sure that every molecule of gas that can come out of the ground does so." He's also out still pushing for increased CSG on the east coast, yet wont ensure it's reserved for local use, so any increase in production is shipped out the country.
From David Uren at the Australia
Sino Iron’s $10 billion mine on Clive Palmer’s leases in the Pilbara has got its production costs below $US100 a tonne for the first time in the past few months, but they are still double the prevailing iron ore price.
Consulting firm AME lists Sino Iron as the world’s highest- cost operation supplying the Chinese market in seaborne trade. The firm counts only the mine’s variable costs such as wages, processing and transport. Adding in the capital charges could easily double its costs.
If Atlas Iron with production costs of around $US60 a tonne is in trouble, Sino Iron should be mothballed. There is no obvious economic justification for keeping it going. The mine’s continued operation says much about what is wrong with the iron ore market and also flashes danger signals for the outlook for the Chinese economy.
Rumour has it there's been some activity around FMG. Possibly the Chinese are looking to prop him up. If China can engineer enough backdoor support to keep FMG going then it will have effective control of 200 million tonnes of Pilbara iron ore and it is game over for the iron ore price permanently.
Do you really believe Abbott would have the balls to say no to the Chinese if they made a take over offer, or at least asked for majority ownership of FMG?