You can only dig it up once so the Australian people should benifit from it as much as possible, and it's not as if this can be offshored like the rest of our industry.

I think this is a brilliant masterstroke and I dont know why they are not playing it up more.
First there is the increased government revenue. Always a good thing in a time of deficit.
Then there is the fact that it will dampen down the mining boom and reduce the inflationary effects of skills shortages and low unemployment. Which will keep interest rates down.
Finally we get to keep more of our resources in the ground to sell when the rest of the world runs low and we can get top dollar.
Aside from a few rich suits I dont see how anyone could complain.

Giving the money to Superannuation companies is as safe as giving money to contractors to put pink bats in your roof or builders to put tin sheds up for a million dollars. This Government knows it has spent its way into so much debt so quickly that it is in the poo. Now it wants to take from those who work hard and take the risks and who already funds tens of thousands of public servants doing their 7 hours a day in Canberra to receive fat salaries. No wonder even the likes of mild mannered Twiggy can't contain themselves with such a blatant cash grab to pay for their out of control election grabbing spending. Thankfully the public have woken up.

Mikk, the little problem that you face is the law of unintended
consequences, when you overlook a few variables in the equation.

Australia has one teeny weeny problem and that is a regular
monthly current account deficit and total net debts of around
1 trillion $. We won't pay it back with seashells. So we
continue to borrow each month, to keep the wheels falling off
the cart.

Our four main banks are amongst the world's largest borrowers.

Mining is about the only way that we will dig our way out of our
financial hole. Building more houses for more migrants, is not going
to do it.

If mining slacks off and our current account grows, overseas investors
who provide all these funds, will get nervous, as they did with
Greece or Iceland, when the numbers did not stack up anymore.

Very quickly that cheap money becomes very expensive money, as more
risk will mean higher interest rates and there is not a thing
that the Govt or Reserve Bank will be able to do about it.

If we then need the IMF to bail us out, all your protesting in
the streets will not change things. They don't fart around either,
when they lay down their conditions.

But ignore all this at your peril.

For those who support the tax, have you really though this through.

Picture yourself as an employee of a strawberry farmer.

You work your 38hr week for say $700.

Now, if the farmer came to you and offered you an additional 15 hours per week, at overtime rates and, you wanted the work, would you accept it?

Now after you have accepted it, the farmer than says to you, by the way, you will be taxed at 70cents in the dollar and I can only pay you if I can sell the strawberries, otherwise you will have worked for nothing.

Now, be honnest, would you accept those conditions if you were that worker?

Now of cause the answer is no! But this is exactly what the government is asking the miners to do.

What they may well do is simply stop investing in exploration and cease to expand.

The alternative option here would be to tax the resourse. I have no problem with that, but don't jeopodise the financial future of our nation by making the business of mining hardley worth the effort.

After all, the CEO's of the mining companies can get 5 or 6% return on investment simply by sitting on thier hands.

Why on earth would they risk billions, knowing full well they will be robbed at the end.

Mining rents and ‘super profits ? but nothing about the Public Service & super awards ?